Don't expect Sherman statements. But there are clear, simpler "Not me" ones. There's nothing noteworthy about noting McFadden is coyly in the game; but that scorecard is very helpful and too bad it was bundled with borderline news. They should give them all roster numbers, to wear like the Vikings do, that many, so early.
Bring Me The News, this link, notes:
The latest name to be added to the mix? Mike McFadden.
[...]
That came just a couple days after it was reported Mary Pawlenty, who served as a judge in Dakota County, may also look at Kline’s spot. The former Minnesota first lady, whose husband Tim Pawlenty served as a Republican governor of Minnesota for eight years, isn’t said to have a timetable for a final decision.
Both Pawlenty and McFadden might have a large field to wade through in order to get a party nomination.
[...]
Three candidates have filed with the Federal Elections Committee, according to records.
-- Angela Craig, DFL
-- David Gerson, Republican
-- Mary Lawrence, DFL
Lawrence, a Minneapolis doctor who filed paperwork to run this past spring, has raised the most money with more than $1.1 million – though her financial summary shows $800,000 of that is a loan to herself.
Beyond those three, there are nine possible candidates – the Pioneer Press has a list of all of them, along with their party affiliation and whether they’ve officially said yes or are just considering a run at this point.
[links in original]
Mary Lawrence. As to candidates who might face up to and reform the income disparity problem, a major issue I see, one lending one's own campaign eight hundred grand looks to be a 1%'er making me for now a skeptic. Moreover, the Lawrence campaign website, here, states about the candidate's spouse:
Jim Lawrence, Mary’s husband, is a successful businessman and a dedicated member of the Twin Cities philanthropic community.
After attending public high school, Jim graduated from Yale College and Harvard Business School. Initially, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He later became a Partner at Bain & Company. After only seven years in the strategy consulting business, Jim started his own firm, LEK which currently employs 500 people in the U.S. He has successfully helped to lead several global companies including PepsiCo, Unilever, and Rothschild, and in Minnesota, Northwest Airlines (now Delta) and General Mills. He is currently based in Minnesota and is the Chairman of Great North Star, LLC, a private investment company.
Always one to give back to his community, Jim coached youth basketball when his sons were little and has served on several philanthropic boards including the University of Minnesota Foundation, the Ordway, the Minnesota International Center, the Minnesota Orchestra, and Allina Health. A devoted member of the Plymouth Congregational Church, he initiated an early morning worship service allowing hockey families to attend Sunday services. He is the Vice Chair of the Board of Overseers at the Carlson School of Business and the former Chair of the Investment Committee for the University of Minnesota Foundation. Jim is a frequent guest lecturer at the Carlson School of Business.
Jim and Mary have established the Lawrence Family Foundation to support education, healthcare research, communities, and the arts. Their foundation has contributed generously to Minnesota-based non-profits.
Donate
That is as plain and complete a disclosure statement as one might want, and it is commendable that way.
However, if Wall Street leanings, sympathy for the derivatives issuers. promoters and traders who brought you securitized mortgage tranches and all that went with them September 2008 and onward, are troublesome considerations with Pawlenty and McFadden, the letters: DFL hardly make the worry less with the Mary Lawrence candidacy. On her Issues page Lawrence has the "rising tide lifts all boats" version of trickle down, but nothing about leveling the playing field by properly taxing the rich, for a change, along with concrete marginal bracket cutoff points and rates applicable to each of the stratospheric zone brackets that may be delineated. That's what would really enthuse me to see from a candidate for Congress, this cycle or ever.
Look at the Lawrence issues page, form your own thoughts; and is this a fire-in-the-belly land-on-your-feet-running-and-never-stop winner's page; in your view?
Likewise, this does not particularly impress me. However, individual tastes differ.
Looking at Lawrence FEC disclosure documents online here and here, it is difficult to weigh the prevalence of out of state money, and the donor affiliations disclosed, as to whether we are seeing anything akin to Wellstonian grassroot support. It brings Walter Mondale more to mind with me, than Paul Wellstone. Yet I am open to being convinced otherwise between now and later; again, with CD2 not being the district in which I have a vote.
With Kline out, CD2 could swing away from for-profit student loan distress politics, to something better, with likelihood favoring that outcome via a DFL victory; be it via Lawrence or Craig.
Dave Minderman has posted twice about the Mary Lawrence candidacy, and lukewarm enthusiasm might be only my reading, so see for yourself; here and here.
Angie Craig. As a high-tech corporate management person (recently in human resources) with a medical devices firm in her past, Craig as a first impression might be a 1%'er, but not a Wall Street prosper-by-trading, the fewer rules the better sort, rather a buckle down and work with others to make the business survive and grow throughout market yins and yangs. Craig, likely to avoid any claim of conflicting interests, has quit the medical device employment as part of her candidacy. Her spouse has an education background, not one in lobbying or in Wall Street or hedge fund trading; nor one suggesting mega-wealth and privilege.
Craig's same sex marriage most surely will have Mary and Ralph Kiffmeyer and their ilk baying nightly at the moon, but it should not deter reasonable people from weighing the entire candidacy and how it might resonate, personally. Craig and her spouse both have maintained productive careers while raising four sons now teenagers, which is an accomplishment.
While neither party is my party, (both are too middling in the road to me with the DFL mainstream too distant from their moderates of the past such as Paul Wellstone); I nonetheless caucus DFL under a lesser evil rubric.
From that perspective, Craig more than Lawrence looks to be a person of the people, "growing up in a trailer park" being resonant with a person's knowing first hand and not theoretically the range of income disparity Angst that our nation has wrongly tolerated; so I credit Craig on that. Last there are Craig's early endorsements, three of which I note as resonant with me. First, Mike Obermueller who carried the fight to Kline twice where general election voters failed to provide a majority to the better candidate - he has endorsed Craig. Next, Jim Carlson, whose career and voting record I have followed, and third, Scott Dibble, who among other noteworthy things had the courage to stand up to simply offensive, awful leadership conduct of Tom Bakk and his crowd. Follow the link, see other names you might recognize. Compare that with the out-of-state donor disclosure information Mary Lawrence has filed with FEC. These are people we know, with track records in Minnesota, where they have done or tried to consistently do good things.
So, were I caucusing DFL in CD2 I first would be happy to see two intelligent, laudable, accomplished candidates from which to choose, and would favor Craig as more of the person I would pin hopes upon; yet if a caucus majority felt otherwise (and knowing both Lawrence and Craig have pledged to abide), I would not feel uncomfortable then supporting Lawrence as the best the two-party process would offer at the end of each party's caucusing. As a hypothetical, if caucusing GOP, I'd go with a gut feeling, Gerson over either Pawlenty or McFadden, as more likely to rock a problematic lobbyist infested status quo boat, in Washington DC.
NOW:
Are you ready for a real laugher; GOP side, Drazkowski "considering," Garafalo "no," per the PiPress score card. Credit Garafalo here (if nowhere else), with having a sense of reality. Drazkowski? Likely he has the filing fee, so what's to stop him? Good judgment? Wait for it.
Seeing other names; Draz can read ...; so a good bet is Drazkowski will save himself the filing fee.
Remember, even business-savvy Sean Nienow, living outside the CD2 district, could file there.
Bachmann's home was redistricted out of CD6, but that did not stop her most recent run in GOP tolerant CD6. A person need not live in the Congressional District in which he/she files to run. That precedent exists, so that Stuart Mills III for example is not constrained only to another run in CD8. Possibilities are endless. There was the New Hampshire guy in CD8 between Oberstar and Nolan.
____________UPDATE____________
Angie, stay out of small planes headed to Eveleth.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Minderman has a duly skeptical review of Craig's candidacy; and he IS in CD2, caucusing there. It is good that people like Dave are around to want to focus on delineating the best willing candidate that can be presented voters in the general election. Craig on her website has favorably mentioned Emily's List, Lawrence has not (or if she has I erred in overlooking it), but it is unclear if Emily's List is backing either of the DFL declared candidates in CD2. If there is a reader knowing if there is an endorsement, please comment. Old news, here, noting two women are running; prior to Kline's bowing out. That gives the appearance of neither being on any special Emily's List listing. Reader help would be welcome.
__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
The federal Congressional district residency situation differs from state Senate and House requirements, as with judicial residency within the district; see, e.g., most recently, Strib reporting. In that report, the part about a false address in Anoka County, what did he use, the Ramsey Municipal Parking Garage address? An in-county P.O. Box, for a county nonresident, as with here.
__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Worth a trip back to a days-old post, to note:
Angie Craig also has not taken on the income disparity issue head-on with any concrete proposal on fairly taxing the rich in some increased manner. Perhaps because she is of the rich, and believes taxation as set up after Reagan and then Bush tax cuts is hunkey-dory.