This race, especially with Timmer favoring Painter, has been intriguing - more interesting than other races, much like the DFL endorsement contest in CD2 where multimillionaire Angie Craig with DCCC backing prevailed for a second attempt at Congress over a long-term non-millionaire teacher who impressed me more.
With Craig's background being directly in the medical device business. Where she built her fortune.
Timmer, aside from the post's headline, is not excerpted, so read his item first, before weighing the balance of the post.
Neither Smith nor Painter is a progressive. That is my complaint.
Smith at best is a Klobuchar clone, if anything; i.e., far from being a progressive about much of anything. Painter's being a Bushco person squares poorly with single-payer advocacy and environmental conscience, positions Painter advocates, and not knowing the man to judge him personally, that positioning of a Bushco person requires a willing suspension of disbelief which I am unprepared to accord the man, (with the John Anderson stalking horse candidacy years ago as a worrisome precedent).
At least Klobuchar is just a hair short of being a millionaire, that is worth noting. (See, also, MinnPost here.)
HOWEVER: The BS from Ken Martin about Painter "refuses to call himself a Democrat" galls greatly - this from head of a party suffering nationwide from shrinkage. It evidences an insularity and an unwillingness to substantively crticize things Painter has offered as policy positions while letting that "not willing to call himself a Democrat" crap out as a critique. Such narrowness and petty insularity needs to be shelved forever as bad policy for attracting new and vital DFL blood. Having posted that way previously, it is time to move on.
In view of the need of the nation for progressive movement in line with the polled views of the people, single payer favoring, wanting Social Security sacrosanct but better, wanting strong unionism, wanting college debt slavery ended, protecting the Boundary Waters, and wanting the rich fairly taxed (promised by Dayton/Tina, undelivered); it is clear that neither Painter nor Smith qualify for a progressive lable. Ellison should have run for Senator instead of for AG, but that's water under the bridge.
So, my decision to vote Smith was a personal, and very, very hard decision - since to me she's unimpressive and unprogressive, instead being a middle of the road DFL regular; where insidership seems to count way too much.
WHY WILL THE MINNESOTA DFL NOT SUPPORT POPULAR VIEWS WITH CONSEQUENT PROGRESSIVE PARTY POLICY IS A MYSTERY; ASIDE FROM MONEY TALKING DISPROPORTIONATELY, AND THAT IS A SUPER-STRONG INDICTMENT OF THE TWO PARTY STRANGLEHOLD IMPEDING OUR NATION, CLEARLY SO, FROM BEING "GREAT AGAIN" (if great ever, where the evidence suggests "powerful," certainly, but never really "great").
_______________UPDATE_______________
While the gist of this post, like others, is the need for progressive politics to displace money-talks politics; one of Timmer's criticism of Smith - his main contention actually - is that she has a glaring conflict of interest:
Contrast that [Richard Painter's website "about" page achievements] with Tina Smith whose family owns millions in medical device stocks while she advocates for the elimination of the medical device tax, which helps fund Medicaid. (Richard wants to keep it, by the way.)
Immediately the question arises, with Timmer having provided no link on the Smith family's portfolio, what's truth vs possible hyperbole, on point?
NPR has posted:
The first full financial disclosure form filed by U.S. Sen. Tina Smith shed light on a vast portfolio of stock holdings that appraise her family’s assets of at least $5 million and possibly near $12 million.
The required report [...] also listed liabilities of $850,000 to $1.75 million, attributed to mortgage and home equity loans.
It’s difficult to pinpoint Smith’s precise worth because filers are allowed to list the value of holdings in wide ranges. But the report lists in detail which mutual funds, stocks and hedge fund securities she has with her husband, Archie. He is an investor with a focus on medical industry stocks.
Smith’s report reflects that emphasis, with med-tech companies throughout: Medtronic, Cogenix, Insulet, Boston Scientific and more. The Smiths also own stocks in U.S. Bancorp and TCF Financial, which are only some of the family’s financial sector holdings.
[links in original] [FURTHER UPDATE: The second MPR link describing Archie Smith states:
Independent investor specializing in medical device stocks. Previously: a partner with Rothschild Capital Partners with a focus on publicly traded medical device stocks, a Venture Partner with SightLine Partners, a venture capital firm focused on investments in later stage private medical device companies and Piper Jaffray as a Senior Healthcare Analyst and Managing Director in Equity Research.]
So Timmer is not misstating anything at all about the Tina-medtech portfolio weight. Let's presume Archie Smith did not make the family millionaires by being an unskilled investor, and let's presume Archie noted those holdings, all of the medical-industrial complex stocks, each represented a large, mature, low-risk, multinational corporation investment of the kind anticipated to yield big over decades, as much as public policy allows. Then, so heavily invested that way, what would you expect?
Moreover, Strib has reported:
The device tax helps fund the ACA, which provides income-based subsidies credited with helping to expand health care coverage to millions of people.
[...] U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., a long-standing critic of the device tax, said he has the commitment of GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan "to address the issue."
But the promise did not come with a date, and Paulsen was unsuccessful in getting device tax repeal included in a tax reform bill passed in December or in attaching an extension of the current collection moratorium onto other end-of-year legislation. So Paulsen is pushing to have the device tax in the Jan. 19 budget deal.
"My viewpoint is that it is prudent to act sooner than later," said Paulsen, who serves a tech-rich district. "I am hearing from constituent companies that ... mothballed these tax collections for the last couple of years. Now they have to start them up again. It's a time commitment. It's a money commitment. There are companies that weren't even around two years ago that are experiencing this for the first time, and there is confusion."
For trade groups such as the Advanced Medical Technology Association, which includes dozens of Minnesota companies as members, there is a logistics issue: If device tax payments are made before Congress extends the moratorium or repeals the tax, retroactive refunds could be a time-consuming process.
"The Treasury Department is expected to issue guidance that there are no penalties that apply on collections," Paulsen said. "But they do not have the ability to waive the tax under the statute."
The device tax has survived multiple repeal efforts since it was included in the ACA in 2010. Critics, including industry lobbyists, called it a job and research killer.
Proponents said it was a way for the device industry to pay its share of a health reform bill that would add newly insured patients to the device market.
Some argued that companies would simply pass the cost of the tax along to patients in the form of higher device prices. Cogentix CEO Darin Hammers said competition in the med tech sector has often kept that from happening.
"That was the big threat [when the tax was first enacted], is that it would get passed along," Hammers said. "But the problem is, it's a very competitive space so it's difficult to pass it on to the end user."
The tax took effect in 2013 and generated more than $5 billion in federal tax revenue until it was suspended, for two years, at the end of 2015.
[...] Tina Smith, said in a statement that she will support repealing the tax.
"I am committed to working with my colleagues in Congress on policies to ensure that our inventors, small businesses, and high-tech workers can continue to innovate," Smith said. "I'll be pressing to find a sensible repeal of the medical device tax in the weeks and months to come."
[italics added] Surely it is unprogressive to whip five billion out of federal income for the benefit of wealthy, mature, high profit, low risk, rapidly growing multinational corporations; especially with that "our inventors, small businesses, and high-tech workers can continue to innovate," excuse being exactly the same crap Big Pharma has been feeding us for decades to justify their gouging us rapaciously. It does cut to favor the Smith family's portfolio, coincidentally of course, in setting policies.
If that five billion is not to be coming from the rapacious, you know who'll be paying.
Blame it all on Mark Dayton picking his wealthy protege for Franken's vacated seat, instead of somebody better. Sombody like Kieth Ellison. Ellison has no big-money conflicts because he is not a millionaire, unlike most in Congress with Smith having joined the club. Ellison puts the people first over big money buying favors. That is a part of why big money dislikes him, apart from big-money Hollywood Haim Saban's religion-based hatred.