It's not just smiley faces at the Senate Majority Caucus anymore.
Earlier this month, the hiring of Former Minnesota House Speaker, Pawlenty commissioner, and current Regent Steve Sviggum as communications director/ Senjem's executive assistant at $102,000 a year by the Republican Senate Majority Caucus fueled a bonfire of criticism mixed with the tinder of praise and expanding the emoticon universe on the right side of the aisle.
Witnesses for the defense didn't help much. Blois Olson won the first nomination for With Friends Like This Award--MN Pol Division for 2012 with this sentence in The Morning Take:
There is no one more authentic and straightforward than Steve Sviggum, and it is clear that having a sage, calm and mature hand in the Senate Majority Leaders operation is what is needed.
This learned observation by the Golden Tongue of Tunheim came at a moment when Sviggum told the Associated Press and other reporters in Sviggum insists new job vetted by U of Minn. brass:
"There is no decision that I can make here that affects the University of Minnesota," he said. "I am not the decision-maker. Now I work for a decision-maker or -makers, but I am not the decision-maker."
The AP story notes that Sviggum said:
he spoke with [Board Chairwoman Linda] Cohen and [university general counsel Mark] Rotenberg separately last week before officially applying for the job. He was announced as Senate communications director Monday.
This account is disputed, according to the U's student paper, the Minnesota Daily. In Disagreement over whether Sviggum vetted Regents policy, Greta Kaul reports:
"Regent Sviggum did not discuss the job or consult about it with either the chair or vice chair of the Board of Regents prior to taking the position. Nor did Regent Sviggum discuss taking this position with the university general counsel or seek his advice about doing so, Board of Regents Chairwoman Linda Cohen and University General Counsel Mark Rotenberg wrote in a joint press release Wednesday.
And there's more, Kaul notes:
It was reported that the Board met last week in order to discuss changes to its conflict of interest policy involving University employees serving on the board. The meeting was, in fact, a conference call between regents Sviggum, Cohen and Vice Chair David Larson, Cohen said Friday. The meeting did not constitute a quorum under Minnesota's open meetings law.[emphasis added]
Sviggum said he brought up the possibility of a regent working at the Senate.
"I vetted the policy up front. I clarified the policy with the [general counsel]. I clarified with the chair," Sviggum said.
Editorial opinion at the school, where Sviggum had been a popular, though adjunct, teacher in the Humphrey Institute, is not taking kindly to the former speaker's sense of entitlement. Today's editorial, Regents get political, begins:
Last week, Regent Steve Sviggum accepted a job as communications and executive assistant of the Senate Republican Caucus. According to the chair of the Board of Regents and the University of Minnesota general counsel, Sviggum did not consult with either of them about whether this position would constitute a conflict of interest. The extent of his efforts was a conference call between himself, the chair and the vice chair of the Board of Regents. That’s hardly thorough.
The conflict of interest in Sviggum’s new position is clear — it is an obvious violation of the employment-related conflict of interest provision of the board’s code of ethics.
But the student editors don't stop there. They continue:
This is only the latest development in the politicization of the Board of Regents. In February 2011, the Legislature selected Laura Brod as its at-large regent candidate, a position she had not been nominated for. Brod was a Republican legislator whose term ended the month before her selection. Before selecting her, the Republican delegation met twice to discuss their selection, excluding Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators. House higher education committee Chairman Bud Nornes explained the selection with an alarming quote: “It’s hard to expect friends to not vote for you.”
Indeed.
However, it appears that the Senate Republican Caucus Communications Office, headed for the moment by Sviggum, so has a plan to make sure the authentic and straightforward Kenyon farmer and political veteran is no longer the center of the news.
They're trotting out former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, whose sudden resignation from the top leadership post and revelation of an innappropriate relationship with a male senate staff led to the dismissal of the guy Sviggum's replacing: Michael Brodkorb, the dark lord of GOP smear politics and former deputy chair.
Via the Grand Forks Herald, veteran Forum Communications political reporter Don Davis reports in Capitol Chatter, Legislative notebook: Assistant calls Senjem tough:
A Senate GOP communications staffer is lining up five-minute media interviews with Koch Tuesday, the opening day of the 2012 legislative session.
While she has said little in public since the relationship was reported, she did issue an apology. She did a series of short telephone interviews when she quit a leader, but that was before the relationship was revealed.
Bluestem thanks Davis for reporting on the machinery of the Senate flacks itself. Some of the handiwork of Sviggum's staff has been seen in Sen. Amy Koch: Back up after 'punch to the face' at the Star Tribune, wherein we get the news that Koch didn't wear her wedding band to the interview.
However, the news article failed to make clear that the punch in the face was largely self-inflicted, regardless of what the gays may say to City Pages. Nor does Koch answer the burning question raised in December by the alt-weekly. Somehow, Bluestem doubts that the Senate GOP communications staffer Davis mentions has called the City Pages staffer to line up an interview; in any event, the journalist has moved on to report on other Lotharios.
The Senate communications office has moved on in other ways as well. Back to Davis. Under the Grand Forks Herald's own headline, Legislative notebook: New Senate leader not just a happy face, readers learn:
New Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, can be as tough as anyone when he negotiates with Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, one of his assistants said.
Senjem is known as a nice guy, but one whose negotiations skills with Democrats have not been tested.
The article goes on to relate the man crush that Assistant Majority Leader Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, has on Dave Senjem.
Bluestem can only observe that that is sure some messaging from Sviggum's comm department, given that Senjem's negotiation skills have indeed been tested, since he served as minority leader at a time when the DFL had an overwhelming majority in the Senate. Having proved hs negotiation skills under such adverse conditions must count for something.
But perhaps not so much within his own caucus. David reports--the first time that BSP has seen the vote noted in print:
Senjem won the job Koch held for a year by a single vote in an 11-hour closed-door meeting late last month.
. . .Ingebrigtsen said Senjem has "that diplomacy about him" and said "he is not going to poke anyone in the eye and go out."
Putting a nice guy in charge of the caucus is not a bad thing, the Alexandria senator said. "There is nothing wrong with Republicans being liked."
A large majority of Senjem's own caucus would disagree, prefering their leadership to be disagreeable sorts.
Images: Steve Sviggum, above; Dave Senjem, not just a happy face.
Earlier in Reform 2.0: Reform 2.0: Oops, he did it again, or, Chief Sviggum's cunning rules headlines & airwaves
Reform 2.0, or spare change in the MN Senate: Sviggum to take home $102,000 as comm head
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