Shocking developments greet fans as they tune into another episode of Emo Senator, Southern Minnesota's favorite telenovela. The long-suffering staff of the Faribault Daily News has liberated themselves of rumored management restrictions on upbraiding the Belle of Waseca County, with the editorial board calling for voters to oust ALEC members from office.
And at the Blue Earth County GOP convention, Allen Quist picked up more committed delegates than did Mike Parry, the Mankato Free Press reports in Al Quist, Mike Parry jockey for delegates at county conventions.
Up in Faribault, the editorial board simply didn't accept Parry's sweet demurals about becoming an ALEC member and attending an ALEC meeting, but so not ever, once talking to ALEC about the asbestos bill that bears the name and language of every other ALEC asbestos model bill in the country. (Bluestem shared the Faribault and Waseca papers in our last episode, Emo Senator: Mike Parry confuses ALEC membership with local Rotary chapter.)
In Get ALEC supporters out of office, the board explains:
Nowhere is there a better example [of ALEC's operations] than Parry’s recent legislation seeking to limit the liability of corporations from asbestos claims.
Though Parry has said that ALEC “didn’t even get in the picture” of the legislation he sponsors, the evidence clearly shows otherwise. The legislation, if passed, would benefit Crown Holdings, which has three manufacturing facilities in southern Minnesota, including one in Faribault. Crown has been helped in its efforts to get the legislation enacted by ALEC. As a result, nearly the exact same bill has become law in 13 states, and ALEC’s director of Legislation and Policy issued a press release dated from 2005 on this
same issue.
And after noting that lobbyists are required to register and make public reports, while ALEC can operate in secrecy, the board concludes:
There are no such restrictions on ALEC, nor on the legislators who march like marionettes back to their respective state houses with bills essentially dictated to them.
That leaves the voting public with just this recourse: Vote out pols who have a record of bowing to ALEC’s influence.
But The Emo Senator has his defenders, who are braving the editorial's comments section to insist that ALEC is no different than all of those evil, evil unions.
So fierce is their ardor for Senator Parry that they fail to see that that argument destroys ALEC in order to save it. Nor do they understand that unlike ALEC, labor unions are required to disclose their spending thrice: once in disclosing their financial records to the Department of Labor in LM annual reports, yet again for lobbying, and finally a third time in disclosing the activities of political action committees, which are funded by voluntary contributions.
ALEC doesn't disclose anything; its an apples-to-ignore-that-elephant-in-the-room comparison.
The editorial must come as a blow to Parry's congressional aspirations, since Faribault is part of the new First Congressional district.
Moving south and west to Mankato, fans of Mike Parry were mesmerized by scenes Mark Fischenich's Al Quist, Mike Parry jockey for delegates at county conventions:
Former state Rep. Allen Quist on Saturday won double the delegates of state Sen. Mike Parry at the Blue Earth County Republican Convention, the event which sends the second biggest contingent to the endorsing convention that will choose the challenger to Democratic Congressman Tim Walz.
At least nine Blue Earth County residents who are supporting Quist were elected to attend the 1st Congressional District Republican Convention on April 21. Parry won at least four delegates. Another nine were still deciding between the two candidates or didn’t reveal their preference. . . .Neither Quist nor Parry were offering any delegate counts Saturday, but Quist said he believes he did very well in Rochester.
“We were most concerned about Olmsted County,” he said of the five conventions a week ago.
Two years ago, then-state Rep. Randy Demmer had 35-40 more delegates from that county than Quist. The margin helped Demmer win the four-candidate 2010 endorsement contest, with Quist finishing second, although Walz won the general election.
“This time around, of the committed delegates, we probably have over 50 percent,” Quist said of the Olmsted County event. .. .
Parry supporters countered by explaining that Blue Earth County is awash with Ron Paul supporters, who favor Quist, while surging Santorum supporters, who form a small but strong rump delegation, are reaching around for Parry.
A startled Bluestem reader asked, "Was I the only one who found the notion of Ron Paul and Al Quist as bedfellows to be rather strange?"
That is a question best directed toward Mrs. Quist, who worked for years for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
Will Emo pull ahead of Professor Quist? Will Parry campaign mastermind and advisor Ben Golnik have to pull his attention from the miasmatic tundra of Minnesota's Eighth where he leads Chip "I Love New Hampshire" Cravaack's campaign, in order to guide our hero toward the primrose path of endorsement?
Tune in to the next episode of Emo Senator.
Photoshop: Will Parry flounce his way to the endorsement? Image by Tild.
It appears that the Santorum-Quist axis within the Minnesota GOP is alive and well in the new First CD.
Posted by: Michael Krause | Mar 05, 2012 at 11:22 AM