Elizabeth Dunbar of Minnesota Public Radio reports in GOP declines to endorse Loon; same-sex marriage vote cited:
Republican delegates on Saturday declined to endorse state Rep. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, who was one of four House Republicans who voted in favor of same-sex marriage.
The Minnesota Family Council claimed victory in a press release after the convention delegates in Eden Prairie decided not to endorse anyone for the 48B District race. . . .
Loon said she had no announced opponent in the race until Saturday morning. After speeches and a few rounds of balloting, someone made a motion to not endorse anyone in the race, she said. . . .
Missing from the longer MPR story and the AP's shorter version in the Winona Daily News? The name of the last minute candidate, self-helf manual writer, former blogger and GOP activist Sheila Kihne.
Fortunately for Bluestem's readers, Look True North has posted Sheila Speaks, wherein Kihne shares some other details of the convention floor fight:
The 104 delegates that attended the March 8th Senate District 48B endorsing convention represented a broad cross section of Republicans in the district. Putting my name in as a challenger that morning was the best way to ensure that delegates be allowed a private vote during this important election year. . . .
Kihne's decision revealed that not all among the delegates were happy with the Loon's marriage vote, which contraducted the RPM platform, while they also agreed that an Eden Prairie Republican candidate should run on one issue: smaller government.
Kihne concludes:
Delegates were allowed to ask questions, communicate priorities, and vote by ballot. I won on five consecutive ballots and finished with 54% of the vote to the sitting House Deputy Minority Leader’s 40%. As a result I am carefully deliberating a primary run.
From the Wayback Machine: select Kihne Kuotes
Now a frenzied tweep, Kihne once blogged at The Activist Next Door 1.0 (a blogspot site) and The Activist Next Door 2.0 for which the domain name registration was allowed to lapse; one can now read short posts on the site about home improvement and vehicle repair.
Fortunately, Kihne's genius is preserved by the Wayback Machine. Let's take a whirlwind tour through the 2.0 version, in no particular order. On a day in which ESPN is celebrating Representative Pat Garofalo's twitter mishap, it's appropriate to start with this gem of insight, Who Tweets, We Tweet, from August 27, 2009:
I don't use Twitter myself, I can barely keep up with this blog. But, I thought this was an interesting piece from Smart Politics byEric Ostermeier about how MN politicians use Twitter to communicate.
Here was my comment:
Michael Brodkorb and a lot of the GOP staff use twitter to stay in touch-- it's a great tool in politics. Although the Dems are seen as "hip and cool"- I predict that Republicans will better use this technology because of our focus on individual liberty and free-thinking. We don't need to check with other people- or our leadership- in order to put something "out there." The Democrats are truly the top-down party...and Republicans will continue to move away from that. It may be a bit chaotic (for a while) but eventually we'll come out stronger because of these types of communication tools. It lets us communicate free of media filters and bias. Thank God for technology.
Yes indeedie.Twitter has made the Republican Party strong. And earlier that month, she posted in California Dreaming?:
Fantastic news out of CA....Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard has filed papers to run for the Republican endorsement for U.S. Senate to challenge Barbara Boxer.
Check out the slant in the San Francisco Chronicle piece, I love it when the liberals get nervous.
Bring on the women of the GOP.
Fiorina lost the 2010 election to Barbara Boxer by ten percentage points.
In 2010, there's the opening of the post, State Race Roundup:
The deadline for filing for the 2010 election was yesterday and it looks like Representative Jenifer Loon has a last-minute challenger who has filed- Ray Daniels. I recognize his name from letters to the editor and I'll make an easy prediction that the former seat of Congressman Erik Paulsen will remain red.
Loon is a tireless worker and she's built a strong reputation as somebody who has excellent constituent services and communication skills. She puts our surveys, she communicates results, she understands how to work well with all sides. She has a great team of folks helping her throughout the Eden Prairie community and I wish her well in her campaign for re-election.
Those were the days, my friend. And there's this prediction from May 2010 in A Tale of Two Toms:
. . . .When I did some limited calling for the Emmer campaign, people would continually say things like, "Oh, my sister babysat for Tom." or "We know the family very well." or "I know his brother." These personal connections may very well dull the edge of the character attacks lobbed against him by the left. Minnesotans like my grandmother don't like it very much when you attack a hometown boy.
Don't ever underestimate the power of these connections, Minneapolis is one big small town. Margaret Anderson Kelliher doesn't have this advantage (she may represent Minneapolis, but she's not FROM Minneapolis and there's a difference.) Tom Horner does...and my bet is (as others have also bet,) that it's the DFL votes that will be going to Horner. . . .
Let's hope that sort of thinking doesn't hurt Marty Seifert, who brags about not being FROM Minneapolis. And from I Heart Chris Christie:
It's just so refreshing to see elected officials who don't sit and worry about what everybody thinks of them or worry about how they play to the media or worry about what their next political move.....and most importantly who don't worry about whether they're re-elected or not. They only want to shrink the bloat of government and promote the growth of the private sector. It's like a breath of fresh air.
The woman's political acumen is boundless. Take her respectful consideration in It's Cool to be Conservative of independent moderates:
Ah- the Minn-Mods. The Minnesota Moderate pickle in the middle who just wants to vote for the winner, who has no political viewpoint other than "I'm independent" which means absolutely nothing. These are the folks who say "Tom Emmer looks angry" regurgitating the Star Tribune's positioning. To which I always say, "Uh-huh, okay, um, what do you think about him on the issues?" Crickets.
These are the same folks who say "Michelle Bachmann is crazy." They only say what they think they should say in order to be accepted by the larger group. In other words, they're FOLLOWERS and followers will follow ANY strong leader regardless of their ideology. . . .
Suburban voters will so appreciate that reflection of themselves in Kihne's eyes; Bluestem suspects that an able moderate DFL candidate might readily take this seat if by some chance the Bachmann-loving, moderate-trashing Kihne trumps Loon in the Republican primary.
There's plenty more Kihne fodder out there. Kihne removed a URL from True North after we posted Making lists, naming names: MN Republicans, the Aspen Institute and the Axis of Soros, which preserves this gem:
Look, I've been saying this for a while now: There are two types of Republicans: Those who understand what the country is facing and what we're up against in terms of battling the left....and there are those who don't. You shouldn't need to go to organizations directly connected to George Soros to figure these things out and I don't care how nice or free the trip.
Kihne came down on Congressman Paulsen and former Representative Brod for their Aspen Institute-funded travel. Bluestem helped her out by finding a few more Republicans spinning on that Axis of Soros:
Making a list from the database (Erik Paulsen's fellowship was granted in 2005 while he was Minnesota House Majority Leader and thus is not part of the Legistorm database, while Laura Brod was a fellow in 2006 while an Assistant Majority Leader), they are:
Currently serving Republicans:
John Kline (a trip to Turkey)Former Congressional Republicans from Minnesota
Norm Coleman (trips to Spain and Mexico)
Gil Gutknecht ( Queenstown MD)
Mark Kennedy (White Sulfur Springs WV)
Her list of Republicans who "don't get it" certainly got longer. And who could forget the Kihne-led twitter orgy attacking Dayton described in Claiming media cover-up, conservative twits try to politicize C-section birth of Dayton grandchild?
We look forward to the primary contest.
Image: A fish in a barrel.
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Such a pity the rocking chair press didn't see fit to mention any of this, much less delve into it as deeply as you, Sally Jo. Why, it's almost as if they don't want people to know just what sort of folks might make up Minnesota's conservative cohorts. Talk about your media cover-ups!
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Mar 11, 2014 at 11:59 AM