Perham conservative activist and perennial Republican challenger Sue Nelson apparently hasn't given up on her dream of challenging incumbent Mary Franson (R-Alexandria) and won't let the math or facts of her defeat at the endorsing convention get in her way.
At Politics in Minnesota, the usually excellent Mike Mullen reports in Primaries brewing in some legislative districts:
. . . According to the longtime party activist, a number of GOP insiders have approached her in recent weeks, asking after her plans and encouraging her to run for office.
Those people, Nelson said, are “making some pretty compelling arguments,” as she considers the looming filing deadline of Tuesday, June 3.
Franson needed seven ballots at the local party endorsement convention to reach the required 60 percent threshold, and did so by a single vote. . .
It's left to our imagination who these party insiders might be, since Nelson apparently share that info. But one of the items looks familiar, and it's this claim:
Franson needed seven ballots at the local party endorsement convention to reach the required 60 percent threshold, and did so by a single vote.
Even on its face, that's pretty sketchy, since a one-vote margin getting a candidate to 60 percent would involve a teeny-tiny pool of delegates. Alas, such was not the case, as Franson won endorsement on the seventh ballot with 59 delegate votes to Nelson's 39.
That's a 20 vote spread.
But we've seen the frame before, in the Perham Focus news brief, Nornes, Franson endorsed by Dist. 8, which originally reported that Franson won in nine ballots, by one vote (the article is now behind a paywall). The paper corrected the error afte being sent the minutes of the convention, according to a Bluestem source.
And where did the paper get the misinformation? According to our source, Sue Nelson ally and former Senate District 8 GOP chair Betty Staebler sent it in a press release that included the following construction:
The endorsement process for House District 8B went deep into the late afternoon hours and required nine ballots before State Representative Mary Franson, Alexandria, narrowly defeated challenger Sue Nelson, rural Perham, gaining the necessary majority by one vote. [emphasis added]
This seems to be the Nelson camp's story--a heady mix and they're sticking to it, minutes or no minutes, facts or not. It's an attempt to muddy the waters about the endorsement and the tight finish in the 2012 election.
Mostly, the district seems quiet, but we did find one recent note of encouragement for Nelson on her campaign Facebook page that appears to make it seem that she's running, although the past political ties of the supporter add a note of irony to the endeavour.
Here's the post:
A former Otter Tail County co-chair, Bagne was a member of Rudy Guiliani's Minnesota team for his 2008 Presidential bid. Guiliani had signed one of the nation's first same sex civil union laws in the country and had famously lived with a gay couple while divorcing his second wife.
Given that Nelson had made an issue of Franson's support of Representative Tim Kelly's bill to use same-sex civil unions as a tool to derail marriage equality, we can only imagine that Bagne has drifted to the right in the years since her support of Rudy.
The surviveor of this one will go on to face DFL challenger Jay Sieling, who's well-respected in the area Bluestem's guessing it will be a race to watch, as the liberal residents of Alexandria and conservative citizens of rural areas work to pick their state representative.
Photo: A elephant war.
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