We're struck by a photo caption on Representative Tony Cornish's Facebook's album, Chankaska Winery Fundraiser 2014:
Jim Hagedorn (Running for Congress) Dave Kruse (Running for House of Representatives) Kurt Daudt (House Minority Leader) Holly Schlingman of the Band, Bobby Patrick (House Leadership) Marty Siefert (Running for Governor).
Here's the photo:
What's so unusual about this photo?
Neither Cornish nor Daudt face challengers in the primary or the general election, but those two fellows on either end are challenging the endorsed Republican candidates in their respective bids for office.
After promising to abide after losing the party's endorsement for Minnesota First Congressional District to Byron Republican newcomer Aaron Miller, Hagedorn changed his mind and ran anyway. Gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert is challenging endorsed candidate Jeff Johnson in the party's August 12 primary, after angering many activists at the Republican state convention with a failed tactic to block any endorsement.
Not yet a state representative, Minnesota House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt served as campaign manager for Seifert's unsuccessful bid for Republican gubernatorial endorsement in 2010.
While Republican state party chair Keith Downey has called for party leaders to honor the endorsements, that edict doesn't seem to have put a dent on the friendliness at the Kasota winery.
For itself, the establishment enjoys a fine working relationship with Cornish. In May, the Mankato Free Press reported in Wineries benefit from liquor bill; Kasota proprietor helped lobby legislators:
To produce its port-style wine, Chankaska Creek Winery adds brandy to stop fermentation, leaving the wine with more sugar, a sweeter taste and slightly more alcohol.
That brandy, from a winemaker’s perspective, is simply an ingredient, not really different than a cork or a label, proprietor Kent Schwickert said.
To the taxman, brandy is liquor, and it gets slapped with a sales tax.
That was the case, at least, until Schwickert helped to lobby the Legislature this session and change the law. Most of the attention on this year’s liquor bill was focused on a proposed expansion of Sunday sales that would allow customers to fill jugs, called growlers, with beer.
The growler provision failed, but three changes to aid the state’s farm wineries were passed by Sen. Kevin Dahle, a DFLer who lives in Northfield but whose district stretches to Kasota.
Schwickert is on the legislative committee of the Minnesota Grape Growers Association and worked with Dahle, Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, and Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, to pass the legislation. . . .
Bluestem has no quarrel with that legislation as Minnesota's growing wine industry is a boon to rural development.
Photo: Candidates gather at Cornish's fundraiser.
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