While what passes as Minnesota's chattering class has begun to predict that a 2013 earmark for a $300,000 public restroom on Crane Lake will be fodder for attack ads in 2016, Bluestem has come to the conclusion that a much more interesting question is to examine why the earmark didn't make the cut for 2014 attack ads and mail pieces.
It's not as if the earmark was buried under a rock and suddenly burst into the public eye with the Tower Timberjay's coverage in the April 8, 2015 article Critics say bathroom plan flushes tax dollars or Jennifer Bjorhus' typically derivative piece in Sunday's Star Tribune.
A review of social media and the Nexis All-News database reveals that the earmark was in plain sight--and had been criticized by Republicans serving in the Minnesota House. Take this April 2013 exchange on twitter prompted by Associated Press reporter Brian Bakst tweeting about the earmark:
$300k biffy “@Stowydad: Crane Lake bathroom project also part of Senate bill up for vote today; money wld come out of water recreation fund
— Sarah Anderson (@Rep_SAnderson) April 19, 2013
@Rep_SAnderson @Stowydad stinks to me.
— Peter Glessing (@PGless) April 19, 2013
Sarah Anderson (R-Plymouth) wasn't the only critic of the earmark, as Bakst reported in Minn. House backs water fee hikes:
Republicans criticized aspects of the bill that they said would cause wasteful spending. Among the parts they ridiculed were two $300,000 appropriations: one to construct a public restroom near Crane Lake and another to fund efforts to restore native plant species along state trails to create suitable habitats for struggling bee, moth and butterfly populations.
The criticism continued until the end of the session. Forum Communications veteran political reporter Don Davis included representative Mary Franson's comments on the House floor in the Capitol Chatter piece, Bill mixes paint, bees and farmers … and includes an island, too:
Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, did not agree with the water monitoring. She said it bothers her to see money spent on water monitoring when the Democratic-written budget does not give enough money to nursing homes.
And, Franson added, “we’ve still got that $300,000 restroom in there.” She referred to a northern Minnesota restroom in an area Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, said is miles away from any public restroom.
Bakst's coverage was widely reprinted. Davis's Capitol Chatter content is widely distributed across Forum Communications chain newspapers; the $300,000 biff wasn't a secret that's suddenly emerged because local residents tipped off the Tower Timberjay.
One clue about why this spending didn't make the cut? We suspect that the frame used to discuss the spending in the region made it problematic for the talking points that the Minnesota Jobs Coalition Legislative Fund used to defeat rural DFL House members.
The Range lawmakers who introduced the earmark as a standalone bill touted it as spending that would help rural Minnesota. Witness its inclusion in the February 2013 article in the Grand Rapids Herald Review, Lawmakers introduce legislation that would impact rural Minnesota.
Minnesota Jobs Coalition Legislative Fund bombarded districts held by rural Democrats with attack mail and radio and newspaper ads lambasting the incumbents for spending big on projects in the Twin Cities. Take the newpaper ads touted in MJC Legislative Fund Releases Newspaper Ads Highlighting Misplaced Priorities of Falk, Fritz, Radinovich, Sawatzky, Savick and Ward:
These big spenders all voted to spend over $20 million on a pedestrian mall in Minneapolis, bail out the Minneapolis library and to spend millions on a Minneapolis sculpture garden,” said Ben Golnik, chairman of the Minnesota Jobs Coalition. “Their constituents deserve real leadership, not rubber stamps for wasteful spending in Minneapolis.”
A $300,000 loo at a public water access on Crane Lake? Chump change compared compared to the spending in the fleshpots of the Twin Cities--and that $300,000 biffy would be planted beside a lake in rural Minnesota. It hardily fit the story-telling. Will the conservative super PACs spin 2013's lack of regional potty parity to their favored candidates' advantage in 2016? In which districts?
Or will the bathroom reading be orphaned again in favor of another narrative?
If the story in which this tale is spin in attack ads and mail is one of Range exceptionalism--in which only the Range succeeds with special interest lobbyists at the center of earmark and project taking as Bjorhus posits--then that narrative can be easily punctured, as the capture of law making by the consultant class isn't particular to the Range.
Rather, it's endemic to the legislative process itself. What's less easy--as Ryan Winkler learned--is to find a way to take power away from the special interests and return it to the common interests.
Image: The 2013-2014 spending that Republican allies attacked was chosen on a rural-urban split, not a Range versus Minnesota narrative.
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