st. paul

Even with 30,000 members stretched across Minnesota, ACORN's Chris Stinson had the look of a man without friends.

Congress had just finished voting to strip federal funding for ACORN, the community activist organization that has been stung by scandal nationally and targeted by political conservatives. Minnesota's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, had joined in a lopsided vote to bar funding.

So Stinson, ACORN's 29-year-old political director in Minnesota, sat in the group's second-floor offices above a liquor store in St. Paul and said the only thing he could say: "I believe that ACORN will survive."

For now, most of ACORN's activities in Minnesota, from providing home foreclosure counseling to registering voters, are on hold, as the organization begins an internal audit. The Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, which had state contracts with the group on housing issues, was muted in its praise. Joe Mansky, Ramsey County's election manager, reiterated his problems with ACORN's voter registration efforts.

Even 78-year-old Lenora Rasmusson of Minneapolis wanted to stop the $10 a month she has automatically deducted from her bank account for ACORN. "I don't like what they've [done]," she said.

While officials in Minnesota representing the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- ACORN's formal name -- tried to distance themselves from the group's national problems, Republicans in Minnesota were making no such distinction. State Republican Party Chair Tony Sutton called ACORN a "disgraced far-left group" and a "notorious outfit," and he criticized those Minnesota Democratic members of Congress -- such as Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minneapolis -- who did not vote to stop federal funding for the group. Other Minnesota Republicans, ranging from U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to Marty Seifert, the former state House Minority Leader now running for governor, had made ACORN a frequent target of their legislative proposals.

For ACORN's longtime critics, the smoking guns were the release of undercover videos that showed a couple posing as a prostitute and a pimp who got advice at several ACORN offices across the country -- though not in Minnesota -- on how to buy a house they intended to use as a brothel employing underage girls from El Salvador. Instead of discouraging the couple, the ACORN employees did not raise objections and even advised them how to conceal their activities from authorities.

Inside ACORN's gritty headquarters in St. Paul, the mood has been somber. The group's office is in the same building as the Green Party of Minnesota, the Minnesota Smoke-Free Coalition and, just down the hall, an office with a sign with the words, "Vic Grossman, social justice advocate." A poster that reads "The America I Believe In Would Close Guantanamo Bay" is taped to a nearby wall.

"We've been on the up and up with everything that we've done," said Sherman Wilburn, a retired security guard who serves as ACORN's board chair in Minnesota.

ACORN's reach in Minnesota extends to fighting predatory lending, saving homes from foreclosure, health care reform, living wage campaigns and voter registration -- and assorted other causes that are mostly aimed at empowering low-income citizens. A free home ownership and foreclosure-prevention meeting is held every Wednesday night in a local church.

But ACORN's reach may be more limited than its critics contend. Stinson said the group, despite its large membership, has a core volunteer group that numbers in the hundreds. The office's phone bank has 12 phones, and there are just three full-time employees in Minnesota. "We can fit eight people in the van," Stinson said of the group's used Chevy van that was bought from a church.

ACORN's political action committee in Minnesota listed just $10,464 in receipts for 2008. Its biggest source of revenue, according to a state report, was a door-to-door canvassing contract for $7,480 with Putting Minnesota First, a coalition that received funding from teacher and labor unions, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club and other organizations.

The group's last state contracts -- Gov. Tim Pawlenty this week ordered funding to ACORN stopped -- were to provide home foreclosure counseling through the state housing finance agency. An MHFA spokesperson said the group did not get new contracts for 2009 and 2010. "They just didn't score" as competitively, said the MHFA's Megan Ryan. She added that ACORN also received $119,600 in federal money for foreclosure counseling and worked on 361 cases from April through December of last year, but said that contract also had expired.

"It's hard to say what's a successful counseling program," Ryan said in response to how well ACORN had performed its work. "Their paperwork seemed to be fine."

While ACORN's voter registration drives have not led to widespread criminal complaints in Minnesota, the group has been described by local officials as too often lacking "quality controls." Pat Diamond, an assistant Hennepin County attorney, said his office investigated a case where an ACORN canvasser submitted multiple voter registration cards for the same person, but said the case was dropped when the canvasser died.

Mansky, Ramsey County's election manager, said he had repeated problems last year with ACORN registering voters but then not turning in the voter cards within the state required time limit. "They've got to follow the rules, just like all the rest of us," he said. "We have tried to be cooperative, but on the other hand, I can't say that they have reciprocated in kind with us."

Staff writer Eric Roper contributed to this report. Mike Kaszuba • 651-222-1673