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With an insider’s eye, Hot Dish tracks the tastiest bits of Minnesota’s political scene and keep you up-to-date on those elected to serve you.

Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Mike Kaszuba, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Brad Schrade and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger. Contributors in D.C.: Kevin Diaz and Corey Mitchell.

Posts about 2012 Presidential election

Fergus Falls band to march in Obama's inaugural parade

Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: December 19, 2012 - 3:21 PM

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Toot the horns and bang the drums, the Fergus Falls High School Marching band will be joining the inaugural parade.

The January 21 parade will be President Barack Obama's second inauguration and the band's second inaugural parade performance. The students, from a city of just 13,000, marched four years ago wearing crisp white uniforms and tufted headpieces.

Four years ago, the band director said the Fergus Falls group was picked from among 1,300 applicants. This year the competition was even stiffer. The inaugural committee said that more than 2,800 groups applied to march in the parade.

See photos of the band's 2009 preparations and trip to DC.

Here's a video of the group's Yankee Doodle Dandy performance:

 

Bipartisan bunch pushes National Popular Vote

Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: December 17, 2012 - 11:39 AM

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On the same day Minnesota's presidential electors will ceremonially cast their votes for President Barack Obama, a bipartisan bunch of Minnesota lawmakers proposed exchanging the power of the Electoral College and making the national popular vote supreme.

The new system, backed by a diverse group of legislators, would give weight to the number of actual votes presidential candidates get, rather than just number of Electoral College votes, in presidential elections. A diverse group of Minnesota backers say it would  mean every vote would have equal value during presidential campaigns, removing the candidates' incentive to focus primarily on the handful swing states.

"Everyone understands that places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, swing states, this is a really good process for them right now. Unfortunately, the rest of the country gets hosed," backer Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, said Monday.

The idea of swapping the power of the electoral college for a popular vote system is not new. A Minnesota measure to join a national compact pass a single committee passed a Republican-controlled House committee last year but never got a full vote in either the House or the Senate.

But, with another presidential election in which Minnesota was all but ignored in the rear view, supporters hope the change will be embraced.

"It's an idea whose time is come," said backer Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope. Rep. Steve Simon, incoming chair of the House elections committee and a St. Louis Park Democrat, is a support and outgoing House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, supported the 2011 measure.

Detractors fear the a popular vote system would mean that candidates would focus only on populous states and fear the specter of a national recount, which could paralyze the process.

This year's national Republican Party platform took a strong position against the idea.

"We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose “national popular vote” would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency," the GOP platform says. The national Democratic platform lacks a similar position.

The current proposal would not dump the electoral college system completely, which would require a constitutional amendment. Instead, if it wins approval, it would guarantee that presidential electors would give their votes to whomever wins the popular vote. 

For the change to take effect, states across the country, whose votes are worth 270 electoral college votes, would have to approve a compact giving power to the national popular vote. So far, nine states, with 132 electoral votes, have approved the plan.

"We're almost half way to where we need to be to change the system constitutionally," said Pat Rosenstiel, consultant to the National Popular Vote campaign.

At noon on Monday, Minnesota's presidential electors -- all Democrats -- will meet to cast their ballots for Obama at the State Capitol.

 

Pawlenty visits White House on 'fiscal cliff'

Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 6, 2012 - 1:15 PM

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Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty visited the White House Thursday representing the Financial Services Roundtable, according to a White House official and a spokeswoman for the bank lobby group he now heads.
 
Pawlenty, a former presidential contender, was in the West Wing to discuss business issues related to the “fiscal cliff.”  A White House official said he met only with staff, not President Obama.
 
Elise Brooks Perkins, communications director for the Financial Services Roundtable, said she could not discuss any other details about the meeting.
 
Pawlenty is the chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable, an organization that represents large banks and other financial-service providers.
 
The visit comes a day after Pawlenty suggested the Democrats have the upper hand in fiscal cliff negotiations, telling a panel sponsored by Bloomberg Government in Washington, “You can’t corner people so totally and so badly that they have no way out.”

Line 3 blocks long at Sibley Park

Posted by: Paul Walsh Updated: November 6, 2012 - 9:29 AM

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Several hundred people were in line this morning at the Sibley Park voting station in south Minneapolis.

They covered three sides of a city block.

An election official, binder in hand, walked the line and checked to make sure folks were at their correct voting location, because polling locations for many voters in the area had changed because of redistricting.

Relief that it's finally over

Posted by: Paul Walsh Updated: November 6, 2012 - 8:25 AM

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Some voters in Minnesota are going to the polls with a mix of enthusiasm and relief that the political TV ads and phones calls to their homes will finally end.

Said South St. Paul voter Peder Thompson: “I think it’s really sad how desperate the political parties have been and all the money pumped into the election. I think it’s very out of line.”
 

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