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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, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and Glen Stubbe. Contributors in D.C.: Kevin Diaz and Corey Mitchell.

Posts about 5th District

Bachmann, other House members, ready committees for 2014 re-election

Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: January 15, 2013 - 5:05 PM

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Late last year, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann filed a 2014 campaign committee.

The existence of the committee doesn't necessarily lock the Republican into vying again for the Sixth Congressional District. It will allow her to raise campaign cash and do other campaign activities.

Bachmann won her last election by about 4,000 votes, just over 1 percentage point. Just a few weeks later, she filed the 2014 committee.

She is one of five sitting U.S. House members from Minnesota who has filed a statement of candidacy for 2014.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, Rick Nolan and Collin Peterson have also filed committees for the next election cycle, and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, has filed a committee for 2018, the next year she would be up for re-election. U.S. Sen. Al Franken, also a Democrat, has had a 2014 campaign committee on record since early last year.

U.S. Reps. John Kline and Erik Paulsen, both Republicans, and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat, have not yet filed re-election committees, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The non-filing does not mean they will not run again, just as the filings do not guarantee a run.

 

Here's Bachmann's filing: 

Ellison joins Democrats' whip operation in U.S. House

Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: January 4, 2013 - 4:04 PM

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With more big fights looming on the debt and budget, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison will join the Democrats’ vote-counting operation in the new 113th Congress, party leaders in the House announced Friday.
 
The Minnesota Democratic was named one of the party’s chief deputy whips, working with Democratic Party Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
 
Ellison, already in a leadership position as co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said he’s excited “to continue the fight for good jobs for working families.”

Two DFL takes on the 'Plan B' debacle

Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 21, 2012 - 2:28 PM

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Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz, leading an effort to force a U.S. House vote on extending the Bush-era tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income, called on House Speaker John Boehner Friday to keep negotiating with President Obama.
 
“We still have to find a solution,” Walz said. “I refuse to believe we cannot do it.”
 
Walz was one of only two Minnesotans in Congress to talk publicly Friday about Boehner’s failed attempt to vote on so-called “Plan B” legislation.
 
The other one was Democrat Keith Ellison, who issued a statement saying, “Instead of Plan A—a bipartisan agreement with the President—Speaker Boehner tried to bring a Tea Party wish list to the floor last night known as ‘Plan B.’”
 
Walz and Ellison, however, represent two different sides of the Democratic coin. Walz said Democrats will have to consider reforms to federal health and retirement plans as part of a larger deal on new taxes and spending cuts. Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has ruled out voting for any benefit cuts.
 
Walz, however, said Republicans have not shown much willingness to negotiate, no matter how much centrist Democrats are willing to bend. “It’s become obvious it doesn’t matter what we said,” Walz told Minnesota reporters Friday. “I could have proposed a trillion-to-one on revenue to cuts, and they still would have rejected it. This is ideological rigidness.”
 
Meanwhile, Minnesota Republicans in Congress stayed mum on the Plan B debacle, which has raised questions about Boehner’s speakership. But departing one-term Rep. Chip Cravaack said early Thursday he was prepared to vote against the Plan B proposal unless it was paired with significant cuts on the spending side.
 
Alas, the Plan B vote was cancelled for lack of support from Republicans.

Ellison vows not to budge on entitlements in fiscal cliff

Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 19, 2012 - 2:09 PM

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President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have cast the GOP as being intransigent on a new tax and spending deal to avert a so-called fiscal cliff, saying the Republicans “keep on finding ways to say no as opposed to finding ways to say yes.”

 

Meanwhile Democrat Keith Ellison vowed to continue to say no to any efforts to cut safety-net programs like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid -- all top targets of GOP negotiators.

“We don’t have to sacrifice the interests of the most vulnerable in order to solve our budgetary problems,” Ellison told Minnesota reporters Wednesday, adding that he would not go along with cuts just to prove his bipartisan bone fides.

“It translates  to people who already have very little, to get by with even less so that people who have a lot can keep even more,” he said.

 

Ellison part of filibuster challenge

Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: December 11, 2012 - 4:32 PM

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A federal judge has begun hearing arguments on Senate filibuster rules this week in a lawsuit brought by critics, including Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, who argue the practice has held up immigration reform in Congress.
 
Several groups, including Common Cause and several Democratic lawmakers, argue that Congress is constitutionally required to pass legislation by a simple majority vote, instead of a 60-vote supermajority that can hold up debate indefinitely.
 
The challenge is now before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C.
 
Senate attorneys argue that the Constitution’s provisions for separation of powers prevent the courts from intervening in the internal deliberations of Congress. All previous challenges have failed.
 
Senate Democrats, who control the Senate, have vowed to reform the filibuster rule when a new Congress convenes in January.
 
Defenders of the filibuster (usually the minority party at any given time) say it protects the rights of minority parties.

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