Ever the energetic showman, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak picked a Dinkytown theater to announce his next starring role: candidate for Minnesota governor.
In a Sunday rally attended by a few hundred longtime fans, Rybak, who just last month cruised to his third term in City Hall, laid out some hefty aspirations: get affordable health care to all, fix the school funding system, create jobs all over the state, and reconnect all Minnesotans, ending partisan and geographic divides.
"We've got a goal here and it's not a small one: Our goal is nothing short of taking back this state," said Rybak from the stage of Minneapolis' Varsity Theater. "I was born in a great state and I'm not going to retire in a mediocre one."
The mayor starts his statewide campaign with some considerable assets: a well-known name, plaudits for his 2007 handling of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, an experienced staff and a vibrant presence. He also carries some just as considerable deficits: he's a liberal mayor of a liberal city with a day job that offers no end of fodder for opponents. No Minneapolis mayor has ever won the governor's seat and Republicans, and some of his DFL opponents, believe that streak won't change next year.
But this mayor's done the unexpected before. He is a former reporter who became a business development booster. He went from weekly newspaper publisher to Internet consultant. Rybak then morphed into an airport noise activist, who led events featuring swimsuit- and pajama-wearing protesters, before he took down a two-term mayoral incumbent in 2001.
Rybak continues his quirk of never matching his socks -- one black, one brown Sunday to go with his grey suit -- and is still trying to do things differently.
Sunday, he pitched himself as an honest broker with experience outside the Capitol's "mess."
"The politics at the state Capitol are badly broken," he said.