The campaign that (still) isn't: Rybak too busy to debate foes

I think I know a little about how Balloon Dad Richard Heene feels. Last week, I was hounded by paparazzi, or rather a single paparazzo, in the Star Tribune lobby. He wore big round glasses and a bow tie, just like Dominick Dunne, but unlike the vultures you see on "Entertainment Tonight," he was cordial and turned off his camera when I asked.

Unlike television paparazzi, however, Robert Carney asked one good question: Why won't Mayor R.T. Rybak participate in his own campaign? For mayor, that is.

I had contacted Carney, the "Moderate Progressive Republican" candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, to interview him about why he wanted to run the city. Instead, he turned his video camera on me and asked me why I wasn't interviewing other mayoral candidates about why they wanted to run the city.

I guess everyone thinks they are Michael Moore these days.

If you haven't been paying close attention, you may not know there is an election coming Nov. 3 to pick the best person to parse the city's budget, fight police corruption and make sure the garbage gets picked up.

Some people who want the job have appeared at three or four venues to discuss city issues. So far, Rybak has refused to come out and play. He has, however, appeared at Kolacky Days in Montgomery, where future governors go to eat. A guy only has so much free time.

His campaign manager says Rybak will almost certainly, probably, maybe debate any "endorsed" candidate on Minnesota Public Radio -- less than 24 hours before the vote.

Today, five mayoral candidates will try to present "redress of grievances" to Rybak to force him to debate city issues. They also say the media have been remiss in covering the absence of an election, or as Carney describes it, "a new type of totalitarianism forming" where public officials answer to no one.

When I think of how media might better cover a nonexistent campaign, I'm reminded of what I call Ralph Melish reporting, named after a Monty Python skit in which a newsman breathlessly describes a nonevent:

Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Ralph Melish looked down. But one glance confirmed his suspicions. Behind a tbush on the side of the road, there was no severed arm, no dismembered trunk of a man in his late 50s, no head in a bag, nothing ...not a sock.

That's the Rybak campaign, not a sock -- not even a mismatched pair, like he used to wear.

Rybak's campaign manager, Julie Hottinger, said the mayor is very busy and couldn't talk. But she assured me he is taking his challengers seriously.

Carney prompted me to visit the brain of Rybak's juggernaut. The address listed on Rybak's website is a UPS store in Uptown, where one can apparently send a check. Hottinger says there is a real campaign HQ, but it's not published.

When it comes to running a country, a state or a city, our elected officials seem to struggle mightily. But man, can we run campaigns. Little overhead, few employees, just send a small check and the entire operation hums like a Lexus.

America has become a perpetual election machine, where most of our energies are directed at running instead of governing: Obama was a no-show at his job while he ran for president. So is Gov. Tim Pawlenty as he runs against Obama. Ten state legislators are running for governor. Until recently, the mayors of both Minneapolis and St. Paul had designs on moving up, but St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman has since decided his "city comes first."

In politics, when your current job comes first, that usually means the poll numbers show that your next appearance at the soup kitchen or job bank won't necessarily be a photo op.

It all begs the question: Who's running this joint?

But if you are looking for a different kind of cat, you might want to know that, if Rybak won't play ball, Kolstad said he might have to face him in the governor's race.

And Carney promises: "If you elect me as mayor, I will run against Pawlenty for president."