Minnesota Campaign Report

My sincere apologies to everyone seeing this site for the first time, or the first time in a while.

Here’s the deal: SoapBlox, the platform on which the community version of MN Campaign Report and MN Progressive Project were built, got hacked yesterday. Badly. Hackers accessed the servers, installed exploits, and got the servers taken down.

This has resulted in the developer and owner of SoapBlox essentially calling it quits.

This is very, very bad.

Please bear with us as we work through this issue, and accept our sincere apologies.

And MAN was this layout ever bad, huh?

After wrangling with my domains, GoDaddy, and then WordPress briefly, this old WordPress site is alive (finally). I won’t be posting here regularly, but it will be available as an archive of my work from May through November 2006 - if you’re looking for something written between those dates, feel free to find it here and link it up.  I’ll be tinkering with the settings here (still some .com links lurking around here) so don’t be fearful if things change all of a sudden.

Then again, you shouldn’t be seeing this site TOO much anyway…

The SoapBlox site will be available here at MNCR.com soon…..Stupid GoDaddy.

The new site is almost ready to go - I’ve made some major layout changes on the back end (many thanks to Paul at SoapBlox for letting me do so).  The top banner text now links back to the frontpage from both the single-diary page and anywhere else you go (I think).  As noted in a recent diary, if there’s anything else you think of that you’d like to see or would make like around here easier, let me know here or via email.I’ve also received several entries for the banner contest - you guys who created entries, you rock.  I’ll upload all the entries for perusal  at some point soon to see what everyone thinks.

Of course, if you’re reading this, then that means you’re on the old site - never fear - just head over to http://www.mncampaignreport.net.  No need to update URLs, over the weekend the new site will be found right at this address.  But as noted, you’ll need to sign up to comment or post diaries - SoapBlox is a wicked mistress.  Don’t worry, no personal information is required, just an email address.

Soon enough, you’re going to need to be logged in to comment - and you love to comment, right?  Head over to http://www.mncampaignreport.net and take care of that - don’t worry, this post is there too .

Incoming U.S. Rep. Tim Walz has been chosen to serve on the House Agriculture Committee alongside fellow Minnesotan (and incoming Committee Chair) Collin Peterson.

From the press release,

“I am honored to serve on this prestigious committee with my good friend and colleague Collin Peterson,” said Walz of his appointment.  “Agriculture is an essential part of the Minnesota economy and there are great strides to be made with the 2007 Farm Bill.  Rep. Peterson and I have discussed a number of visionary ideas for renewable fuels and conservation and I’m eager to get to work on these ideas.”"Congressman-elect Walz will be an outstanding addition to the House Agriculture Committee, particularly as we begin to write the 2007 Farm Bill,” said Chairman-designate Collin Peterson.  “This is great news for Minnesota agriculture, and I look forward to his valuable input on the Committee.”

On its face, this one is a no-brainer - the First is a big agricultural area, Walz asked for it, and the committee chairman is from a neighboring district.  The freshman may not have much in the way of seniority, but it will be interesting to see what kind of influence Minnesota as a whole will play on U.S. agro-policy in the 110th Congress.

Editor’s Note: As a continuation of our 2008 Candidate Series, Joe Bodell and Robin Marty will continue debating the strengths and weaknesses of potential challengers to Senator Norm Coleman. These posts should not be seen of an endorsement of any candidate. Our previous counterpoint can be found here.

Marty: After being the naysayer in the last go around, it’s my turn to come up with some pros for a candidate, and so far I’m finding myself liking the idea of former State Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson running for the seat. As a former Republican and moderate Democrat, Johnson would have the ability to siphon off conservatives unhappy with Norm Coleman, especially while Coleman moves more and more to the center as well. I can already see the set up - “former Republican turned Democrat vs former Democrat turned Republican.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Should we take bets on how many points Mark Kennedy’s presence on the campaign trail would knock off of Norm Coleman’s bottom line in 2008?  Three?  Four?

Kennedy, 49, said he’ll continue to be “engaged” in political issues, both in helping Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., win re-election in 2008, and in making the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities a success.  He said he planned to return to business when his term is up.

Of course, Kennedy’s response to a question like “How would you help Coleman given that you recently got 38% statewide?” would most likely run along the lines of “there are a variety of ways for me to help out”  meaning that Team Coleman intelligently told him “the best way for you to help is to stay the hell out of the way.”

It will be interesting, however, to see how much involvement Kennedy is given with the RNC in 2008.  His was, until about August of this year, a rising star in his party, and the Republica activists and officials that will be crawling all over the Twin Cities might not look so kindly upon someone who didn’t just lose, but lost badly in a state they had hoped to pick up.

This bit can also be found over at http://www.mncampaignreport.net - go sign up and comment over there! Quick!  Before the domain names switch over!

According to an article in the current issue of Roll Call, Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) plans to introduce a bill to change how staff disbursements are listed in Congressional records. Earlier in the 2006 cycle, a website called Legistorm sprang into existence, aggregating data on congressional staffers and their salaries, which is technically public data but has until now been somewhat difficult to find.

According to the article,

Wicker introduced legislation last week that would prevent the names of House staffers from being listed in the public reports on chamber disbursements. His bill is a direct response to such salary data finding its way onto the Internet, Wicker said, citing a slew of gossip spreading across Capitol Hill earlier this year after a new Web site went live with staff salaries.

“There’s just no point in subjecting individual staff members to this sort of a violation of their privacy,” said Wicker, who added he would reintroduce the measure in the 110th Congress. “It’s one thing for the public to know what a Member earns; that’s a matter of public record. … I think it’s taking it too far for rank-and-file Congressional staffers to have their individual salaries bandied about in the public domain.”

Read the rest of this entry »

When I started MNCR, as I’ve noted in response to several questions on how I got into blogging, it was pretty straightforward. It had that orange banner on a white background Blog*Spot-default theme, and virtually no one read it. Version 1.1 added a slightly more palatable theme, and in May 2006 I bit the bullet and went to a remote-hosted site using WordPress. We’ve been at MNCR 2.0 been since then.

Until now. It’s difficult to explain, but WordPress feels stale, somehow. It does some things very well - sidebar links, for example, are database-driven, and thus don’t require any futzing with HTML to funtion. That’s good. The site theme is relatively easy to manage. But at a certain point along the traffic-growth continuum, the platform starts constricting the level of communication and community that a blog like MNCR could potentially supply.

Enter SoapBlox. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working behind the scenes to build MNCR 3.0 on the SoapBlox system, the platform behind Minnesota Monitor, Swing State Project, Burnt Orange Report, and several other fantastic blogs around the country. The most important difference is the presence of user diaries - essentially, mini-blogs for readers who want to do more than just comment, or bloggers who want to cross-post in a local forum instead of spreading seeds to the wind on DailyKos, or candidates who want to connect with the Netroots at any level (Tom Vilsack, I’m looking at you, hombre). You get the idea - the possibilities are endless.

This week, in addition to the stories I’m sure will come up, I’ll be transitioning to the new site, currently located at http://www.mncampaignreport.net. Eventually, mncampaignreport.com will point at the new site, and this one will stick around under the .net domain, so don’t sweat updating your links just yet. What you can do, however, is go to the new site, sign up in the top right menu, and check out some of the great features. The layout will change slightly just to look a bit more like home, but that’s what a gradual roll-out is all about.

You may say “Hey, I noticed some new stuff at MNPublius.com too - what gives? Is this a liberal conspiracy?” My answer is, I hope not. The timing was purely coincidence, but the potential is a thriving, growing, progressive blogosphere in Minnesota going toward the 2008 elections. I hope to make MNCR 3.0 a vibrant part of that vision.

I’ll be busy for part of this afternoon working on some features in a major site upgrade, due out Monday.  If you’re lucky enough to be on one of the several emails I’ve sent out about it, please hit it up and help me test it out!

If I haven’t already been in touch with you, and you’re interested in a sneak peek, by all means, email me.  A blog enthusiast won’t regret it - you’ll be getting in on the ground floor of something I think it going to be pretty special.