Election Season Begins
"Letter to Editor"09/19/2006
Dear Editor,
Alliance for a Better Minnesota, an organization that represents over 500,000 Minnesotans, has come together because we’re concerned about the direction Minnesota is heading under Tim Pawlenty. The Pawlenty Administration has broken its promises about education, health care, and public safety and has cut programs that are important to Minnesota families.
This week the ad wars heated up in the governor’s race with Pawlenty airing both a revised “education” ad that directly attacked DFL candidate, Mike Hatch, and a property tax ad which made the laughable claim that Pawlenty had “kept the lid” on taxes. You can view the Pawlenty ads on his website if you’ve missed them on the screen. The Pawlenty ads continued the social branding of his campaign with more “Target look alike” themes. It’s a clever idea to invoke the upbeat, suburban feel of a trip to Target, but will it make voters forget the bulging classrooms in K-12 schools and the high cost of health insurance? As Judi Dutcher noted, Target’s a great place to buy deodorant, but do you really want to buy your Governor there?
As an alternative, if you want to help tell the truth on the air about Tim Pawlenty, check out the ads on the ABM website and make a contribution to keep them playing between now and the election. Go to http://www.allianceforabettermn.com/media.aspx to view the ads.
To make a contribution to the Alliance for a Better Minnesota go to
https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/259/donate.asp?formid=donate
This e-mail is part of a series of weekly updates about how ABM is holding the Governor accountable. For more information, please visit our website http://www.allianceforabettermn.com or our blog blog.allianceforabettermn.com
Where is Mr. Nice Governor now?
“Governor Pawlenty, as the titular head of the Minnesota Republican Party and someone who has direct contact with the Republican National Committee, needs to repudiate his party’s fear-mongering and religious intolerance in Minnesota’s elections,” said Dave Foster, chair of Alliance for a Better Minnesota. “Otherwise, his previous comments on trying to broaden the appeal of the Republican Party are sheer hypocrisy.
“The Republican National Committee, the Minnesota Republican Party and its associated organizations have already announced in the Washington Post that they will spend millions of dollars on television ads focused on ‘personal attacks and local controversies’ that will try to distract voters from their dismal record
“As the state’s Republican leader, Pawlenty should publicly and emphatically denounce these tactics, and forbid these dirty tricks from being used in the state.
Governor Pawlenty becomes candidate Pawlenty
“Today’s debate is just another example of how this Governor is out of touch with Minnesotans on the most important issues like education and health care,” said Dave Foster, chair of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota.
“He has completely morphed back into “Candidate Pawlenty”, making promises, just as he did in 2002, hoping that Minnesotans will forget ‘Governor Pawlenty’—the Governor who allowed out of pockets costs for those with private insurance increase by 30%, the Governor who cut $185 million from public education and the Governor who idly stood by as tuition at the state’s colleges and universities skyrocketed over 33%.”
The ABM BLOG highlights the misdeeds of the Pawlenty administration. Join Ona Keller in the discussion on what’s wrong with Minnesota and what we need to do to fix it blog.allianceforabettermn.com. This week on the blog:
Happy Primary Day
I didn’t have much trouble picking my candidates. But it must be tough for Republicans voting in the gubernatorial primary. Let’s take taxes for example. Governor Pawlenty pledged not to raise taxes, and then cut the budget so much that local governments were forced to raise property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars. Sue Jeffers wants to lower taxes, and her plan to pay for it is that good-hearted people will voluntarily pay more. Neither of these plans seem fiscally sound.
Lower Tuition Increases?
An article in today’s Star Tribune notes that tuition at the U of M will only go up 4% next year. Since tuition has risen over 100% in the last decade, I’m sure many students are breathing a sigh of relief. But wait kids, don’t relax just yet. Buried deep down in the article, the President of the U says that “the funding request to the Legislature would be “substantial,” and larger than the $1.2 billion two-year request made two years ago. State funding accounts for about one-quarter of the U’s operations budget.”
In other words, students won’t face double digit increases in tuition as long as the Governor honors the U’s request.