Panel vetoes three Pawlenty regent picks

"MN Legislature"

02/28/2007

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press


The Minnesota Legislature will hold a wide-open election for University of Minnesota regents next month after a legislative panel on Tuesday night refused to endorse three of the four candidates nominated by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

A joint House-Senate committee on regents voted 18-2 to recommend Linda Cohen, a psychologist from Minnetonka, for an open at-large seat on the U's governing board.

But the committee voted to "present" the names of three other Pawlenty nominees to a joint convention of the House and Senate "without recommendation." They are two incumbent regents — Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell, of Minneapolis, who represents the 5th Congressional District on the board, and at-large regent Cynthia Lesher, of New Brighton, the chief executive of Northern States Power Co.-Minnesota — and university law student Venora Hung, of Golden Valley, who is running for the board's student seat.

In effect, the panel invited other candidates to challenge those three gubernatorial nominees when a joint convention of the House and Senate elects the regents before April 1.

After the meeting, former Senate DFL Majority Leader Dean Johnson, of Willmar, said he will run for an at-large seat. The Regent Candidate Advisory Council recommended 11 candidates to the governor last month, and Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, the co-chair of the regents committee, said she expects several of those not nominated by Pawlenty to run.

Five of those candidates screened before the committee Tuesday night along with three Pawlenty nominees. But the committee can not recommend any candidate not nominated by the governor.

"They are all excellent candidates," and the committee did not want to narrow the field to Pawlenty's nominees, said Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, panel co-chair.

The voting was largely along partisan lines, with DFLers voting against Bell, Lesher and Hung while Republicans voted for them.