Almanac: At the Capitol

Religious right leaders announced Friday that they won’t abide by laws that support gay marriage or abortion. One hundred and twenty-five members of the religious right and leaders from the Catholic church signed the Manhattan Declaration. Only one signer was from Minnesota: Archbishop John Nienstedt (pictured) of the Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

The Manhattan Declaration is the religious right’s line in the sand: They’re vowing to ignore any laws that contradict their worldview. The document reads:

Therefore, let it be known that we will not comply with any edict that compels us or the institutions we lead to participate in or facilitate abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, euthanasia, or any other act that violates the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family.

Further, let it be known that we will not bend to any rule forcing us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality, marriage, and the family.

Further, let it be known that we will not be intimidated into silence or acquiescence or the violation of our consciences by any power on earth, be it cultural or political, regardless of the consequences to ourselves.

The Human Rights Campaign immediately lashed out at the signers of the Manhattan Declaration, pointing out that LGBT-rights groups have gone to great pains to make laws that protect both LGBT people and people of faith.

“This declaration simply perpetuates the fallacy that equality and religious liberty are incompatible and that every step toward fairness for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is another burden on religious people. In reality, non-discrimination laws are working all over this country, where religious freedom is existing side-by-side with equal opportunity,” Harry Knox, director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, said in a statement. “Advocates of LGBT equality have taken great pains in their legislative efforts to ensure that the rights of religious organizations and people under the First Amendment are protected. It is deeply cynical for the authors of this document to paint themselves as victims because they cannot have a free hand to discriminate, including with taxpayer dollars.”

“Crafty” detainees in Iraq have taken to taunting members of the Wisconsin National Guard about the successes of Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre.

As if Iraq weren’t already riven enough with its own internecine antagonisms, prisoners there under U.S. military guard are siding with Minnesota in the bitter, cross-border gridiron rivalry between the two neighbor states.

The detainees clued into the Guard members’ loyalty to the Green and Gold after the soldiers repainted camp walls in those colors.

“They know Favre by name,” First Lieutenant Tim Boehnen said of the former Packers quarterback, in an interview with Milwaukee radio station WTMJ-AM.

“They obviously then started up the conversations and started talking about Brett Favre,” Boehnen said. “They soon learned about Favre going to the Vikings, and things just started going downhill from there.”

The abuse is apparently entirely verbal, and good-natured, according to Boehnen …

One of the big words they know now is shenanigan. They’ll constantly talk about “Favre shenanigans,” “He’s so good for the Vikings,” and “The Packers have got to really feel bad about that one.”

… unlike, say, the abuse of a goat in Winona that fans painted green and gold before shaving the number 4 into its side and stuffing it into the trunk of a car earlier this football season.

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher is getting her second union endorsement for governor in as many days (and her third so far), this one from the 43,000-member Greater Minnesota American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65, Minnesota Public Radio’s Polinaut reports.

Kelliher picked up the endorsements from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49 (yesterday) and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (last week).

How important are such endorsements?

“[B]ecause of changing demographics, union political endorsements may not move the rank-and-file members, whose interests may not be the same as the union leadership, the way they used to be,” Hamline University professor David Schultz told the St. Paul Legal Ledger.

AFSCME Council 5’s executive director disputed that.

“[O]ur members are incredibly motivated to elect a new governor who will promote public services, rebuild the economy of the state and deal with the budget crisis in a way that asks the wealthiest people in the state to pay their fair share of taxes,” Eliot Seide said.

The year 2011 will be the end of an era in broadcasting. That’s when Oprah will leave her long-running show — and, by coincidence, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty will leave his, Minnesota Public Radio confirms. Today, his “hot” wife Mary sits in for T-Paw on ‘CCO, but you won’t see Her Hotness unless the First Couple follows Garrison Keillor’s lead and starts simulcasting in high-def to movie theaters.

Elsewhere in Minnesota News this morning …

STATEWIDE: Local property taxes up 3.5 percent. That’s an estimated average; the truth comes out at Truth-in-Taxation hearings starting next week. [Associated Press]

RAMSEY COUNTY: She gets put on the Coleman-Franken recount board, the unallotment lawsuit, now the dad-shirt case. Doesn’t Judge Kathleen Gearin deserve a “Stay Out of the News Free” card?” [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

STATEWIDE: Al Franken’s bill would aid homeless kids. Bill would help them stay in the same school when possible. [ECM Publishers]

OWATONNA: Texts (both kinds) prompt race tensions. White kids and Somali kids are fighting after anti-Somali writings circulate. [Star Tribune]

MOORHEAD: Native Americans in college. They’re the focus of a national conference today.  [Associated Press]

ALBERT LEA: “Pay-to-play” charges could sink junior-league puck squad. The whistleblower is a bowling alley owner in Elkhorn, Neb. [Albert Lea Tribune]

The Chisholm cultural institution known until last summer as Ironworld will lay off 26 full-time staff members Friday and on Satuday close its doors to visitors. The Minnesota Discovery Center, originally a state-funded effort now struggling as a private nonprofit, has suffered in the economic downturn. But like the mines that anchor the Iron Range culture it celebrates, the center has come back from temporary closures before.

The center, which has existed in one form or another since 1977, has been planning a new children’s area at its centerpiece museum and has a fundraiser and holiday program on the calendar for December. The center also houses a 7,000-volume library and research center and hosts events throughout the year.

In January, the museum was scheduled to open an exhibit of photographs from Walden Woods in Massachusetts, a project involving the Walden Woods Project. That’s a cultural nonprofit (dedicated to preserving the place that Henry David Thoreau made famous) founded and supported by musician Don Henley.

Now would be a good time for a famous son or daughter of the Iron Range to do the same for the former Ironworld.

A new report by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) finds that, despite the nation’s economic turmoil, Minnesota’s civic health is good — so much so that we’re among the country’s leaders in indicators like voter turnout, volunteerism and charitable giving. NCOC is chartered by Congress “with the responsibility of promoting effective citizenship and civic education.” Each year, NCOC surveys the nation on citizenship issues; it released its data on Minnesota earlier this month.

“Minnesota showed civic resilience in a year when much of the nation saw a sharp drop in civic effort,” the report found.

Its findings show that the state continues to lead in civic participation:

1st in voter turnout, with 77.8 % of those eligible voting, 14.2% higher than the national average.
1st in citizen consciousness of having a “strong civic tradition,” with 26.5 % saying it is strong compared to other states, compared to 13.2% for the national average.
3rd in donations to charitable organizations, with 60.2% donating $25 or more.
4th in statewide volunteering, with 60.5% volunteering in the last year.
6th in working with others to fix something in the neighborhood, with 12.4%.

Despite economic problems, the state fared better than most:

72.2% nationally said they had cut back in volunteering; in Minnesota the figure was 58.6%
41.4% of Minnesotans said they had increased volunteering – compared to 27.8% for the nation as a whole.
40.3% reported being involved in community discussions about the effects of the economic recession.
50.9% of Minnesotans say they would be willing to “work less” if doing so would create more jobs for those who are unemployed.
Almost 53% say they are willing to volunteer more.

And support for efforts to increase civic participation is still high:

86.4% believe that young people should be able to earn money for college through community service projects.
80.8% believe that young people should be required to do community service in higher school.
71% believe that students in high school need to pass a new civics test.
43.7% support training opportunities to learn skills as part of volunteer activities.
15.3% value the opportunity to learn and to be challenged as the first priority for their career, while 9.3% of Minnesotans seek to make a “public benefit” as the first priority. The quarter of the population who prize civic and educational aspects of jobs contrasts to 18.7% for the nation as a whole.

Burberry, Britain’s once-staid fashion house, can’t help it if Sarah Palin wears their trademark plaid scarves. “[T]he conspicuousness of the pattern also means that the company has little control over how it is seen, or on whom,” the New Yorker magazine observed, in reference to Palin. Minneapolis has the same problem: today the Mill City gets dragged into a lengthy New York Times recounting of Palin’s purchases at the downtown Neiman Marcus store last year during the Republican National Convention.

Of course, they weren’t really Palin’s purchases — and that’s another Minneapolis connection in the Times story. Jeff Larson, the locally-bred Republican consultant whose FLS Connect GOP phone-solicitation firm has been in the news again lately, fronted Palin the $130,000 for her clothes. (The Republican National Committee paid him back.)

The occasion for retelling the story of Palin’s Minneapolis shopping spree is her new book, in which Palin has her own version.

The Times interviews Lisa Kline, the designer who dressed Palin and the members of her family for the 2008 GOP convention. An excerpt:

Neiman Marcus opened for Ms. Kline and her assistant at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, she said, and the two split up and spent a rushed 90 minutes or so gathering what they needed. Ms. Palin and her family were not there; nor was anyone from the campaign. Instead, the two stylists relied on a couple of salesclerks and a store manager.

“There was no conversation. There was no chitchat. It was just, ‘We need two pairs of pants in size yadada,’ ” Ms. Kline said. The purchases were rung up, but Ms. Kline was not asked for payment of any kind.

“Apparently it had been prearranged,” she said. …

Ms. Kline said she does not recall who asked her to expand her styling to the entire Palin family or who set up the appointment at Neiman Marcus, which later became so controversial because it undermined the candidate’s image as a populist.

The Burberry brand that Palin favors has had a bad rap back in Britain as having become too populist:

During the 1970s, the brand became popular with the British football casual cult, leading to it to being associated with chavs, hooligans and members of football firms by the 1990s. The brand became something of a national joke, particularly when actress Danniella Westbrook was photographed with her young daughter wearing matching Burberry outfits. South Wales police ran a drive against anti-social behaviour under the name Operation Burberry and Burberry admitted that “Burberry is now synonymous with Chavs and thugs.”

Palin will make a return visit to Minnesota on her book tour, with a stop at the Mall of America on Dec. 7. (But don’t go there dressed like a chav in your Burberrys, or the security guards’ll be on you.)

Margaret Anderson Kelliher

State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill — giving life to what the union terms “the largest job-creating bill in decades.”

That override has haunted the six Republicans who helped Democrats get the bill passed Pawlenty’s veto — most recently on Monday, when news broke that state Sen. Steve Dille won’t seek re-election.

One week ago, Kelliher won the backing of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, who called her the “most electable candidate in the race.”

Republican Allen Quist has been angling to get back in elective office since 1994 — about the same length of time the Minnesota Vikings have spent angling to get a new taxpayer-funded stadium. Now both are making dramatic moves. Vikes owner Zygi Wilf says he’s washing his hands of “political games” and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission; he’ll take his case to the Legislature and the governor. Quist, on the other hand, is out to prove he can still play political games. He announces today he’ll run for Congress in the First District against incumbent Democrat Tim Walz.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning ….

HENNEPIN COUNTY: They told us it would come to this. The county’s medical center will stop seeing uninsured patients who don’t live in the county: fallout from  Gov. Pawlenty’s line-item veto of funding for indigent care. [Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal]

STATEWIDE: Cities face “horror show” from state budget cuts. Metro area city officials meet today to try to figure out how to avoid the slasher. [League of Minnesota Cities]

MOORHEAD: “Downward spiral” from underfunded schools feared. New residents drawn to new schools will simply leave.  [Minnesota Public Radio]

ST. PAUL: Gentrification coming down the track. Along the planned Central Corridor light rail line, property tax hikes can kill a neighborhood sure as bulldozers.  [Twin Cities Daily Planet]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Recreation and entertainment infrastructure not core to mission. The U of M’s “intransigence” (to use one key legislator’s word) on its Central Corridor complaints threatens funding for its budget requests at the state Capitol. [Minnesota Daily]

FOLEY: Native son nabs National Book Award. T.J. Stiles, a Carleton College grad, won for his biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. [St. Cloud Times]

While Rep. Michele Bachmann was the highest-profile catch for the “Appeal to Heaven” gala for the controversial You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International ministry (even though she ultimately was a no-show and sent a video message instead), another rising star in the local Republican party reportedly managed to make it to help raise money to bring God’s message into public schools: gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.

According to You Can Run head Bradlee Dean — who says homosexuals, President Obama, and liberals are criminals and that the separation of church and state is a myth — Emmer was on hand to raise money for the ministry.

“The spirit of God was there,” Dean said on his Saturday radio show on AM 1280 The Patriot. “We had Tom Emmer there, the gubernatorial candidate for 2010, a potentially important guy.”

Interestingly, though, Emmer chose not to mention his attendance at the fundraiser on his list of campaign appearances from last week.

Update: Emmer’s campaign told the Minnesota Independent, “Rep. Tom Emmer stopped by the event for a social hour before the dinner and program. The program is headquartered out of Wright County which is Rep. Emmer’s county and has many supporters in Tom’s legislative district. It was not mentioned in the campaign update because it was not a campaign event.”

As if Michele Bachmann’s 2010 re-election battle wasn’t already going to be a doozy, it’s begun shaping up as a proxy war between the forces of U.S. Sen. Al Franken and the man he bested in Minnesota’s recount, former Sen. Norm Coleman. “The eyes of the nation — and Michele Bachmann’s right-wing allies — will be on this race,” Franken wrote in an email today on behalf of Bachmann rival Tarryl Clark. ”I have no doubt [Bachmann] is going to get re-elected by her constituents,” Coleman told an audience at Harvard University Tuesday night.

Coleman wrote his own fundraising letter on behalf of Bachmann in September. Franken was a listed co-host for a fundraising event for Clark, a DFL Party state senator, in Minneapolis last week. Maureen Reed is also mounting a 2010 challenge to Bachmann.

Coleman’s comments Tuesday came in response to a question from his Harvard audience about whether “death bed” rhetoric and “Nazi imagery” were hurting the Republican Party. “I don’t think that the signs you mention are part of the party or central to the discussion,” Coleman countered.

In the course of his response, Coleman brought up “the Michele Bachmanns out there.” He disputed a link between extreme rhetoric and elected officials or the Tea Party movement. “Your basic notion is mistaken,” he said. “You’re taking something way out on the fringe and you’re applying it to the legitimate anger that folks have.”

But earlier, Coleman seemed ready to harness anger himself with this line in his speech: “Pity the politician who comes between a citizen and their constitutional Second Amendment rights.”

Coleman, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, is treading on Franken’s former stomping grounds: the Minnesota funnyman-turned-statesman was a math major at Harvard.

He has cast himself as someone who can bring young people into the Republican Party, showing off his savvy by naming things like travel agents and 8-track tapes that the students in his audience don’t use. Besides, he asserted, young people don’t deal with social issues on a day-to-day basis. “Very rarely are you going to think about what’s going to happen on Roe v. Wade today,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he looks for middle ground on social issues. He advocated “doing those things that support young women so they don’t have to have an abortion.” Gay marriage is “a pretty narrow issue,” he said, citing civil unions as a possible compromise on the more contentious issue of how to define marriage.

“The philosophy of conservatives really is more in line with your generation,” Coleman said. “I just think we haven’t done a good job of articulating it.”

Coleman articulated this reason for having lost his re-election battle to Franken last year: his yes vote on bailout bills to stave off a depression in October 2008. “But for the collapse of the economy, I don’t think the race would have been close,” he said.

The political-numbers-geek website FiveThirtyEight.com was on the money with predictions about the outcome of the 2008 presidential race and Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. So cut ‘em some slack for saying Tim Pawlenty is the man to beat in the 2010 Minnesota governor’s race. Everyone learns from mistakes — and in this case, we learn how the race might look had Pawlenty stayed in it.

Here’s the glimpse into an alternate political universe, courtesy FiveThirtyEight’s Tom Schaller:

The most compelling race may be in Minnesota, however, where Tim Pawlenty won narrowly four years ago and might be distracted by presidential politics. Losing re-election would scotch any White House ambitions he has, making him a ripe target for the Democratic Governors Association. And that made me think that maybe — just maybe — Sarah Palin knew what she was doing by getting herself safely out of the way of anti-incumbent fury that may dominate the 2010 cycle.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza shakes us out of that daydream:

Norm Coleman (R) isn’t expected to make a decision on the 2010 governor’s race until next year but a new Rasmussen poll suggests the former senator has plenty of time to make his decision. Coleman led the Republican field with 50 percent while state Rep. Marty Seifert at 11 percent was the only other potential candidate to break double digits. Coleman’s lead is almost entirely attributable to name identification gained from his time as mayor of St. Paul and his six years in the Senate but it does suggest that if he decides to run, he will be a clear favorite. On the Democratic side, former Sen. Mark Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak each received 30 percent of the vote while none of the other candidates scored in double digits. Coleman would give Republicans a chance to hold this seat, which is being vacated by Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) after two terms. But, if Coleman takes a pass this race looks extremely difficult for any other GOP candidate given Minnesota’s Democratic tilt.

Rep. Tim Walz and Allen Quist

Republican Allen Quist solicits funds saying he and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann “are two peas in a pod.” Now he’s set to announce Thursday whether he’ll make a bid to join Bachmann in Congress by running against Democrat Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First District.

Quist’s announcement at 1 p.m. in the Rochester City Council chambers will settle a candidacy question that only a month ago he told the Minnesota Independent was “a big if.”

Quist gained the GOP endorsement in 1994 but failed in a run at becoming governor, losing in the primary to incumbent Arne Carlson, who went on to win re-election. Quist was elected to three terms in the state House in the 1980s.

His wife Julie is Bachmann’s district director.

Walz is a DFLer who has held the southern Minnesota district since unseating Republican Gil Gutknecht in 2006.

The national chapter of the Sierra Club has launched an ad attacking Rep. Michele Bachmann for what the group says are close ties to the oil industry. The ads are in their second week of a two-week run on television stations in Bachmann’s district, according to Sierra Club Action, the political wing of the environmental group.

In addition to Bachmann, the ads are targeting Republican Reps. John Boehner of Ohio, Denny Rehberg of Montana, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, as well as Democrat Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania.

“Stain,” as the ad is titled, “highlights the cash from Big Oil and other special interests taken by Members who voted against the American Clean Energy & Security Act, a comprehensive clean energy and climate plan that will put America back in control of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet,” according to a statement from the Sierra Club.

Here’s the full ad:

Tuesday was a day for Q and As with Norm Coleman, Michele Bachmann and Tom Petters. Coleman in the Harvard Crimson: “No regrets.” Bachmann in City Pages: “I’m proud.” Petters in federal court: “I apologize.” Al Franken got in on the game this morning on Minnesota Public Radio, where an interviewer said it sounds like he’d have trouble backing a health reform bill that restricts abortion rights. Franken: “[long pause] … It does, doesn’t it?”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATEWIDE: Ask Al more. Five dollars and cab fare to New York City will get you a lunch audience with Sen. Franken. [Washington Post's In the Loop]

TWIN CITIES: Random acts of criminality on YouTube. Police are on the trail of local thugs who posted a clip showing them attacking people on bikes and on foot. [Fox 9]

PRIOR LAKE: Native Americans get ready for Copenhagen. They want a say in climate-change talks. [Associated Press]

DASSEL: Steve Dille out. The Republican state senator won’t run again; he was one of the eight GOPers who helped override Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of transportation funding in 2008. [Litchfield Independent Review; Polinaut]

PRAIRIE ISLAND: Lege has last say on nuke storage. The people’s reps at the state Capitol could reverse a regulatory OK for Xcel Energy to store more nuclear waste. [Rochester Post-Bulletin]

STATEWIDE: Or possibly universe-wide? Minnesota Public Radio’s designs on dominance in news. [Braublog]

My Washington Independent profile of WorldNetDaily made the case that the conservative website, which opinion-makers brush off as a conspiracy hub, is actually incredibly influential on the right. Here’s some evidence for that argument.

For months — really since it was announced at the How to Take Back America Conference — WND has backed a campaign to send “pink slips” to members of Congress. Upon the sending of the five millionth pink slip, WND held a press conference yesterday on Capitol Hill, drawing actual GOP members of Congress, including Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). A photo of Bachmann (above) and Gohmert (below) with WND Editor Joseph Farah, one of the driving forces of the “birther” movement.

Asked what the biggest threat facing Minnesota now is, gubernatorial candidate and state Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, is quick with an answer: Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s unallotments. In a video by Craig Stellmacher, Rukavina says the legislature “should’ve come out swinging” immediately after Pawlenty decided unilaterally to cut $2.7 billion from the state budget. He believes Pawlenty’s actions were unconstitutional and says he approached party leadership in early June about pursuing a suit.

“It’s usurping the power of the legislature… Right now he’s actually writing laws,” he said. “I don’t know where’s he getting this authority, and nobody’s really taking him on.”

“Right now any governor — whether the governor is Tom Rukavina or Tim Pawlenty — can basically sign every spending bill and then decide to unallot,” he said.

Rukavina agrees that Pawlenty’s motives in unallotment have been more about his national political ambitions than in looking after Minnesota’s future.

“I think he’s being very insincere in his claim that he loves this state and loves the people of this state,” he said. “Because what he’s doing to them isn’t, from where I come from, any sign of love.”

On Monday, the House Rules Committee voted to file a brief in support of a suit against the governor’s unallotment of some $2.7 million from the state budget.

Watch it:

See answers by DFL gubernatorial candidates R.T. Rybak and Paul Thissen to Stellmacher’s ongoing candidate series on the biggest threats to Minnesota.

No, it’s not the return flight-path for those errant Northwest Airlines pilots. It’s U.S. Sen. Al Franken’s hand-drawn map of Minnesota, done on spec for National Geographic. 

Franken and 10 other senators responded to the magazine’s request that they draw the outline of their home states, marking three important places. The assignment was right up Franken’s alley, since he regularly shows off his ability to draw a freehand map of the entire United States from memory.

But highlighting only three places stumped Franken, who responded in wordy fashion with “the importance of Minnesota in the region,” “the entire state” and  ”my hometown, St. Louis Park.”

In attempting to cover all conceivable bases while not playing favorites, Franken seems to have inadvertently tipped his hand, mentioning the state’s prairie land twice:

There’s natural beauty throughout Minnesota, from the Boundary Waters in the Northeast that we share with Canada to the prairies in the west back to the gorgeous bluffs of southeastern Minnesota. There’s the prairies of the west — the fertile farmland along the Red River Valley of the North and the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.

The senators’ entries appear to have been done in permanent marker, so even if Franken realized he’d let his prairie obsession show, he couldn’t fix it. Or maybe he’s trying to curry favor in areas where Democrats have to work harder for votes. In any case, here’s his whole sketch:

Photo: WDCpix.com

In a matchup between President Barack Obama and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Obama would win by ten points, according to a new St. Cloud State University poll (pdf) released Tuesday. When asked who they would vote for in 2012, 49 percent of Minnesotans surveyed said they’d support Obama, while 39.7 percent said they’d back Pawlenty.

The poll of 550 Minnesotans also found that among independents, when pushed, many are more likely to identify with the DFL (40.5 percent) than the Republican party (23.7 percent).

Just over half of Minnesotans (50.5 percent) gave President Obama a favorable rating in the poll. Gov. Tim Pawlenty didn’t fare as well, with only 48.5 percent rating his job performance as excellent or pretty good. Almost as many, 48.4 percent, rated Pawlenty’s performance as fair or poor.

The poll found that 50.3 percent of those surveyed say Obama is doing an excellent or pretty good job, but 47.4 percent rated the president’s performance as fair or poor.

Topping the list of the main issues facing the state are health care insurance at 19.6 percent, the budget deficit at 13.8 percent, education at 13.3 percent and unemployment at 12.8 percent.

Wedge issues barely registered with poll respondents with abortion at 0.8 percent, “family issues” at 0.2 percent, immigration at 0.8 percent and religious moral issues at 0.1 percent.

Overall, respondents said the state was heading in the wrong direction; 42.5 percent said the state is moving in the right direction and 43.8 said it was moving in the wrong direction. Nine percent said the state’s situation is neutral.

The poll doesn’t reveal its margin of error or polling methodology.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Nov. 5 rally in opposition to Democrat-led health care reform sure has generated press for the Sixth District Republican, but increasingly in ways she might not have anticipated. She ended up apologizing, sort of, for rally attendees who used imagery of Holocaust victims to express their dislike for reforms. Government watchdog group CREW has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics over Bachmann’s promotion of the event. And now a woman in Michigan, angered over a newspaper editorial criticizing Bachmann’s event, threatened to take a gun to the paper and “do what they did at Fort Hood” in response.

A 60-year-old Port Huron, Mich. woman called up the Kentucky-based customer service center for the Gannett-owned Times Herald of Port Huron to express her anger over the editorial, which criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Candice Miller for attending the rally. The Nov. 12 editorial called out protest signs that depicted Obama as “Sambo” and others that showed the Holocaust imagery, as well as protesters who chanted “Nazi, Nazi.”

The editorial concluded by calling on Miller to apologize for attending the Bachmann-organized event, which it characterized as a “GOP festival of hate.”

No charges have been filed against the woman, but an investigation is ongoing.