My wife and I, along with our five year old son, just returned from the kickoff event in Alexandria.
It was packed with great turnout and enthusiasm!! Senator Coleman has a lot of support here in West Central Minnesota. I think he will win convincingly in the area with better margins than the first election. There is not great enthusiasm among conservative Democrats for Al Franken. I think many DFLers had hoped for Ciresi from what I have heard.
Coleman gave a great heartfelt speech. A couple introduced him and told a story about their efforts to adopt a son from Guatemala. It was an emotional speech on how Senator Coleman traveled down to Guatemala, personally, and spoke with the leaders to help parents finish up the adoption process. If not for Senator Coleman the parents were going to become victim's of international law changes, and their dreams of bringing the children home would have been dashed.
I am not sure there was a dry eye in the building including Senator Coleman. He then talked about the loss of his own children and how personal this issue was to him.
I have seen both men now, and I am biased, but there is no comparison that Senator Coleman has been right on most agricultural issues and good for rural Minnesota. He realized that cities, like Clarissa, do not have the tax base to cover all of the federally mandated programs we have thrown at us and why the Small City Development Funds are necessary.
As an economist I would be in favor of eliminating those programs if it came with the same reduction in taxes and unfunded mandates.
I do not think we need to send a gifted talker and joke teller, like Al Franken, to Washington. We have enough people in Washington who are gifted talkers, and I would argue that is probably part of Washington's problem.
We need a Senator like Norm Coleman who will do what is right for Minnesota, and is willing to disagree with his own party and urban Democrats on issues important to agriculture and rural cities and towns.
