Range’s biggest paper uses bloated boondoggle to endorse Coleman

First, the least surprising news in the history of the Iron Range: the Mesabi Daily News endorsed Norm Coleman for re-election on Sunday. This could have been predicted from the very beginning of this election from the paper’s heavy spin of Coleman as the “jobs” candidate and the constant pushing of anti-Franken stories and editorials. At one point the center-right paper strongly advocated for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, not because of his liberal policies, but because they were looking for anything to knock the well-financed and well-known Franken from his path to the nomination in what appears to be a DFL year.

That’s fine. It’s predictable and Range voters have often refuted newspaper endorsements. When I was editor of the Hibbing paper we didn’t even do them. If you want to know who I’m voting for it’s pretty easy to find out. People will make up their own minds.

The Mesabi Daily News editorial direction is not determined by an editorial board, but rather by the editor, Bill Hanna — a longtime Range journalist originally from North Minneapolis. Bill has many admirable traits, but objectivity is not one of them. He’s pro-development to the extreme and tends to let his opinions spill over onto the news pages when the editorial page is not enough. He and his paper have every right to endorse Coleman, but to prop up the bloated, decaying Excelsior Energy Mesaba project as justification for supporting Coleman is an insult to the intelligence of Iron Range voters. Excelsior Energy exists solely because Bill Hanna and the Mesabi Daily News have never, ever asked hard questions about the viability of the project and technology in an objective way. They shut out opposing viewpoints in their news coverage from 2001 through the present. And then, even after the Excelsior Mesaba project encountered blow after crushing blow from the realities of the economy, the power industry and energy experts, the MDN is using this waste of $9.5 million of Iron Range money and millions more from the state and federal government as justification for re-electing Sen. Coleman.

Hey, if you like Coleman, great. But this is a joke.

But we find Franken to be sadly out of step on issues that play such a crucial role in the future of Northeastern Minnesota.

We are especially concerned with Franken on economic development issues.

On Excelsior Energy, Franken is opposed to the project. He has flat out said it should be built elsewhere — “in coal country” — with the jobs it would create benefiting another state. So much for looking at an innovative way for economic development in Minnesota and on the Iron Range. Coleman and most DFL legislators have worked hard to move along this energy project.

First of all, if Bill used Google or read Newsweek, he’d know that the CEO of Duke Energy, the largest coal company in the country, also believes this so-called “clean coal” technology is only viable at the mouth of a coal mine where the carbon can be buried (it can’t here) and the costs of transporting coal and carbon slurry is as low as possible (it would cost billions to do it here). Indeed, the Mesaba Energy Project doesn’t have a customer, permits or a viable business plan short of near-total government financing. Recently, the fact that Excelsior used state funds to lobby for state favors and federal money — which is deeply unethical — went largely unnoticed and was not mentioned in the Mesabi Daily News. Nor was it mentioned that former DFL State Sen. Doug Johnson, who endorsed Coleman in a Sunday front page splash, is a lobbyist for Excelsior Energy.

If there’s one thing I always hated as an Iron Range reporter and editor it was crackpots who wouldn’t give it up on certain issues. I am trying really, really hard not to be a crackpot here. I would support a power plant if I felt it was needed or wise. This is neither. And neither is re-electing Coleman on these grounds.

Al Franken is not a perfect candidate. The first to admit that would probably be Al Franken. He’s written a few nasty jokes along with other very good ones and has a history of getting mad when he sees injustice in the world. But he cares deeply about the people on the Iron Range, about real jobs for the Iron Range and he’s not about to be pushed around by developers and big shots when it comes to what’s in the people’s best interest. Al doesn’t need the MDN endorsement to do well here. He does need it to be pointed out that the Mesabi Daily News isn’t just an apologist for Norm Coleman’s lukewarm term in the Senate, it is in dereliction of its duty as a newspaper on the matter of Excelsior Energy and the role of developers and lobbyists in shaping the agenda of the Iron Range political world. This goes beyond party politics to a core problem; if smooth-talking promise-makers can push around our local leaders and prop up federal chameleons like Norm Coleman, there is no future here.

That will not stand. Not with me.

I’m voting for Franken, if anyone cares.

Comments

  1. Mesabi Daily News endorses Coleman
    WOW! That, folks, is a crushing blow to team Franken.
    Biggest paper in the middle of yellow dog DFL Iron Range!

    So not only the Messi News, but the Pioneer Press, Rochester Post-Bulletin, and the Star Trib!!!

    OUCH!!!

    Expect the negative ads by Franken to flood our air waves.

  2. Wow! Didn’t you just read what I wrote? The MDN often endorses Republicans for state office. It’s a center right publication in the middle of the center left Range. The paper is in the tank with this clean coal plant and its lawyers and lobbyists. I expect plenty of negative ads from all sides.

    And for the Star Trib, it’s amazing how new owners often have a way of shifting endorsements after dumping top political writers. But I suspect you didn’t come here to write about all this.

  3. Attention, Aaron, US Senator is a federal office, not state.

    Endorsing Coleman:
    Mesabi Daily News
    Rochester Post-Bulletin
    Pioneer Press
    Star Tribune

    Endorsing Al &%#@&$! Franken:
    MN Brown

    Da Range has always been solid DFL left, nothing center right about it, just look at for whom da Range votes… DFL or D every time, without preconditions.

  4. State=Statewide, but you knew that’s what I meant and went for the cheap shot anyway. Classy.

    It’s funny how conservatives suddenly put so much stock in newspaper endorsements when conservative companies buy up the newspapers and force their editorial pages to endorse Republicans. If McCain wasn’t tanking so badly, you can bet they’d have endorsed him too. I have been inside newspaper companies and know how this works. Thanks for stopping by to spread today’s talking points.

    What you don’t know about the Range could fill a steamer trunk. Yes, it’s a reliably Democratic area but you don’t know why. It’s a workers’ area that values hard work and community and it’s had newspapers and company bosses telling it how to vote one way or another for 100 years — and yet, the party on the side of workers always wins. I admit this is an unusual year with an unusual DFL candidate, but I know who’s going to really be looking out for workers. I don’t know who will win, but I know who I’m voting for.

    Good luck.

  5. Does anybody actually pay attention to newspaper endorsements or endorsements from virtually anybody else anymore anyway? I can’t believe that somebody would actually vote for a candidate simply because the Mesabi Daily News, Star Tribune, New York Times, Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney, Kurt Schilling, Al Gore, or anybody else told them to. If a large number of people actually do, the country has bigger problems than most of us realize.

    I’ve heard of analysts say over the years to never underestimate the stupidity of the voting public, but never really thought much of it. After hearing some friends and coworkers talk and listening to the following segment, I understand what the analysts are talking about. Here’s an example.

    http://www.bpmdeejays.com/upload/hs_sal_in_Harlem_100108.mp3

  6. I just find it very surprising that all these papers that absolutely lean to the left endorse Coleman. I do not base my decision on bird cage liner endorsements of any type.

    Hey Brown, I’ve been reading the Messi News and manny shopper for decades, don’t tell me I don’t know da Range, you only make yerself look foolish by your ASSumptions about others.

    Remember the days when high school kids would thumb their noses at teachers; tell the teacher that all they needed to do was graduate, that they already had a job in the mines waiting for them that would make a heck of a lot more than the teacher and even more than someone that took four or more years for a college degree?
    Bubble that was created by unions… and then the bust for those reasons and other global factors for sure…
    I knew a lot of good people, friends and family, that went through hard times back in those tough days.

    How about the tough time the loggers have been in recently. The price they were getting harvesting trees was way out of line and the market corrected…

    Sure, not black and white issues, too many variables to list them all…

    I’m just sayin’, Coleman and the Messi News can’t be as evil and dangerous as you want to believe.

  7. High talk, K-Rod. My name is Aaron J. Brown and I’m listed in the Range phone directory. I’ve lived here my whole live and am fifth generation Range. I grew up in the 1980s and I owe everything I have to teachers who prepared me for a life outside mining.

    I never said the MDN or these other papers are evil. I said they have their biases and their reasons for doing what they do. Everyone does, me and you included. I just think it’s a little intellectually dishonest to attack the media when you don’t like its conclusions, but tout the media as authoritative when you agree with it. All sources need to be considered objectively.

  8. You probably call Left wing Marshall at the T-Jay a centrist.

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