The DFL mining battle that wasn’t

Last week the question was how badly a pro-mining resolution would damage the electoral prospects of DFLers after this weekend’s state convention in Duluth.

What we’ve learned is that Democratic-Farmer-Laborites have at least figured out that the more they bicker in public on this issue, the worse things get for them — especially among a very touchy set of Iron Range mining backers and environmentalists. So, as this Star Tribune story explains, leaders of both sides rushed to find a compromise on Sunday: they would table the measure, perhaps forever. The party took no new positions. Mining opponents and supporters will continue to hold their own positions, as they would have done anyway.

Naturally, the soundbites rising from the Republican convention in Rochester were resoundingly pro-mining, as that party seeks its biennial bounty of theoretical Iron Range votes. As I’ve explained, without any environmental wing to speak of, Republicans have no one to offend by saying “mine every mountain.” Anyone bothered by that sentiment was never going to vote for them anyway.

I was worried that by the end of this past weekend, we’d be looking at the wreckage of a DFL coalition. I’d have to repeat Charlton Heston’s lines from the end of “The Planet of the Apes,” where a space traveler finds that he was on Earth the whole time, and that “the maniacs blew it all up.”

There is nothing about a party platform resolution that has any serious bearing on the enactment of public policy. They can, over time, shape a party’s priorities, but this resolution in Duluth was never going to help or hurt new mining in northern Minnesota. By walking away from it, DFLers found the only path that would allow them to maintain their coalition. Amazingly, they did so rather deftly. The only better outcome would have been for no resolution to have been advanced in the first place.

So, as it stands, DFL standard-bearers Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Al Franken hold similar positions on mining: generally supportive, so long as environmental protections are ensured. All Republican candidates for their offices hold a position supporting mining, rejecting any possibility that the mining would be done in an unsafe, unclean way.

You can form your own conclusion about this. But it should be apparent that there is no serious opposition to mining at the top of either ticket. But there are myriad, serious differences on virtually all other issues. This is why I keep saying that focusing on mining is an ineffective way to guide your vote, particularly if you support it. The effect on mining policy differences with your vote is minimal, whereas outcomes would be much different on matters like public education, taxes, health care access and more based on who is elected this November.