McCain

A study in contrasts.

Right at 10 p.m. at tonight's Republican Party election celebration at Bloomington's Sheraton Hotel, GOP Chairman Ron Carey and Gov. Tim Pawlenty got a roomful of Republicans rocking.

"We've got a lot to be thankful for tonight," Carey told the crowd, which had already been shaken out of its earlier doldrums by news that U.S. Rep. John Kline had easily retaken his seat. Carey predict other victories would be coming in the next hours.

Carey made the house explode when he told the party faithful that the numbers they were seeing on the big-screen TV sets in the corners of the room, which showed the U.S. Senate race deadlocked between U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken, were wrong.

"When we look behind the scenes at where the votes are coming from, this is very similar to 2006," Carey said. "Were looking at the counties and the areas that haven't come in yet and we're very encouraged by the fact that we're at where we're at when we have a lot of really strong Republican areas yet to report."

The place really lit up when he announced that Rep. Michele Bachmann was running ahead of Elwyn Tinklenberg with Wright County and Sherburne County showing almost no returns. "There is reason for cautious optimism there, as well."

Violinist and Obama campaign volunteer Linda Plaut arrived at 5:30 this morning at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, a K-5 public school in Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech (short for Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). 

Are you like me today, sitting on the edge of my seat, fingers and eyes poised to pounce on any and all information about the presidential and other elections? Well, those of us going crazy with anticipation about who’s going to win what just about everyone agrees is the most important election in many years and perhaps of our lives … will have to keep on going crazy.

We won’t know any real information about whether Barack Obama or John McCain is winning until this evening, EVEN if we start seeing poll results (or supposed poll results) this afternoon.

The hard lessons of the last two presidential elections have resulted in major changes to the way poll results are tracked and kept under wraps. For clear information about all things poll-related on this urgent Election Day go to www.pollster.com, the co-creation of Charles Franklin, who’s also behind the blog PoliticalArithmetik (http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com) (“Where numbers and politics meet”) and a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

So, Thursday evening about 9:15, as John McCain was starting his acceptance speech, my brother-in-law, Randy, and I headed into the LoTo bar in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood just off downtown, about eight blocks from the Xcel. And a bunch of crazy-seeming women were screaming and cheering and jumping up and down on their seats on one side of the oblong bar.

I couldn’t figure out what the six or so women were making all the fuss about – were these McCain fans? The way they were dressed – in a general style I’d call “crunchy,” with a lot of pink, so perhaps “crunchy pink” – they didn’t look like McCain fans. And, man, were they loud

Actually, I was a little annoyed – I just wanted to have a couple of beers with Randy and maybe catch a bit of what McCain had to say. Unfortunately, the only available table was a table away from the obstreperous women. Though Randy and I were right next to a nice big-screen tube, we couldn’t hear a damn thing McCain was saying.

These women were loud and excited and in almost constant motion. As different members of the group kept running in and out of LoTo, new members kept showing up, eventually even a couple of guys – a young black guy with dreadlocks and an older white guy wearing a baseball jacket with “Kenya” written across the back.

Around 2 p.m. Monday, writer Betsy Sundquist reported from 5th and Jackson, on the edge of Mears Park about eight blocks east of the Xcel Center, that protesters are breaking windows with rocks and bricks and throwing tear gas.

A police officer who would not give his name said, "People are getting hurt, and it's just the beginning."

As he spoke, ambulances flew past on 5th Street.

Sundquist said that protesters tossing bricks had shattered a big picture window along the front of Galtier Plaza, 380 Jackson St. A woman helping clean up the debris asked, "What does this have to do with ending the war?" 

Terri Dresen, a spokeswoman for United Hospital at 333 Smith Ave. N., reported about 3 p.m. that the hospital's emergency room had seen no RNC-related injuries yet. "It's really quiet over here," she said. 

Sunday night, at their beautiful riverfront place in Minneapolis, Sam and Sylvia Kaplan, Minnesota’s political power couple, hosted a cocktail party billed as a bi-partisan welcome to politicians and journalists in town for the RNC.

The Kaplans’ airy, 10,000-square-foot house was filled with folks wanting to be in a festive mood, but having a hard time –- feeling conflicted. There was a strange feeling all around, a subdued party atmosphere I’ve felt before at family funerals -– you know those funerals where, yes, of course we’re sad that Grandma or uncle so-and-so has died, but it’s sure great to see the cousins from New York we hardly ever get to see but love it when we do.

No, Tim Pawlenty did not get the vice presidential nod from the McCain campaign.

But there’s still a Minnesota connection in McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his VP.

Palin’s new director of communications and press secretary, Bill McAllister, spent a chunk of his career in Minnesota, including a stint at our own Saint Paul Legal Ledger. McAllister returns to St. Paul next week during the RNC.

“I haven’t been [there] in five years. It’s kind of a weird way to come back,” McAllister said on Friday afternoon. “The governor was already scheduled to speak to the convention.”

McAllister, 52, was born in New York, but his family moved to Minnesota when he was 15 years old. McAllister graduated from Washburn High School in south Minneapolis in 1974 and earned a degree in mass communications from Hamline University in St. Paul.

McAllister worked at the St. Cloud Times from 1980 to 1991, where he spent seven years covering the state Legislature. McAllister served as managing editor of the Saint Paul Legal Ledger from 1997 to 1999.

Prior to joining Palin’s staff, McAllister had been Capitol bureau chief for NBC affiliate KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska.

A campaign blog on the Washington Post has already reported that McAllister got the news of Palin’s selection from his former fourth estate colleagues very, very early Friday morning.

Tim Pawlenty gives a good speech.

And he did so again on the early side of Saturday morning in Rochester to a not-quite-filled convention hall to a half-asleep audience of state Republican Party delegates and officials mostly awakened by the second-term GOP governor’s talk filled with encouragement, hope and optimism.

Introduced as the “shining star” and “saving salvation” of the Republican Party in Minnesota, Pawlenty took the stage, approached the microphone and brandished for the GOP faithful his frequent speech prop, a pen – what Pawlenty calls his veto pen. (I wonder if the pen he raised today is the same pen he actually does sign vetoes with. Is it the same pen I’ve seen him raise in numerous speeches?)

“I’ve brought my friend,” Pawlenty told the crowd, which applauded.

Expressing a hope that the GOP regains the majority in the Legislature, Pawlenty said that “in the meantime, I’ve strapped on the political goalie equipment” in order to stop bad bills. He went on to say that, as folks may have noticed in the newspaper yesterday, he was “proud" to be the single-year record-holder for number of vetoes issued by a Minnesota governor.

But, then, jumping into his hopeful mode, Pawlenty told the delegates and GOP officials, the Republican Party can’t be just “the party that says ‘no.’ … We need to be the party of good ideas. … We have some work to do in that regard.”

Using a tried-and-true GOP approach, Pawlenty urged the party faithful “to go back to the playbook of Ronald Reagan.”

Saying the country is “facing a lot of challenges” and more than a few “bumps in the road,” Pawlenty suggested that the GOP look back to the leadership of Reagan “who was hopeful and optimistic and decent.”

Pawlenty told the crowd that he wanted hope and optimism to be “the tone and tenor of our party.”

The governor invoked his mother, who, he said, used to tell her kids that “gratitude opens the door to more blessings.”

The country may be facing many challenges, he said, but “We are the greatest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world. … Let’s be thankful for what we’ve got.”

Pawlenty then took a few moments to thank and praise Ron Carey, head of the state Republican Party, which Carey obviously appreciated, as on the giant video screen flanking the podium he could be seen apparently wiping away a tear.

The governor then addressed where the party is and where it’s headed. “We are the party of the marketplace … and right now more people choosing the products and services of our competitors.”

Pawlenty challenged the state GOP – and, by extension, Republicans nationally (keep in mind he’s keeping the national scene in mind as an oft-mentioned candidate to become John McCain’s VEEP on the GOP presidential ticket this fall) – to do a better job of getting their core message out to the people – Reagan Democrats, in particular.

“What can we do better? The marketplace is telling us we aren’t doing a good enough job. … We have a higher burden to get our message out.”

Pawlenty invoked his family again, talking about his brothers and sisters, all Reagan Democrats. (He joked how he was the only Republican in his “family of origin.”) Using his siblings as examples of centrist Democrats, Pawlenty said they are exactly the audience Republicans should be targeting.

“We are not doing as good a job of translating our core values to people like my family, and we need to do that.”

Of course, Pawlenty stressed to applause, “No matter what our differences as a party, that’s nothing compared to what will happen if Barack Obama becomes president.”

As rumors swirl around Pawlenty about being on McCain’s VEEP shortlist and the days count down to the national GOP convention, the governor as he closed his relatively brief speech addressed the McCain campaign for president, calling the Arizona senator “my friend.”

Pawlenty repeated a few familiar McCain stories related to his years as a POW in Vietnam and suggested McCain has the best personal story and is the most qualified candidate.

“The best experiences in life are lived. … Don’t listen to the rhetoric – look at the life lived.”

Addressing the concerns many Republicans have about McCain’s conservative credentials, Pawlenty asked the crowd to give the senator a chance.

“As president, [McCain] will win the war on terror, hold the lid on spending and get us a conservative [U.S] Supreme Court – and that’s a pretty good start.”

Pawlenty then thanked the party delegates and officials for their devotion, especially on a beautiful spring morning, and then took off, saying he had to be at a troop deployment in Minneapolis.

Alex Plechash, a delegate from Wayzata and Senate District 33, agreed with Pawlenty that the Republican Party needs to do a better job of reaching out to Reagan Democrats

“I think the governor is right when he says we haven’t done a good job in expressing our message,” Plechash commented on the convention floor. “That’s his challenge to us as a party.”