The obligatory recap

So what happened yesterday? A few thoughts:

• I was surprised Jeff Johnson won, but in retrospect I should have seen his victory over Tim Pawlenty coming a mile away. Johnson was the GOP nominee in 2014, so he's hardly a newcomer. Pawlenty had a lot of money behind him, but little rationale behind his campaign. In important respects, the dynamic was the same as what happened to Tommy Thompson when he lost to Tammy Baldwin in the senate race in Wisconsin in 2012; the brand name is rarely enough and the politician with the name still has to make the sale. The business about Pawlenty's dissing of Trump was a factor, but Pawlenty's evident disdain in dealing with the state party (he blew off the nominating process and the convention) was far more important. Johnson has been campaigning hard all year. The party activists were out in force and they voted for Johnson. Other than an ad attacking Johnson, Pawlenty was barely visible. Pawlenty thought he was invincible. Guess not.
• On the DFL side, Tim Walz will be hard to beat. He has a dozen years of experience pretending to be a moderate and he'll tack to the center now that he has the DFL nomination, but operationally he's no different than Erin Murphy. Johnson's task will be to demonstrate that Walz is a phony. As for Lori Swanson, good riddance. We can also hope that Mike Hatch, the éminence grise behind Swanson, is finally gone as well.
• I wonder how Alliance for a Better Minnesota is going to play things now. They were clearly planning to carpet-bomb T-Paw, but he's gone. Let's see what the big brains do.
• Keith Ellison is a dumpster fire, but he won the Attorney General's race easily. Can he make the sale statewide? I suspect Doug Wardlow, the GOP nominee, will get some help. Ellison is a deeply corrupt individual and the notion that he should be attorney general is preposterous, but those three letters after his name carry a lot of weight.
• Ilhan Omar is a fraud, too, but she's almost certainly going to Congress. The good news is she'll be a nonentity backbencher. Betty McCollum will save a seat for her.

Game on!

(Less than) One week out -- Attorney General

While the governor is ultimately more consequential, the attorney general of a state has a lot of power. The incumbent AG, Lori Swanson, lost her endorsement at the DFL convention and decided instead to run for governor. That opened up the door for a bunch of candidates on the DFL side. Of this group, the most prominent is Rep. Keith Ellison, who is giving up his seat in Congress to run for the office. Nearly everyone on the right worries about Ellison, but many do for the wrong reason. Ellison is a Muslim, so some think he'd try to impose sharia law or something like that. That's silly, of course. We have over a decade of evidence to weigh Ellison and it's pretty clear -- the only thing Ellison wants to impose on the people is, well, Keith Ellison. And that is reason enough to oppose him. His dim identity politics and Farrakhan footsie are simply tools in his quest for self-aggrandizement. He wants out of Washington because he couldn't be the big kahuna at the Democratic National Committee. If he can control the power of a state attorney general's office, he can indulge his impulses, including harassing Donald Trump. And he may get his wish.

The other candidates in the field include the guy who won the DFL endorsement, political newcomer Matt Pelikan. Pelikan is a straight-up SJW type and could finish last, because there's no compelling reason for his candidacy. Tom Foley was once the Ramsey County Attorney but hasn't been active in politics for nearly 25 years now, making him well past his sell-by date. Mike Rothman and Debra Hillstrom both come from the more moderate wing of the DFL and would likely conduct themselves in office similar to the way Swanson and her predecessor, Mike Hatch, ran the show. Rothman was Mark Dayton's commerce commissioner and he got an endorsement from the Star Tribune, but he's almost a complete unknown. Hillstrom has been in the Lege for nearly 20 years and has also been a prosecutor in Anoka County. She'd probably do the least harm of the five, but she's not going to beat Ellison in a primary where the key advantage is name recognition. Advantage: Ellison.

On the Republican side, the endorsed candidate is Doug Wardlow, who served one term in the Lege and has subsequently been mostly in private practice. He's a typical Republican candidate -- rock solid on understanding the role of government and more interested in protecting the citizenry than in mounting noisy crusades. He would be great. Wardlow first has to fight off the surprise candidacy of Bob Lessard, who was a big wheel DFLer on the Iron Range since the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch. Lessard is a big outdoorsman/conservationist and well-known in the state, but is remembered mostly by people who are approaching retirement age. People who know who Lessard is will also know he's not actually a Republican, so in the end I suspect Wardlow will win the primary. It will be interesting to see if any of the big money comes into Minnesota to support his candidacy, especially if Ellison gets the DFL nod. Stay tuned.

Calliope, Part Two -- The Race for Attorney General

While the race for governor is certainly the most consequential of this election cycle, the attorney general matters quite a lot, too. And it's going to be interesting now that Lori Swanson has decided to run for governor.

The big fish on the DFL side is Keith Ellison, who has been in Congress for six terms and until recently served as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. The term "problematic" is overused, but that's Ellison. He's never quite gotten around to disavowing his previous support of Louis Farrakhan and he's mostly gotten by with a compliant local press burying his misdeeds. A guy who likes to skirt the law ought not be Attorney General, but he has to be the favorite, even though there are plausible alternatives. The endorsed DFL candidate, Matt Pelikan, has no chance, despite the value of the endorsement. He's a DFL activist from Northfield who was able to run Swanson off by trashing her intermittent support for gun rights and by being more woke generally, but he's a silly candidate in every other respect. There are also three other plausible candidates on the DFL side, including Rep. Debra Hillstrom of Brooklyn Center, who is an Anoka County prosecutor for her day job. Hillstrom would likely perform in office like Swanson has; if you have to have a DFLer in the position, she'd be competent. Another candidate, Mike Rothman, served as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce. He's a bright guy but he's coming out of the bureaucracy and it's not clear he has the presence to get past the other candidates. Also in the race is Tom Foley, who was Ramsey County Attorney years ago. He could certainly do the job, but he's getting long in the tooth. Ellison has to be the favorite, but he'd be a disastrous pick for the job. It would have been better if Rothman and Foley had dropped out, leaving Hillstrom to run, but that didn't happen. Advantage: Keith Ellison.

On the Republican side, the endorsed candidate is Doug Wardlow, who served one term in the Minnesota legislature. In an ordinary year, he'd be the latest Republican sacrificial lamb, but he might have a chance, particularly if Ellison is the candidate for the DFL. Wardlow is a bright guy and a solid conservative; if he could win, he'd be great. Just before the filing deadline, Wardlow got a challenger, the longtime state senator from International Falls, Bob Lessard. Lessard is a legend, but he's a legend because he's 87 years old. While I have great respect for his service to the state, he's past his sell-by date by at least 15 years. Advantage: Doug Wardlow.

We'll look at some more races in the coming days.