Minn. GOP Sen. Candidate Campaigns Against Star-Tribune

Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer Eric Black says the campaign for Mark Kennedy, the Republican challenger to the Minnesota Senate seat held by Democrat Mark Dayton, has declared that it has two opponents to fight: The Amy Klobuchar campaign and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which it says is conducting a de facto campaign of its own in favor of the Democrat.

The Mark Kennedy campaign has either come unhinged (for reasons about which I shall not speculate), or has decided that to beat Amy Klobuchar, Kennedy has to run against the Star Tribune.

In a June 28 e-mail to supporters, Kennedy Campaign Manager Pat Shortridge urgently requests campaign donations by tomorrow (so they can be included in the June 30 reporting period), because only by raising buckets of dough-re-mi can Kennedy hope to overcome the disadvantages of being covered by a newspaper that is little more than the publicity arm of the Amy Klobuchar campaign.

According to the e-mail , the Star Tribune has “decided that Mark Kennedy is such a threat to win our Senate seat with a fair and square campaign, that they need to do something about it.”

Why is the Strib willing to risk all for Klobuchar? According to the e-mail it’s because her father, Jim Klobuchar, was a long-time columnist for the Minneapolis Star.

According to the e-mail, the Strib has “decided that they’ll publish most any Democrat attack, no matter the facts. They’ll repeat the strangest liberal lies, even if they know the truth.”

Here is a portion of the fundraising email sent out by Pat Shortridge, Mark Kennedy's campaign manager:

“There you go again.”
President Reagan’s famous words have never rung truer.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has once again decided that it is going to try and hand-pick Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator. They’ve decided that Minnesota needs six more years of a fringe liberal rather than a common sense conservative who will bring the right kind of change.
They’ve decided that Mark Kennedy is such a threat to win our Senate seat with a fair and square campaign, that they need to do something about it.
They’ve decided that they’ll publish most any Democrat attack, no matter the facts. They’ll repeat the strangest liberal lies, even if they know the truth. It’s very clear to me that the newspaper that employed Amy Klobuchar’s father for 30 years simply can’t cover this race fairly.
I think they know that Amy Klobuchar can’t win this race on her own. They know that her record as Hennepin County Attorney won’t stand up to public scrutiny. They know that her habit of saying one thing and doing another won’t hold water with Minnesota voters. And most important, they know that her extremely liberal views on the issues aren’t what Minnesotans want.
You have to wonder sometimes about the partisan political agenda of the press. This week, the press could have covered the candidates for the United States Senate on any of the following important issues:
· The latest Democrat efforts to cut and run from Iraq
· The statement from Democrat Congressman John Murtha that the US presence in Iraq represents the world’s primary security threat,
· Press publication of leaked documents that sabotaged a key national anti-terrorism program,
· Efforts by the Congress to protect our flag from being burned
Instead, the Star Tribune runs a story fabricated by Daily Kos, an extremist website and fueled by the DFL.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of these partisan liberals in the press doing everything they can to win elections for liberal Democrats who can’t win them on their own.