[Updated with endorsements: see below]

Sen. Terri Bonoff (DFL-Hopkins) has already built a strong organization with a solid, experienced staff. She is ready to take on any Republican candidate. In quick succession she's run two State Senate races, first in 2005 after David Gaither resigned to become Gov. Tim Pawlenty's Chief of Staff then in 2006 when the seat came up in the election cycle. In 2006 the Republican Party targeted her heavily and some yet unidentified group distributed literature with a picture of a dead fetus to attack her pro-choice positions.

After Jim Ramstad announced his retirement, she was the first Democrat to indicate she intended to run (and eventually the first to formally announce). She quickly raised $80,000 over one weekend to prove she was a serious candidate. So far she's competing against Edina Mayor Jim Hovland who recently switched to the DFL and Iraq vet and attorney Ashwin Madia for the DFL endorsement.

She knows that the Republicans are desperate to keep this seat and has already survived their dirty tactics. Although the scale of the dirt probably is nothing like the 2006 campaign, she's had a small taste with Republican activist Michael Brodkorb's smear attack from her announcement event.

I picked up some buzz about a YouTube video that portrayed the event as a "gaffe-a-thon." (I'll link to the video below.) Turned out my acquaintance Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, with whom I have enjoyed several respectful conversations, had assembled and posted the video on YouTube. By the time I became aware of it, Brodkorb had also written two posts mocking Bonoff's inarticulateness and promising future posts on future Bonoff "gaffes" while the comment threads gleefully pronounced Bonoff to be a moron and an airhead.

The 30-second video strings together four alleged gaffes. In one, Bonoff refers to Europe and Asia as countries, instead of continents (or collections of countries.) In another, she describes herself as a mom, a community activist, a former business executive, and "a Minnesota State Senate" instead of "senator." In one, Bonoff says that "the House of Representative(s) was meant to be the body where the people's voices are heard." Brodkorb apparently felt she dropped the "s" at the end of Representatives. You can decide for yourself, just as you can decide whether pronouncing the word without the final letter constitutes a gaffe.

For me, no, not even close. Almost anyone, speaking for half an hour, will commit these kinds of errors in roughly these numbers. The current occupant of the Oval Office, whom I presume Brodkorb admires more than I do, has been known to occasionally mangle a word or two.

The video struck me as a cheap shot, as an effort to create a resonant chord so that every time Bonoff speaks, more evidence of her ditziness can be claimed, and as an an object lesson in how to eradicate civility and substance from our politics. I called Brodkorb, told him how I felt and what I was thinking of writing, and, after a rough start, we had a good exchange.
(Eric Blank Ink)

Terri was born and raised in Edina, attended college out east then came back to MN and climbed the corporate ladder. In 1999, she retired from Navarre Corporation as a senior executive. Her political path is quite traditional. She went to a meeting about her sons school, became concerned and was quickly swept into the political side of it. She though it was so ridiculous that her kid's school had to constantly beg for money. She was soon driving to the State Capitol to lobby on behalf of educational issues.

In 2002 Steve Kelley urged her to run for the State Senate, but she didn't. She decided that she was going to run for the SD43 seat in 2005. She called up David Gaither who she knew fairly well to give him a head's up about what she was going to do. She told him "out of respect, I'd like a different opponent than you." She was shocked when 3 days later, Gov. Pawlenty announced Gaither as his Chief of Staff. Her politeness and sense of fair play she has so far exhibited in her political career will probably allow her to remain above the crap that Brodkorb and his ilk will throw her way.

As most Minnesotans know and recent arrivals soon find out, MN Nice is a thin veneer with most people. However, Terri projects an authenticity which her actions as a politician back up. If she ends up being the candidate, you can be sure that the MN lefty blogosphere will do what we can to cover her back. She's the type of politician that does politics the correct way as far as I can tell. I expect that the right wing attacks will just roll off her much like Brodkorb's invented kerfluffle.

Another example is she claims she still gets along well with her State Senate opponent, Plymouth Mayor Judy Johnson. When I pushed her for a little dirt on the race, she declined not wanting to say anything untoward against Johnson.

Part of her mentality comes from her background in business. She explained that at the companies she worked at, everyone was working toward the same goal. If someone seemed like they were at odds with the company's goal, they were either brought in or jettisoned. She brings that same sense of working toward a common goal into her politics. She said she was initially shocked by the intransigence at the legislature. Despite that, she's moved a number of things through the process.

One of the innovations she's brought into government from her business background is an efficiency mindset. Schools were her first target. She explained to me that every school district (there are around 400 in MN) had its own dispatch and record-keeping systems. "That's amazingly redundant," she exclaimed. She pushed a bill through to get all districts on the same record-keeping system and make the dispatching system more efficient. It didn't pass, but the next year her principals were incorporated in Pawlenty's legislative agenda and passed.

When everyone noticed that tax income from car sales had decreased dramatically, she realized that many people out where she lived leased. The state was missing out on $40 million in taxes from leases. She wrote and pushed a bill to plug that income hole.

She's also been a strong supporter of pushing good transportation legislation. She also wrote and pushed a good early childhood education bill.

Most importantly for her is that she wants to be very clear about her values. She thinks that trust is vitally important. She wants her constituents to believe that she'll do what she said she would. While they might not always agree with her, she wants voters to know that they'll clearly know where she stands and what she values. She thinks that this has been a key part of her electoral success.

Checking with people more familiar with her two races, she sounded more moderate and reasonable than Judy Johnson did in the 2005 special election. In the 2006 election, Johnson had moderated almost every one of her far right positions, but people didn't believe her moderateness was genuine.

Issues

Terri believes that we need to get out of Iraq. "We should let the Iraqis take over control of their country as soon as humanly possible," she explained. "We need to work with their neighbors to help them however possible."

"We have accepted a wrong premise on healthcare," she stated. "We accepted a premise that healthcare is not a right. Every American deserves to have healthcare and we need a universal system to guarantee that." I asked her if she would be for a single-payer system. "No," she replied. I pushed further because I want single-payer. She is concerned about creating a huge government bureaucracy. I mentioned that no country that has a universal system has a pure single payer system. She then agreed that if it wasn't a new huge bureacracy, but was farmed out much in the same way that Medicare farms out running the program, she would be for it.

The real question for her regarding a universal healthcare system is who pays for it. She said that we should eliminate some of the recent tax cuts for the richest 1% to pay for it.

She said that she has fought for GLBT rights and choice. She said that if she'd been ousted in the 2006 election, it would've been good enough for her to have kept the marriage amendment of the ballot and to have been that one extra vote to guarantee a woman's right to choose. There was a bill in the 2006 session which would have stipulated that no tax dollars could be spent on abortions. This would have eliminated any women on assistance from having a choice. Fate, however, had other plans for her.

I asked her about immigration. "First we need to secure our borders and ports," she explained. "Then we need to address the underlying problems that cause illegal immigration. Because of the way CAFTA and NAFTA have been implemented, we've learned we need to write in protections for labor and environmental concerns. We need to insist upon the highest level of integrity in our trade agreements so that people and our environment are protected."

The campaign

Ken Sanguin is Terri's Campaign Manager. He came to Minnesota in 2002 and worked on Paul Wellstone's campaign. He also worked on Amy Klobuchar's campaign and was second in command to Ben Goldfarb. Considering his pedigree, he clearly understands what it takes for a Democrat to win in MN. I have raved on numerous occasions about how well Amy's campaign was run. It's a pleasure to see that the leading DFLer isn't bringing in Washington consultants without any knowledge of the western suburbs.

I asked them both about what the Washington establishment had told Ken and Terri or what influence they've tried to have over her campaign.

"They've been very hands off," Terri said. "They've just told me that for them to get involved, they want to see a tremendous fundraising effort." So I asked how it was going. "My fundraising is going very well. I'm splitting my time between it and delegate contact. I'm trying to be everywhere!" She applauded her Director of Finance, Will Blauvelt's work so far. She feels that Ken and Will are doing great work and giving her a great start.

Oh ... one more thing ... and she's very proud of her EMILY's List endorsement. She's only 1 of 7 so far and apparently there aren't going to be all that many endorsements this time around. She promised me a load of new endorsements coming very soon.

[Update]

MN Publius has the scoop on Terri's endorsements:

Senator John Doll, District 40
Senator Ron Latz, District 44
Senator Ann Rest, District 45
Senator Linda Scheid, District 46
Senator Leo Foley, District 47
Senator Dan Larson, District 63
Representative Maria Rudd, District 42A
Representative John Benson, District 43B
Representative Steve Simon, District 44A
Representative Sandra Peterson, District 45A
Representative Michael Nelson, District 46A
Representative Denise Dittrich, District 47A
Representative Linda Slocum, District 63B

Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher, 60A
Senate Majority Leader Lawrence Pogemiller, District 59
(MN Publius)