Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Election-Year Kabuki
What, you didn't think the 2006 election season had started yet? Silly people. Here's the scoop: Minnesota Public Radio announced this morning that former state education czar (and creationist/IDer) Cheri Pierson Yecke, who had been laughed out of her czardom when the DFL Senate let Governor "Thirty-Two-Percent" Tim Pawlenty know that there were limits to what they could stomach, was moving on to become the new education czar in Florida under Jeb Bush. (Sorry, that's actually Katherine Harris' role. But I digress.) Anyway, the most important part of the story was right at the very end of the broadcast (the website text version actually goes into more detail):
She has been running for Congress in Minnesota's 6th District, but will now abandon those plans. "It came down to being one of five people who might get the nomination or taking the for sure thing as being the only person that Jeb Bush wanted to see in this position and I'm not a gambling person so I went with the sure bet," she said. Yecke said her new position begins in October.Translation: She wasn't the person the local Republicans want as their candidate to replace Mark Kennedy as he goes off to get slaughtered by either Patty Wetterling or Amy Klobuchar in the fight for Mark Dayton's Senate seat. My only question is if Jeb Bush had been planning to offer her the education-czar gig all along, or if this was the state GOP's bigwigs going to great lengths to buy her off.
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