Ever the energetic showman, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak picked a Dinkytown theater to announce his next starring role: candidate for Minnesota governor.
In a Sunday rally attended by a few hundred longtime fans, Rybak, who just last month cruised to his third term in City Hall, laid out some hefty aspirations: get affordable health care to all, fix the school funding system, create jobs all over the state, and reconnect all Minnesotans, ending partisan and geographic divides.
"We've got a goal here and it's not a small one: Our goal is nothing short of taking back this state," said Rybak from the stage of Minneapolis' Varsity Theater. "I was born in a great state and I'm not going to retire in a mediocre one."
The mayor starts his statewide campaign with some considerable assets: a well-known name, plaudits for his 2007 handling of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, an experienced staff and a vibrant presence. He also carries some just as considerable deficits: he's a liberal mayor of a liberal city with a day job that offers no end of fodder for opponents. No Minneapolis mayor has ever won the governor's seat and Republicans, and some of his DFL opponents, believe that streak won't change next year.
But this mayor's done the unexpected before. He is a former reporter who became a business development booster. He went from weekly newspaper publisher to Internet consultant. Rybak then morphed into an airport noise activist, who led events featuring swimsuit- and pajama-wearing protesters, before he took down a two-term mayoral incumbent in 2001.
Rybak continues his quirk of never matching his socks -- one black, one brown Sunday to go with his grey suit -- and is still trying to do things differently.
Sunday, he pitched himself as an honest broker with experience outside the Capitol's "mess."
"The politics at the state Capitol are badly broken," he said.
Rybak echoed the call for change that led President Obama to the White House last year.
"We need new politics and we need some new policies," Rybak told the crowd. "Change only comes if the people come forward and recapture the governments that are supposed to represent them."
In a line that was supposed to be a nod to the grass-roots campaign he will lead but could be taken out of context, Rybak said: "Obama did not win the last election and I will not win the next one." He went on: "You took back our country and now it's time to take back our state."
A nod from the top
Rybak received some encouragement for his efforts from the president at a private meeting last week.
The mayor, in Washington for a Democratic Governors Association gathering, and his campaign manager were meeting with West Wing staffers when Rybak said he was told: "There is somebody downstairs who wanted to say hi to you."
The mayor, an early and ardent Obama supporter, was led to the Oval Office. There, Obama and Rybak ate apples -- Galas, which the mayor said are not as good as Minnesota Honeycrisps --and the president asked about the governor's race.
Rybak said he did not ask for, and did not receive, the president's campaign endorsement.
There are 10 other DFLers and seven Republicans in the crowded race to win the seat Gov. Tim Pawlenty will vacate in 2011.
Republican Party Deputy Chairman Michael Brodkorb, who was present at Sunday's announcement, said Rybak is unsuited to sit in the governor's office.
"R.T.," he said, stands for "Raise Taxes," Brodkorb said, adding that the mayor has views on guns that will never fly outstate and he represents the "far left wing in the DFL Party."
Jeremy Hanson, Rybak's chief of staff, suggested on Twitter that the Republicans' protest was a sign of Rybak's power.
"Wondering why [the Minnesota GOP and Brodkorb] and his friends are spending so much time trashing [Rybak.]" Hanson wrote. "Worried?"
Rachel E. Stassen-Berger • 651-292-0164
