MDE ENDORSES SOLBERG FOR HOUSE MINORITY LEADER

I hope Solberg is elected as the new DFL House minority leader (see second story). His election to the post would provide me with so much material.

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Rep. Loren Solberg issues apology for seeing X-rated film

In a move apparently designed to blunt an anticipated television news report, a state legislator on Monday issued a terse statement saying that he attended an X-rated movie last week during a legislative conference in California.

"While attending the National Conference of State Legislatures in San Diego, Calif., I had a lapse of good judgment and attended an X-rated movie," said Rep. Loren Solberg, DFL-Bovey. "For that I apologize."

The statement was hand-delivered to reporters at the State Capitol yesterday without further explanation, and attempts to contact Solberg at his office and his home were unsuccessful.

Later in the day, KSTP-TV, Channel 5, broadcast a report that said a reporter had observed Solberg, 51, going into the sex-oriented theater in San Diego. An executive of the station acknowledged that it had a crew following legislators in San Diego.

Gary Hill, KSTP managing editor, said, "We were out there to see what the legislators were doing at the conference. We were looking to air something this week."

Eleven of 134 House members and 17 of 67 senators attended the conference.

House Speaker Dee Long, DFL-Minneapolis, who also attended the conference, said a man she believed to be a KSTP reporter at one point misrepresented himself as being from another state and registered at the conference using the name of a photographer from another news agency.

She said the KSTP crew followed Minnesota legislators and were intrusive at times.

"It was a very, very weird experience for all of us," Long said.

Long said she and her husband spent vacation time part of the week, for which she paid her own expenses. "I'm paying for more nights than the state is," she said.

Hill said producer John Blake did not misrepresent himself to Long. "I would think Dee is trying to deflect her activities away from her and onto ours," Hill said. Source: Star Tribune, October 19, 2005

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Candidates line up for possible vacancies
Entenza plans to go for Hatch's job; others eye Entenza's post

Think of it as a game of political dominoes.

Three Democratic-Farmer-Labor state representatives — Joe Atkins of Inver Grove Heights, Margaret Anderson Kelliher of Minneapolis and Loren Solberg of Grand Rapids — are beginning to quietly campaign for the job of House minority leader now held by Rep. Matt Entenza of St. Paul.

But Entenza's post will become available only if Attorney General Mike Hatch confirms next week that he will run for governor and if Entenza then makes a run for Hatch's job as attorney general.

"Just putting out feelers is what I'm doing," Solberg said Tuesday of the contacts he has made over recent days with fellow House DFLers about winning their support in an eventual vote to replace Entenza.

Kelliher said: "There's a lot of things to happen for any of this to make it into the reality stage."

Both Kelliher and Atkins also acknowledged talking to DFL colleagues about succeeding Entenza as minority leader.

Entenza said that if he did run for attorney general, he would not step down as minority leader until after the DFL Party's endorsing convention in June 2006.

Republicans now hold a two-vote majority in the House. Whoever is elected as DFL minority leader next summer almost certainly would become Speaker of the House if Democrats take over the majority in next November's elections.

Hatch, who unsuccessfully sought the DFL nomination for governor in 1990 and 1994 and has frequently talked about running for governor next year, sent out a fundraising letter this week saying he would announce a 2006 campaign for governor on Oct. 24.

Entenza, a lawyer, has long talked about succeeding Hatch as attorney general. In December 2001, Entenza formed a campaign committee for attorney general that he said he would use if Hatch ran for governor the following year. But Hatch did not seek the governorship in 2002, and Entenza disbanded his committee.

On Tuesday, Entenza said he remained "very interested" in running for attorney general, but he said he would not announce a campaign until Hatch spoke first. Source: Pioneer Press, October 19, 2005