Stupid or craven?

You be the judge

Peter Bartz Gallagher for Politics in Minnesota

Lori Sturdevant votes for stupid. She says it was not a political stunt to offer a new stadium financing plan using general obligation bonds to pay the state's share. As she puts it:

Roll out a radically new stadium funding scheme a day after the originally scheduled session adjournment date, as leaders of the Republican majorities did Tuesday, and suspicion that a poltical trick was afoot was understandably rampant.

Gosh, Lori, ya think?

But Sturdevant says that the purity of the motives of the Republican leadership cannot be questioned because:

After Thursday's quick GOP retreat from their idea, no one should [think it was a stunt]. If adding the stadium to the bonding bill had been a political stunt, as many Capitol wags first surmised, the resistance the idea encountered from state bonding authorities would not have deterred them. The majority leaders would have pressed on. They even might have succeeded in giving political cover to GOP legislators who don't want to be accused of doing nothing to prevent an NFL exodus from Minnesota, but don't support putting e-pulltabs in many of the state's bars to pay for a new stadium.

But there you have it, kids. The idea was withdrawn, well again, let's Sturdevant tell us:

House Majority Leader Matt Dean, an architect by profession and the "architect" of the withdrawn bonding idea, said he spent several hours with state, Minneapolis and Vikings officials Wednesday examining the narrow question: Would general obligation bonding work? State officials' analysis [emphasis added] convinced him that the rules governing those bonds, which are backed by state income and sales taxes, would preclude their use for this project, he said.

So, after conferring with with people in, inter alia, the Dayton administration who Dean didn't feel the need to consult before he trumpeted this brand new idea, he figured out it wouldn't work; the "rules" just wouldn't allow it. Nice job Matt.

You know, Sturdevant is probably right.