Mark Dayton’s public relations mouthpiece

As Rocket Man’s comments below suggest, Minnesota’s 2006 Senate race may well be competitive even though the Republican candidate will be running against an incumbent. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has already started the public relations machinery running for Dayton, who is an otherwise colorless, inept, demagogic artifact of alcoholic if not psychiatric rehabilitation. (I used to be on his Christmas card mailing list; he freely shared his life experiences with near-strangers like me on an annual basis.)
The guys at Fraters Libertas have an exemplary analysis of Monday’s Star Tribune page-one puff piece on Dayton: “Its pays to have a friend in Mark Dayton.” Whoever Dayton’s 2006 Republican opponent is, he or she will have to overcome the headwinds created by the state’s dominant newspaper — an institution as shameless, dishonest, and disgraceful in its own way as the New York Times.