Introducing Mantooth

Mantooth is a friend of mine who at this juncture wants to remain anonymous. Therefore I will take the credit or blame for anything great or irresponsible he does. He offered Capitol Brew-haha a nice wrap-up of yesterday's activities.

Posted by Mantooth:

Kudos to Capitol Brewhaha, who got mad props from mpr.org's " Polinaut" (ne Tom Scheck) for being one of the first to report a significant development in the race for state attorney general - a race that has been nothing but a steady stream of significant developments over the past six days: Sen. Steve Kelley will run for AG.

Kelley joins Solicitor General Lori Swanson and former-Rep. Bill Luther as serious contenders in the DFL primary. Unless, of course, you agree with Nick Coleman and think that Jennifer Mattson's experience on the "field hockey and lacrosse [teams] at Barnard " has adequately prepared her to be our next Attorney General.

Coming off a run for Governor that ended little more than one month ago at the DFL state convention, Kelley should be in the best position to quickly pull together a fully functioning campaign in the sliver of time between now and the Sep. 12 primary. However, Swanson obviously has the support of Mike Hatch which would prove valuable should he choose to divert his attention - and, more importantly, campaign personnel - to the AG race. It's not like Hatch has been spending a lot of time worrying about his own primary challenger. And, one could argue that he can afford to be even more disinterested given that the noise from the AG race is bound to drown out the Lourey campaign for at least the next several weeks.

Bill Luther likely has too much going against him to be a legitimate threat to take the primary: he can't use the left-over cash from his last Congressional bid in this race; his last campaign employed tactics that were way more questionable than those that allow his attempt at a return to public life, and; he seems to be out of step with the current make-up of the DFL - not unlike MIke Freeman, who's decision to continue a Quixotic campaign for Hennepin County Attorney apparently cleared the way for Luther to enter the AG race. While it seems unlikely that Luther will make it to the general election, he could still come out of this a winner if he is able to garner enough support to position himself as a kingmaker. If that is that shoudl come to pass, I suspect Luther would back Swanson as Hatch is more likely to be in a position to repay such a favor quite handsomely come January.