Margaret Anderson Kelliher for Governor

ECM Editorial Board endorsement in DFL gubernatorial primary -- Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s eight years in office have given voters ample time to compare his no-new-taxes version of government with the more progressive model that had prevailed for decades.

November’s gubernatorial election again presents clashing philosophies.

On the Democrat-Farmer-Labor side, Margaret Anderson Kelliher is the best candidate to make her party’s case in a robust contest with Republican endorsee Tom Emmer and Independence Party endorsee Tom Horner.

Anderson Kelliher, a 12-year veteran of the state House of Representatives, was elected speaker in 2007. She faces former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, also a former state auditor, and former House Minority Leader Matt Entenza in an Aug. 10 primary.

On most issues, the candidates’ positions are similar.

The new governor’s first job will be mending an unprecedented  $5.8 billion hole in the state budget. Anderson-Kelliher and Entenza propose similar approaches that include spending cuts, tax hikes and continued delays in aid payments to school districts.

Both propose higher income taxes for households making more than $250,000 a year. They’re right to use the income tax to begin to reverse regressivity that has crept into Minnesota’s state and local tax structure during the Pawlenty years.

Dayton’s approach — raising more revenue than either of his DFL opponents by hiking income taxes on a broader swath of “high-income” earners — may have gut-level appeal for some  DFL primary voters. It’s too divisive to carry into a general election and the 2011 legislative session.

Anderson Kelliher’s choice of John Gunyou as her lieutenant governor running mate inspires confidence in her intellectual and political flexibility. Gunyou (a former state finance commissioner under Republican Gov. Arne Carlson. The current Minnetonka city manager is expert on state finance and revenue  and a well–known scold on “solutions” that trade long-term stability for expediency.

The Anderson Kelliher/Gunyou team offers the best chance for an evolving model of state finance that will become more  fair and less vulnerable to unsettling revenue swings.

Anderson Kelliher was the chief architect of a gasoline-tax increase that will raise more than $6 billion for badly needed road and bridge projects. She held together a coalition, including several Republicans, that delivered the only veto override Pawlenty has suffered in office.

She represents a new generation of DFL leadership, one less prone to inter-caucus “bullying and yelling,” in her words, and more willing to try velvet persuasion.

The daughter of rural Minnesota dairy farmers, Anderson Kelliher is visionary in many respects - such as her call for a government official to oversee services for a growing population of elderly - but some of her ideas need work.

In an interview with the ECM Editorial Board, she gave an incomplete response to a question about Minnesota’s growing public-pension crisis.

In order to win DFL endorsement, she committed to exploring a state universal health-care system. The goal may be laudable,  but too little has been said about how it would meld with the federal program and whether the cost is sustainable, especially in these times.

Anderson Kelliher also supports a large, dedicated increase in state school funding combined with cuts in property taxes. To her credit, she says Minnesota must conquer its budget crisis first.

She opposes gambling expansion and state tax dollars being spent on a new Vikings stadium, would sign a same-sex marriage bill and rightly identifies Minnesota’s eroding water quality as its  biggest environmental problem.

Anderson Kelliher is facing two wealthy Goliaths who have invested small fortunes in the Aug. 10 primary. Their campaign war chests neither qualify nor disqualify any of the three capable and experienced candidates. Anderson Kelliher should win on merit alone.