More dueling ads unveiled in state shutdown staredown

The ad war over Minnesota's looming state government shutdown is escalating. The state's two biggest public employee unions unveiled a statewide TV ad Wednesday that says, simply, "we want to work for MN." A few hours later, a conservative advocacy group raised the curtain on ads it hopes to air if it gets enough financial support from voters. That brings to five the number of organizations that have weighed in with advertisements hoping to sway public opinion on the state budget impasse that could trigger a shutdown on July 1. The state council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) plan to spend $300,00 on a 30-second broadcast and cable TV ad intended to pressure a handful of Republican legislators to change their minds and support Gov. Mark Dayton's plan to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans. Minnesota Majority, an organization that promotes what it calls "traditional values," posted two one-minute ads on its website and asked supporters to vote for their favorite, explaining that it needs as much as $500 to place the ad with a radio station. In one of the ads, a robotic animated Dayton is shown wandering the Capitol, intoning "more spending, more taxes." In a prepared statement, Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis called the debate over the budget and the shutdown"very one-sided" and that the group hopes the ads will correct that. As for the unions, saying that the state "will grind to a halt" if a shutdown occurs, Jim Monroe, MAPE's executive director, said the state's public employees "want to work for Minnesota. They take great pride in providing services to all Minnesotans and are upset with the budget impasse." Monroe and AFSCME's Eliot Seide painted a bleak picture of closed state parks, halted road construction and a loss of health care for as many as 140,000 Minnesotans. The 25,000 public workers who would be laid off represent "the largest layoff in Minnesota history" and that those employees are "pawns in a cynical political game," Seide said. "It's time for citizens to tell the Republicans to compromise." The employees are facing a grimmer situation than they did during the brief partial government shutdown in 2005, when they were able to cash in vacation pay and were reimbursed after it ended, under the workers' contracts, they would be simply laid off and will have to file for unemployment compensation, Monroe and Seide said. "They'll never make up" potential lost wages, Seide said. "They're being locked out of work." The ad consists of several public employees speaking to the camera. "Instead of taxing the richest 2 percent, Republicans want to start sending out pink slips," said Russell Raczkowski, an education adviser at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, referring to Dayton's tax plan. "This doesn't have to happen." The unions' ad blitz, also sponsored by the Inter-Faculty Organization and the Middle Management Association, comes on the heels of ads already being run by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, backing Dayton's position in the budget showdown, while the Republican legislative leadership's stand is being backed by ads run by the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses. With layoff notices heading this week for the mailboxes of state employees, AFSCME has posted fliers throughout the Capitol complex, posing a stark question to its members: "ARE YOU READY?"