At its state convention on Saturday in Brooklyn Park, the Independence Party of Minnesota changed its rules to end an experiment with cross-endorsement. The vote was an overwhelming 80-20 to grant IP endorsement only to candidates who are exclusively committed to running as IPers, the party's State Chair Jack Uldrich told me yesterday. The party has gone back and forth on this issue over the years, he said, but the 2008 experience with cross-endorsement was very negative and Uldrich said he thinks the party will be firm in the new policy. "We want to protect the Independence party brand and we want to stand on our own two feet," Uldrich said.

The most immediate impact of the change is that Dr. Maureen Reed, who was seeking the endorsement of both the DFL and IP in her race for Congress in the 6th District, will completely focus on the DFL process, according to her campaign manager, although he said that she was already focused on the DFL before the IP policy change.

Perhaps of more interest to Bachmann-race watchers, in my conversation with Reed's campaign manager about the change, it became increasingly clear that Reed will run in a DFL primary if, as seems likely, state Sen. Tarryl Clark is the DFL endorsee.

First the IP rule change: In 2008, the IP experimented with cross-endorsement, giving itself the option of endorsing DFLers or Republicans in races where the party did not have a strong candidate of its own and where one of the other candidates took positions friendly to IP principles. The party ended up endorsing two DFL congressional candidates -- Elwyn Tinklenberg in the 6th District and Steve Sarvi in the Second. It was not a good experience. Both cross-endorsed candidates lost (Tinklenberg to incumbent Repub Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarvi to incumbent Repub Rep. John Kline).

The cross-endorsements "didn't provide any tangible benefit" to the IP nor the non-IPers they endorsed, Uldrich said. Neither candidate touted their IP endorsement much and neither gave particular emphasis to the IP platform issues that attracted the IP to them, Uldrich said.

Specifically, Uldrich said, the IP is looking for candidates who will talk about the hard but necessary choices (tax hikes and/or benefit cuts) necessary to get entitlement spending under control. At the IP convention, Tinklenberg told the IP that he would make an issue of it in his race, but IP'ers felt that he never did.

The cross-endorsement in the 6th District turned into a particular muddle because of Minnesota election law. Minnesota forbids any candidate from appearing on the ballot with two party designations or on two ballot lines. (Some other states, like New York, that have durable smaller parties, allow this.) In 2008, Bob Anderson of Woodbury, who makes dental crowns, sought the IP endorsement but lost to Tinklenberg. Anderson then ran in the primary for the IP nomination. State election law prevented Tinklenberg from running for two nominations in the primary. Anderson, who was unopposed, got on the ballot as the IP nominee and ended up getting 10 percent of the vote, quite impressive for a political unknown with no campaign budget.

(Debate still rages over whether Anderson's 10 percent cost Tinklenberg the election. Anderson has a right-leaning libertarian streak and might have received votes that otherwise would have gone for Bachmann. But Anderson got little media attention and was excluded from several prominent debates, so it's questionable how many voters knew anything about him. Some voters may have used him as a protest against the other two choices. And everyone knows someone named Bob Anderson.)

Uldrich said the fact that Anderson got 10 percent as the IP nominee, despite the fact that the party had endorsed Tinklenberg, was another sign that the cross-endorsement strategy wasn't working.

I just spoke to Anderson, who is clearly thinking about running again. He said that if he decides to run, he will seek the IP endorsement. But if he fails to get it, he will not run in the primary. Instead, he would consider seeking the nomination of another minor party or trying to get enough petition signatures to get on the ballot as an independent. Uldrich gave Anderson a minute to address the convention Saturday. He said the party did not seem that excited about backing Anderson and reserves the right to make no endorsement in the 6th District race, but that will be up to the 6th District convention.

So, back to 2010

Reed, a physician and former chair of the U of M Regents, was on the IP ticket in 2006 as the running-mate of gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson. The ticket fared poorly and gave rise to the same controversy about whether the IP had thrown the election to Republican incumbent Tim Pawlenty. (The evidence that the IP changed the outcome of that race strikes me as stronger than in the Bachmann-Tinklenberg-Anderson race.)

This year, when she announced for Congress, Reed said she would seek both the DFL and IP endorsements, but has emphasized the DFL and has said flatly that she would not be on the ballot as an IP candidate. (In other words, she was hoping to go the same route that Tinklenberg, receiving the IP endorsement but being the DFL nominee.)

More recently, after Sen. Clark entered the race and has run up an unbroken string of endorsements from labor and other groups, which makes it seem almost certain that she will be the DFL endorsee, I had wondered whether Reed might switch to emphasizing the IP route to the ballot, but that is not happening.

"There’s no chance that that will be the case," Reed's campaign manager, Jason Isaacson, told me yesterday. "There's no way to win in the Sixth District without the support of independent voters; Maureen has always wanted independent voters; but since i came on board, I’ve made clear that that doesn’t go through the IP. If it wasn't already clear, what happened in 2008 demonstrated that the independent voter in the Sixth District doesn’t take the guidance from the IP."

Isaacson didn't concede anything, and Reed is still seeking the DFL endorsement. But Iaacson didn't dispute that Clark has a commanding position in the contest for the DFL endorsement. "The question is: How do we get Michele Bachmann out of office? the answer is: It’s going to have to be a moderate Democrat. We're not sure that the convention is the way to manage that."

The Reed campaign has been emphasizing recently that Clark, because of her role in the state Senate (Clark is the deputy leader of the DFL caucus) has taken too many liberal positions to be electable in the Sixth.

"The DFL convention is an important player," Isaacson said. "It’s important to respect the process. But at the end of the day, the most Democratic thing you can do is let the Democratic voters decide" who will be their nominee.

I told Isaacson that that sounded pretty close to declaring that Reed will run in the primary if Clark gets the endorsement. He replied that that decision has not been made but:

"I would say that we’re getting a lot closer to making that decision. I would expect that some decision will be made about that in the near future."

He said the campaign would make clear its intentions before the endorsing convention meets.

Clark has made a flat pledge to abide by the endorsement, meaning she will not run in a primary if Reed gets the endorsement. Reed has never made that pledge.

For its part, Uldrich said the IP is not very interested in having Reed seek their endorsement. He said that he had tried earlier to recruit Reed to run for governor, but that since she has made clear that her political future will be in the DFL, it would be hard for the IP to take her back. "Our people were very disappointed with her decision not to stick to her guns and go IP all the way," he said.