State Auditor Rebecca Otto, who now faces a DFL challenge in the August primary from Matt Entenza, angered northern Minnesota mining interests when she voted last fall against exploratory mining leases in an action on the state Executive Council.
The leases went through anyway, because Otto was the only no vote, but an editorial in the Mesabi Daily News Friday calls it “one of the all-time dumbest votes.”
And, the editorial says, in addition to causing her trouble, it’s causing a flap in the DFL party.
“…she’s sparked a major uprising in the traditional DFL Iron Range stronghold. A lot of DFLers in the region are quite upset — and for very good reason — over her anti-copper/nickel/precious metals position.
…She has now managed to cause a huge headache — a colossal migraine — for the DFL Party, quite possibly tainting the re-election campaigns in northeastern Minnesota of Gov. Mark Dayton, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan and Sen. Al Franken. … Nolan and Dayton are standing by their endorsement of Otto, but doing so with some reservations. There has been no comment on the issue from Franken.”
The paper is fine with the “Dump Otto” movement:
“After all, we are fighting for our very way of life and livelihood in the future, not for Auditor Otto and her followers’ misdirected, narrow-minded, selfish and hypocritical cause.
“All of this because Otto voted against drilling some holes on the Iron Range for exploratory reasons, not even actual nonferrous mining.”
Otto sounds like a hero to me. What do you need more mining for? A couple of jobs that will provide employment for twenty years? In the meantime we have five hundred years in clean-up costs.
If people really want to preserve the northern Minnesota way of life they’ll opt to promote the natural beauty of the are and tourism as long term sustainable growth. Mining is just a grab and run proposition that will leave the area worse off in the long term.