June 4, 2007
StarTribune
Lori Sturdevant
Minnesota is used to seeing governors get pretty agitated about a chance to snare a new industry for this state, or keep a good one tethered here.
My late book-writing partner Elmer L. Andersen probably got all of about two votes from the Iron Range, he being a Republican. But he still spent nearly four years promoting a constitutional guarantee of fair taxation to anchor the taconite industry here.
Twenty years later, DFLer Rudy Perpich circled the globe, hunting for jobs in industries ranging from chopsticks manufacturing to supercomputing. Then came Republican Arne Carlson, who knocked himself out to keep Northwest Airlines afloat.
Even Jesse Ventura used an appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show" to pitch for a new employer for laid-off taconite workers in Hoyt Lakes.
So as the clock wound down on the 2007 session, I figured that Gov. Tim Pawlenty would soon start talking up the University of Minnesota's request for fast-track bonding authority for four new bioscience research buildings. Or that legislators would start buzzing about calls from the governor's office, urging a kind look at the university's plan for hiring scores of new faculty.
The university's request was, after all, the only viable, affordable, remotely plausible plan in sight for keeping up with the competition, and snagging a share of the industry that's exploding in research hotspots around the country.
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