Let’s Speculate Wildly About Who Gov. Klobuchar Will Appoint to Backfill Her U.S. Senate Seat

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

And MN's Interim U.S. Senator Will Be...

After shellacking Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth by almost 13 points on Tuesday, future Minnesota Gov. Amy Klobuchar must find someone to backfill her old seat in the U.S. Senate. (Technically Gov. Tim Walz could do so between now and Klobuchar's January 4 swearing in, but he's politically toxic and she has already signaled she'll make the call.)

Who will get the prestigious gig? "I suspect that whoever is appointed will be someone with a lot of expertise about the policy making process, about Minnesota as a state,” U of M political science professor Kathryn Pearson tells Ellie Roth at MPR News. Yeah, that's... kind of the job.

More specifically, Democratic names like left-punching U.S. Rep. Angie Craig (DFL-MN) and Kelly Morrison are being floated, as is highly competent Secretary of State Steve Simon. (None of those three responded to the Strib's request for comment.) Walz, a name nobody's floating, has said he'd "rather eat glass" than work inside the Senate Chamber—evocative! Some progressives have suggested state Sen. Erin Maye Quade (DFL-Apple Valley), but that would-be appointee ideologically flies in the face of everything the appointer represents. And who could forget the strange, right-wing-originated rumor that Klobuchar promised her seat to former Gov. Jesse Ventura as part of a quid pro quo arrangement?

Per state law, there'll be a special election next November where the governor's TBD appointee will face off against a TBD Republican to see who serves out Klobuchar’s term, which runs until January 2031. MPR notes that this could be the only U.S. Senate election of '27, meaning a massive influx of out-of-state spending could come to Minnesota. If you loved the past six months of political ads thudding you over the head, you'll be in hog heaven.

In 2017, eventual RacketCast guest Mark Dayton appointed fellow eventual RacketCast guest Tina Smith to U.S. Sen. Al Franken's old seat following his resignation. In 1976, Gov. Wendell Anderson more or less self-appointed himself to the Senate, and the resulting political backlash contributed to 1978's "Minnesota Massacre" election debacle for state Dems. "I played my political hand very poorly," Anderson, who died before the launch of RacketCast, later acknowledged.

In other news of Klobuchar's new job: Her recently assembled transition team includes former St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter.

Knives Out for Pete Hegseth

The big news outta Washington, D.C., this week: It sure looks like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is gonna take the fall for Tuesday's historic Republican stomping at the polls.

That's according to everyone from CNN ("Republicans Quickly Turn Against Pete Hegseth After Midterms Rout") to Rolling Stone ("Will Trump Bring Down His Pumped-Up God of War?") to the Daily Beast ("Trump Plots Secret Move to Dump Hegseth and Save Face").

According to the D.C. Republicans who spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity, the bloodthirsty Hegseth "oversold" the United States' ability to win quickly in Iran, which has since become a "quagmire." Now, I'm no poli sci expert, but we could have told you all of that ahead of Tuesday!

“The pivot is starting” on the war and Hegseth, one former senior Pentagon official tells CNN. “This has been primarily a Department of War-led effort because you chose to take military action to resolve a foreign policy matter.”

The House could bring impeachment articles against the pride of Forest Lake as soon as next week, according to sources. How's Hegseth taking it? Very well and normally, of course.

Let's Check in With the Eternally Messy Jennifer Carnahan

Yesterday's Racket recap of Tuesday's midterm results missed one small-town race that resulted in big news: Jennifer Carnahan lost her bid for reelection as mayor of Nisswa to former fire captain Andy Schaefer. 

If you don’t remember her name you might remember her scandals. Carnahan had been Nisswa’s mayor for less than a year when colleagues and constituents were calling for her resignation. There were accusations of toxic work environments and rumored physical assaults. 

But that’s just a small part of the Carnahan lore. In 2021, her friendship with GOP donor/convicted sex trafficker Anton Lazzaro led to her ousting as chair of the Minnesota GOP (somehow she managed to give herself a $38K severance fee on the way out). Around the same time she was recorded joking about her husband U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn's (R-MN) impending death from cancer; a year later she was raising funds in his name and (allegedly) getting into brawls at his funeral.

Meet the Vatican Priest Who Arranged Dylan's Hoodie-tastic Meeting With the Pope

By now you've seen the incredible photo from Wednesday at the Vatican: Hibbing, Minnesota's Bob Dylan, seen rocking his (recent) trademark black hoodie plus some sort of tie/ascot hybrid, standing next to Chicago, Illinois's Pope Leo XIV, seen rocking standard-issue pontiff garb.

Just great stuff all around, perhaps the coolest meeting of the minds inside Vatican City since the Second Vatican Council—but how in god's name did it happen in the first place?

Thanks to author/publicist Ray Padgett's Flagging Down the Double E's Substack, we now know Vatican City is swarming with Dylan-heads. Padgett learned as much by connecting with Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest who works at the Vatican as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education and, as it turns out, writes his own Substack. Spadaro wouldn't say what His Holiness and the Pope talked about, but did mention that they "sat down at a table in the library, like two old friends... the way they looked at each other was beautiful, intense."

We learn the hoodie wasn't an issue, in case you were worried. And as for whether Leo XIV loves Dylan... well, does the Pope shit in the woods?

Is the Pope a Bob Dylan fan, do you know? What sort of music does he like?

Dylan is part of Leo’s generation soundtrack. He has quoted him more than once. In April, in Cameroon, he echoed the themes of “Masters of War.” In July he used the lines of “Go Away You Bomb” to speak out against nuclear rearmament. Leo XIV is an Augustinian, and in 1967, on John Wesley Harding, Dylan dreamed he saw that very saint. The Pope was born in Chicago in 1955 and was a teenager at the turn of the sixties and seventies. The American pop, folk, and rock of that era has been part of his cultural makeup since he was young. But it was Jim Musselman, Prevost’s classmate at Villanova University and a Bob Dylan admirer, who revealed that the two of them talked about music a lot. He was the one who told him to read an essay arguing that Dylan was the great poetic talent of his generation.

Finally, are you going to Dylan’s show in Rome tonight?

Of course! I received the ticket from him.