What Happened on Tuesday? A Post-Election Analysis

Former Congressman Vin Weber, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and Professor Larry Jacobs discussed the 2006 election results. Vin Weber is a senior fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He served in Congress from 1981 to 1993, representing Minnesota’s Second Congressional District. He is a partner at Clark & Weinstock, a consulting firm that provides strategic advice to institutions with matters before the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Prior to Clark & Weinstock’s, Weber was president — and co-director with Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Bill Bennett — of Empower America, a public policy advocacy group. He is a trustee of the German Marshall Fund, co-director of the Aspen Institute’s Domestic Policy Project, member of the Visiting Committee for the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and council member of the National Council for Political Management at George Washington University. In 2001, he was elected chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private, nonprofit organization designed to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. Weber is a regular commentator on National Public Radio and is often sought as a political analyst for network programs such as CNN’s Capital Gang. R.T. Rybak is the current Mayor of Minneapolis. He was first elected in Nov. 2001 and re-elected in Nov. 2005. Since he took office in January of 2002, Mayor Rybak has streamlined the City’s development functions, created a $10 million housing trust fund, strengthened the City’s Code of Ethics, and closed a $50 million gap in City funding by delivering four budgets in less than two years. Rybak has a broad background in business, journalism and community activism. Prior to being elected Mayor, Rybak was a business consultant and served as publisher of the Twin Cities Reader, where he also launched Q Monthly, a local gay and lesbian newspaper. As development director of the Downtown Council, Rybak worked to retain small businesses and helped bring the Farmer's Market to Nicollet Mall. Rybak covered city issues, including crime, housing and city development, for the Minneapolis Tribune in the late 1970s and early ‘80s