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Capitol View®
Mike Mulcahy

Daily Digest: Another quiet weekend

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Good morning. Welcome to Monday and the start of a new work week. Here's the Digest.

1. Michele Kelm-Helgen, who resigned under pressure from her job as chair of the government agency overseeing U.S. Bank Stadium, jumped to the head of the line to buy front-row season tickets for Minnesota Vikings games. She also helped friends and family members buy the rights to nearby seats, before longtime Vikings season-ticket holders could claim them, records show. The first of the 49,700 seat licenses at U.S. Bank Stadium went on sale March 5, 2014, for Section 1. Kelm-Helgen and her friends bought their seat licenses on that date and paid the market rate of $7,000 per seat. (Star Tribune)

2. Minnesota Democrats gave chairman Ken Martin another term even though he admitted mistakes in the 2016 campaign, where the DFL lost control of the state Senate and nearly saw Hillary Clinton lose in the state to Donald Trump. “When I travel around the state, our party is literally dying,” Martin told the party's central committee on Saturday. “We need to change that.” (Pioneer Press)

3. Attorney General Lori Swanson keeps a relatively low profile in her powerful post as she quietly accumulates support that will be valuable if she runs for governor next year. She doesn't have the apparent advantages of some of the other Democrats who may run for governor next year, but she has been making connections around the state. Her opponents say she's too political, while supporters say she can bridge the rural-urban gap that has developed in Minnesota. (Star Tribune)

4. St. Paul police detained at least five people for lighting fireworks to disrupt a weekend pro-Trump rally at the State Capitol.The rally was one of several "March 4 Trump" events planned around the country. It drew about 400 people to St. Paul, and around 50 anti-Trump protesters. Interactions between the two groups became heated at times. (MPR News)

5. F.B.I. director James B. Comey asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, but the department has not released any such statement. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said. (New York Times)