Dec 23, 2008 8:00 am US/Central
Campaign 2008 Is Minnesota's Top Story Of The Year
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Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St Paul, Minn., on Sept. 3, 2008. (File)
Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
John McCain claimed the GOP nomination for president. The nation met a hockey mom and governor named Sarah Palin. More than 800 people were arrested as protesters clashed with police outside the Republican National Convention. A crucial U.S. Senate race was too close to call.
And it all happened in Minnesota.
Minnesota's moment on the national political stage made Campaign 2008 the state's top story this past year.
For four days in September, the world's eyes were on St. Paul for the Republican National Convention. McCain capped one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent political history when he took the stage at Xcel Energy Center to accept his party's anointment. A star was born there as Palin became the first woman ever named to a GOP presidential ticket -- and an early contender for 2012.
But anti-war protesters and other activists filled the streets near the hall. Anarchists fought police in the worst civil disturbances the Twin Cities had seen in decades. Officers in riot gear responded with tear gas, pepper spray and percussion grenades.
Barack Obama easily carried Minnesota by 10 points, but his coattails might not have been long enough for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken. He and Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent, were locked in a recount that was certain to drag into the new year.
In November, the National Transportation Safety Board officially concluded that a design flaw from the 1960s was the probable cause of the August 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured 145. The board said designers either failed to calculate or improperly calculated how thick its steel gusset plates should be.
Drivers honked with approval as the replacement bridge opened in September, well ahead of a Dec. 24 deadline. Attorneys filed the first lawsuits on behalf of victims in November, and the state approved a $38 million victims compensation fund in May.
The national economic meltdown hit hard in Minnesota, where unemployment hit nearly 6 1/2 percent by November. Declining tax revenues sent state leaders scrambling for ways to plug a $5.27 billion budget deficit, the biggest shortfall Minnesota government has ever seen.
High fuel prices were a major reason Delta Air Lines swallowed up Northwest Airlines, a mainstay of the Minnesota economy, in a combination that closed in October and made Atlanta-based Delta the world's largest carrier. Delta pledged to preserve a hub at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
As the economy tanked, Minnesota companies laid off thousands of workers. One of the state's largest private employers, 3M Co., cut nearly 3,300 jobs worldwide in the second half of 2008, including about 400 in the Twin Cities. Ford Motor Co. furloughed some 770 workers at its St. Paul plant in December. Duluth-based airplane maker Cirrus Design Corp. furloughed or laid off about 600 people between its plants in Duluth and in Grand Forks, N.D. Hutchinson-based Hutchinson Technology Inc., which makes computer components, said it would cut as many as 1,125 jobs, though it didn't specify where.
Business and crime news merged in the spectacular fall of Tom Petters, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who landed in jail after a lieutenant exposed an alleged massive Ponzi scheme at the heart of a corporate empire that included Sun Country Airlines and Polaroid.
Authorities said they had no inkling anything was amiss with Petters' operations until Deanna Coleman came forward in September, telling investigators how they promised investors big returns in exchange for financing bogus resales of merchandise from smaller vendors to giant retailers. Petters was indicted on 20 federal counts stemming from allegations he defrauded investors of up to $3 billion over 14 years.
The state's top stories weren't confined to the Twin Cities. Major stories from Greater Minnesota included:
-- A school bus crash near the southwest Minnesota town of Cottonwood that killed four students in February. Olga Marina Franco Del Cid, an illegal immigrant who initially lied about her identity and denied she was driving the van that slammed into the bus, was sentenced in September to nearly 13 years in prison.
-- A tornado killed a boy in Hugo in May and put his sister in the hospital for several months. In July, a tornado packing winds up to 150 mph destroyed three homes in Willmar.
-- A 60-year-old Little Falls man took several Morrison County officials hostage during a board meeting in June. Gordon Wheeler Sr. had clashed for years with county officials over the strip club and porn shop he once operated. Officers shot him to death after he refused to drop his gun.
-- Flooding caused by torrential rains hit southeastern Minnesota, particularly Austin, and left one man dead. But the June flooding was far worse in several other Midwestern states.
--A corporate jet crash in Owatonna in July killed eight people -- two pilots and six passengers, all casino and construction executives, who were on their way Atlantic City, N.J., to Owatonna for a business meeting.
-- A Washington, D.C., man committed suicide in December as he faced felony charges of starting the state's most destructive forest fire in 90 years. Stephen George Posniak was accused of letting his campfire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area get out of control in May 2007. It burned 118 square miles in Minnesota and Ontario, destroying some 140 buildings worth more than $10 million. It cost around $11 million to put out. Posniak had pleaded not guilty in Duluth in November.
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