The council president isn’t talking, but we’re hearing that one of Barb Johnson’s daughters may run for her mom’s council seat in 2009. We’ve already reported that Johnson is considering a mayoral run, so if all falls into place, she’d find herself in the mayor’s office and Ward 4 would be represented by a third generation of Rainville women. Johnson’s mother, Alice Rainville, represented the ward from 1975 to 1997 (she was appointed to fill a vacancy left when her cousin, John Derus, won a seat on the Hennepin County Board), at which time daughter Barbara succeeded here. We’re not guessing about which of Johnson’s daughters might be in the mix. Both of her eldest — Sarah and Emily — are lawyers; the youngest, Margaret, made her name as a college basketball star. But, who cares? We’re talking dynasty here.

Saying she is “firmly ensconced in the private sector,” former Minneapolis City Council president Jackie Cherryhomes told us today she is not considering a run for mayor.

Cherryhomes, who served on the council from 1990 to 2002 and now lobbies City Hall for a number of clients, including developer and former council colleague Steve Minn, took issue with our Monday post suggesting that she was considering a return to government service. When we noted that reliable sources had suggested that she was thinking about a mayoral candidacy, the longtime Northside power broker denied anything was afoot. “The only reliable sources,” she said, “are my husband, my parents, and maybe my daughter.”

Two Minneapolis DFL heavyweights — former City Council president Jackie Cherryhomes and Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin — are hoping to revive their once promising political careers with a run for mayor.

More bad news for Minnesota Republicans: Longtime GOP Congressman Jim Ramstad announced today that he would not run for re-election next year. The news is expected to spark a lively endorsement fight in both parties, as a number of candidates immediately expressed their interest in the seat.

With former MnDOT commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg expected to enter the race for the DFL endorsement in the Sixth Congressional District, We’re likely to see both current candidates — attorney Bob Hill and banker Bob Olson — step back and re-evaluate their candidacies. Olson, who earlier this year had launched a long-shot U.S. Senate bid, had shifted his attention to the Sixth largely at the urging of local political operative Nikki Carlson, who had hoped to exact some revenge against Hill, who had dumped her as campaign manager. Hill, for his part, may be better suited to the retail politics of the state legislature. Look for some clarity here in a couple of weeks.

You can say this much about Green Party activist and (now perennial) U.S. Senate candidate Mike Cavlan: He may not have a clue about the realities of Beltway politics, but at least he has some grasp of the realities of their real-life consequences.

Perhaps hoping that she won’t be trampled by several of her Minneapolis City Council colleagues on the way to the elections office, council president Barb Johnson has begun to explore a 2009 mayoral run. And while the prospect of a Johnson candidacy will hardly ignite grand passions, it would raise an intriguing question: Is there any political muscle left on the old North Side?

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak was an early and enthusiastic endorser of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid. In fact, Rybak routinely bragged that he was the first mayor to endorse Obama.

The conventional wisdom holds that local endorsements build support for that presidential candidate. Indeed, many political wags expected Rybak to use his early support to build Obama’s Minnesota base and, in turn, bolster Rybak’s base for a future statewide run.

Another presidential campaign is slowly taking shape well behind the scenes of the more celebrated contest currently playing out across the country. Most insiders expect Council President Barb Johnson not to seek re-election to her safe Ward 4 seat in 2009 and retire. CM Elizabeth Glidden (Ward 8) and Betsy Hodges (Ward 13) are both putting out feelers to gauge their support among their colleagues for a “presidential” run. Alas, this is a very, very quiet campaign.

It is seldom in recent years that the political visions of state, county, and city have combined so clumsily as in two landmark decisions that have somehow escaped the full scrutiny of those noble, ink-stained wretches who populate what’s left of our free press in these parts. We’re speaking, of course, of Hennepin County’s tragic-comic attempts to secure the asphalt wilderness in downtown Minneapolis’ North Loop for the purpose of building a baseball stadium for Carl Pohlad and the Minnesota Twins and the puzzling city-county deal to merge the Minneapolis Public Library system with that of Hennepin County. Both experiments in visionary public policy have been conducted with less due diligence than most ordinary citizens would employ before they rent a movie.