Familiar ground

Posted at 11:38 AM on March 24, 2006 by Bob Collins

Lots of comings and goings in the races today so I'm trying to update Campaign 2006 like crazy and falling a bit behind. So we'll take all of these today one by one.

First, Rebecca Yanisch. She announced her candidacy for the 5th District congressional race this morning. I should have the audio of her speech on her C2006 Web page in the next hour or so but looking through the transcript, it sounded rather familiar.

"When I was 21, I had a high school diploma, a job that paid less than the minimum wage, a two-year-old daughter and a marriage that wasn't working. I decided to enroll in college, and after working my way through as a single parent, graduated with a degree in finance and, later, a master's degree in business administration."

It's certainly a compelling story. It could be her campaign theme. It was in the campaign of 2000. Take, this line from Michael Khoo's profile of her back then.

Yanisch downplays the gender card, but it's subtly woven throughout her campaign. She married early and divorced early. The story of the candidate giving birth without the benefit of health insurance and, as a single mother, working her way through the University of North Dakota, has proven too potent for the campaign to resist. At nearly every public appearance, Yanisch reminds potential voters she has not just studied their problems, she has lived them.

I miss Michael Khoo. He was a fabulous reporter. But, alas, he's gone off to Yale Law School and the next time we hear from him will, no doubt, be when he's nominated to the Supreme Court.

This next paragraph from his story was a keeper.

Meanwhile, the campaign de-emphasizes other aspects of her past. She was born on a family farm, but a fairly prosperous one which, by her own reckoning, covered more than 3,000 acres in the fertile Red River Valley. She says, however, she didn't lean on her family for support in the years after her daughter was born.

Anyway, will familiar themes echo louder in the 5th than they did statewide in 2000?

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