Polinaut: August 30, 2006 Archive

Three major parties?

Posted at 7:57 AM on August 30, 2006 by Mike Mulcahy (8 Comments)

MPR's Laura McCallum has a report today that details how IP-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson ended up with just $16,000 left in his campaign coffers as of this week's pre-primary report.

Among other things, he spent $21,000 to rent a hotel ballroom to announce his campaign and has paid staff so far about $250,000.

He's counting on the taxpayers to give a boost to his campaign with a public subsidy of about $283,000. And his campaign says they've been raising money since the end of the reporting period.

Of course fundraising isn't the only way to judge the success of a campaign, but this story does raise some questions.

Is the "major party" bar set too low in Minnesota? (It takes 5 votes out of every hundred cast statewide to qualify)

Does Hutchinson's campaign spending reflect at all on his campaign message that he can best manage the state budget?

Did the Ventura era leave a lasting third party legacy in Minnesota?

I'll leave it to you to provide the answers.

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The Daily Digest: 8-30-06

Posted at 10:11 AM on August 30, 2006 by Tom Scheck

MPR's Laura McCallum comes back from vacation, looks at the latest campaign finance reports and reports on the I-P's Peter Hutchinson and his campaign spending.

Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty praised President Bush's decision to provide drought aid to farmers but some call it stingy.

Mike Hatch, the DFL endorsed candidate for governor, is appealing a ruling on violent video games.

On the Senate front, the dailies focus on DFL endorsed Amy Klobuchar's plan to reduce the national debt. Mark Kennedy stayed in the headlines with visits from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Marshall Independent, the Star Tribune and the Pi Press have stories.

Rachel Stassen Berger, with the Pi Press, has a storyon how the head of the NRCC is warning GOP donors to be worried about the upcoming election. Are they really worried or just shaking the money trees?

City Pages has a profile of Keith Ellison, the DFL endorsed candidate running in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District.

Skyway News also examines the 5th District Race.

The Star Tribune chases yesterday's Pioneer Press story that chased a Denver Post story that suggests the Twin Cities are sitting pretty in its bid for the 2008 DNC Convention.

Don Davis, with Forum Communications, takes a look at the Democrats running for attorney general.

The House DFL promises a back to basics agenda but doesn't really explain how they'll pay for improving those basics

MPR and the Star Tribune have stories on the vote by the Hennepin County Board to approve the sales tax increase for a new Twins ballpark.

KARE-11 has a story on the candidates running for Ramsey County Sheriff.

The Pi Press reports that prosecutors are reexamining Chief Finney's role in a 1981 murder.

An execution in South Dakota has been delayed.

Finally, Rochester City Council member Pat Carr thinks Pat Carr is great except Pat Carr didn't use Pat Carr's name in the postings.

Special interest group runs an ad criticizing Pawlenty

Posted at 2:25 PM on August 30, 2006 by Tom Scheck

The Alliance for a Better Minnesota started running an ad criticizing Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's record. The group is backed by wealthy DFL donors, unions and Native American tribes.

The group has not been shy about targeting Governor Pawlenty. Their recent campaign finance report said they had $240,000 to spend on the upcoming election. Pawlenty's campaign manager said they would examine the campaign finance reports of DFLer Mike Hatch, The Alliance for a Better Minnesota and Minnesotans for Change before deciding if they would forego the state campaign subsidies and break the $2.4 million spending cap. Pawlenty has until Friday to decide.

Officials with The Alliance for Better Minnesota said the ads would start running on Twin Cities tv stations on Thursday. They wouldn't disclose the size of the ad buy.

The great fantasy: the campaign

Posted at 4:43 PM on August 30, 2006 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

Marty Chicknavorian. That's the kid at the front of the class that always raised his hand and always had the right answer when I was growing up in my New England milltown. "Chicky" was a good kid and we were friends. He was a baseball fan too. But, truth be told -- as if it needed to be -- he was way smarter than me and once I accepted the fact that he really did have all the answers, any frustration that I didn't seemed to disappear.

Chicky would have made a good politician; at least in terms of doing a good job once in elective office (I think he became an optometrist). But he probably wouldn't have been able to get elected. See, Chicky looked smart and he just wasn't like everyone else. He was -- and I don't know how else to say it -- better than us. He didn't act better than us. He just was. We knew it. And we hated him for it, sometimes.

That probably would've turned off the electorate which, anecdotally, embraces the person who seems to have all the answers but dresses, looks, or acts like a "real" person. And let's face it: "real person" is someone who we believe actually could be as clueless as we sometimes feel.

When you think about it, it's one of the great paradoxes of politics. We want smart, but we don't want "too educated." We want someone with all the answers, but we don't want someone who we think thinks he/she has all the answers. We want someone who'll stand out. But we want someone who'll fit in.

I was thinking about this at the State Fair today as we strolled past the various candidate booths. I don't know how I could be a candidate for office these days because I wouldn't really know how to act. And, let's face it, if you're going to run for office, there's a fair amount of acting involved.

Everyone who knows the answer to everything raise your hand. Thank-you. Now, sit down because your votes are insignificant at this stage of the campaign. But for those of you who don't have all the answers and aren't sure what to do, welcome to the pressure cooker, because you get to decide the future.

Look at the poll numbers. Take the Star Tribune poll out of the mix, and they have hardly budged since January. Why? I'm guessing it's because the folks who didn't know the answers in January, don't know them now. And the folks who were sure what all the answers were, made up their minds early.

That's why I'm wondering when some acto...I mean, candidate -- will have a TV ad that says, "I'm X, and I don't know what to do about Iraq (for example). It's not a black-and-white issue with me because I see salient points on both sides of the issue." Could that person win after admitting that they really are like the people they're trying to sway? Would they be admitting that they're really like the rest of us? Maybe we have a few answers, but we don't have all of them?

What would your campaign commercial say? Me? It'd say, "I'm as concerned about the economy as you are and I don't have an answer for it because I don't think there's a magic bullet. I can only promise you that I'll get up early, stay late and work as hard at being a (position here) as you would if you were running for this seat. I know the price of milk. I know the feeling late at night when you start running the numbers for educating your kids in your head. I know the feeling you get when you buy a new tool at the hardware store and it says 'Made in China.' You're thinking: 'can't we make these?' and you're thinking 'have we peaked?' We have if you think we have. But if you think we haven't, then vote for me. I don't what good it will do. But there'll be someone representing you who is just like you."

I'd get crushed at the ballot box. Crushed. Why? For the same reason the local paper has moved the Hollywood page to where the editorial page use to be -- in Section A. We love our fantasies.

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It'd be a lot easier if God would just tell us who to vote for

Posted at 7:04 PM on August 30, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

The good folks at Bachmann vs. the Machine (dangit! Sorry, Jeff.) Wetterling had an interesting post today citing a Slate article on a survey on religion and politics. Got that? They had something that someone else wrote about what someone else did. And now I'm writing about it. God bless the blogosphere, I say.

The gist of the article was that Democrats do not poll well as being "friendly toward religion." OK, cased closed, the Republicans win and the heathens go home, right? Not exactly.

The poll says that more than 60 percent of those surveyed think liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools (it wasn't a school but think "Bunnygate" to see how easy it is to answer that question). But the poll also says that nearly half those surveyed think conservative Christians have gone too far in imposing their religious values on the country.

The survey actually says 20-percent of those surveyed think the Democrats are unfriendly toward religion; the same as 2005. But, as Slate points out, this number was 40 percent in 2004. Thirteen percent says Republicans are unfriendly toward religion, up four percent from 2005.

The article in Slate says "Which is why it is startling that in the two years since this Democratic revival began, the party’s faith-friendly image has dimmed rather than improved."

Where it really gets interesting, of course, is on the question of who should have the most influence on laws in the U.S. -- the people or the Bible?

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said the people. But among white evangelicals, 60-percent said the Bible. And -- and this will get people's dander up -- the percentage of people who answer "the Bible" to that question goes up as the amount of education goes down. (Update) Does this mean that people who tend to be religious are not educated? Or does it mean that people who tend to think their religion should be the guiding principle of the nation's laws tend to be less educated? The two, it seems to me, are not the same question. (/update)

But how all this plays in the 6th District isn't yet clear to me. Is religion an issue. I don't mean is it behind some of the issues. I mean is it an issue?

And how big a part of the electorate in the 6th are evangelical Christians? I ask because the survey seems to suggest there's more religious people who are are not evangelicals.

Related stuff:
2004: A tale of two churches (NPR)

Religion and politics (BlueOregon)

Probe Ministries: Politics and Religion

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