Hatch pins loss partly on E85 error
Hatch gives his election analysis in a letter sent to supporters Saturday. The attorney general led much of the campaign, but came up about 20,000 votes short of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty in the end.
Hatch said he suffered in areas of rural Minnesota with plants that make E85, a fuel blend that contains 85 percent ethanol. One week before Election Day, lieutenant governor nominee Judi Dutcher was caught on film flubbing questions about E85 during a stop in Alexandria.
"While we still won the northwestern counties (where there are no ethanol plants), we got killed in western and southern counties, where seventeen ethanol plants are located," Hatch wrote.
His letter doesn't mention his run-ins with reporters asking him about Dutcher's gaffe, including exchange where he allegedly labeled a reporter a "Republican whore."
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Another contributing factor, Hatch wrote, was a flood of ads in the last week from an upstart group known as A Stronger America-Minnesota, which accused him of bullying behavior. The group spent between $500,000 and $1 million on commercials and mailings, although most of the group's donors remain a secret.
The third problem Hatch identified was the vote strength of Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson in urban DFL strongholds.
Hatch underperformed other statewide DFL candidates in key Ramsey and Hennepin County precincts, according to an analysis published Monday by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
"The DFL needs to gain in the cities. Hatch obviously didn't do that," said Chris Gilbert, a political science professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.
Statewide, Hutchinson grabbed 150,000 votes.
"I'd love to be the great killer in this deal, but I'm not," Hutchinson said, noting his overall 6 percent vote total.
The newspaper said Hatch also ran weaker in 141 precincts than 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
