Mark Dayton, the “Senator” from Minnesota has announced that he is not running for reelection in 2006. Dayton has done little other than take up space in the Senate and occasionally make some embarrasing bloviation, so his loss won’t mean much to the state of Minnesota. After his embarrassing incident of closing his Washington offices out of supposed concern for “terrorism” all one can say is “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
It’s looking more and more likely that the Republicans are going to get both Senate seats in Minnesota. The Minnesota GOP has a host of strong candidates from Rep. Mark Kennedy to Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer and others who have the ability to put that seat in GOP hands.
Mark Dayton is not a good politician but was an above-average Senator….at least by the standards of a Senator in the minority party. I admired his guts in consistently telling the truth in an atmosphere where fantasy has become the new reality. Even if the Dems retain the Senate seat, Dayton’s plainspoken man-of-the-people populism will be missed.
I would normally agree that the Republicans would have the advantage here, but the Dems have a couple of things in their favor. I’m not sold on Mike Ciresi, but Betty McCollum and Amy Klobuchar would make solid statewide candidates. Furthermore, Minnesota was a state that rejected George Bush last year, and that was before Bush kicked his radical right-wing domestic agenda into post-election overdrive. Either Mark Kennedy or Gil Gutknecht would supply 95% or better parity with Bush’s platform. Will the same state that rejected Bush choose two years later to elect another rubber stamp on his agenda? I would lean towards no, but given our society’s tireless trend towards universal delusion, I could easily be wrong.
In my City (Eagan), Bush got 926 fewer votes than John Kline. In contrast the DFL congressional candidate got 2840 votes less than John Kerry.
Assuming all of the voting was legitimate. State GOPers are simply more attractive than the president, and Bush did not bring down Kline in the least, Whereas over 2800 Kerry voters could not be bothered to vote for Teresa Daly (DFL) even while standing in the voting booth.
Where I am going with this is Many MN voters find Bush repellent (mostly due to constant battering by the press) even though they are generally conservative. Bush losing MN means little in the 2006 senate election. For the democrats, they will have a hard time getting voters out for thier candidate, whoever it is.
I am prediciting a big backlash in 2006 with the state senate elections, with the MNGOP taking everything, Senate, Govenor, etc, all but traditionally DFL congressional seats.
Rick, your point is well taken. Even though the policies of John Kline are one and the same with his puppetmaster George Bush (and well to the right of where most Eagan voters stand on the issues of the day), there continues to be a failure to connect the dots between the John Klines of Congress and the Bush administration. With that in mind, Mark Kennedy and Gil Gutknecht may be able to get away with running as moderates and pick up the votes of second-ring suburban voters who rejected George Bush last year.
The Eaganites I have talked to fit squarely into the centrist fold. On the issues, they fit solidly with the “New Democrat” doctrine. I’m not sold on your premise that they’re all really as conservative as George Bush. Your prediction of a “GOP backlash” in Minnesota in 2006 is certainly possible with the delusional voting habits of so many people voting against the party with whom they agree with on the issues, but it would go against the historical grain to see continued GOP gains when they are already the long-term majority party overseeing a nation on the cusp of ruin. It all depends on how much longer the GOP can deftly bamboozle people into voting for a party that supports a platform that is destroying them….and how long the Dems continue to be lost in the wilderness.