Monday, July 28, 2014

Four on the floor

The PiPress gave some space to the four Republicans who are in the primary to run against Mark Dayton. I haven't spent a lot of time on this race, mostly because I'm pretty sure that my opinion is of minimal importance to most people. I have my preferences, but I'd have no trouble supporting any of the four against Dayton, who generally makes William J. LePetomane, the addled governor played by Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, look coherent.

The PiPress does a mostly fair job of profiling the four main candidates, including providing the obligatory attack lines from Carrie Lucking, Ken Martin, and the rest of the goon squad associated with the DFL and its ancillaries. In case you care, Scott Honour is Mitt Romney, Jeff Johnson is a Tea Party stooge, and Kurt Zellers is out of touch and was completely responsible for the shutdown in 2011. Marty Seifert apparently doesn't merit a swat from the apparat, at least that Bill Salisbury is allowed to share just yet.

For the sake of party unity, it would be easiest if Johnson, who won the endorsement at the GOP convention, ends up winning the primary. I suspect the party could get behind Zellers if he wins, but there's a lot of bad blood regarding Seifert, especially his graceless departure from the nominating process. Unless Honour surges, I don't see him making it, although he's going to be spending a lot of his own money in the next few weeks. What's been most striking about the campaign thus far is that the candidates have been mostly unwilling to attack one another.

One thing seems clear -- Dayton, for his part, is going to do his best to limit the opportunities to be seen on the same stage with the GOP primary winner. He's blowing off the Minnesota Public Radio debate at the State Fair and it remains to be seen whether he'll be willing to debate much after that. If you're Dayton, that's a smart move, because he can count on the local media not calling him out for avoiding discussions, while he'll have a lot of support from Alliance for a Better Minnesota, the dirt merchants who turned Tom Emmer into Emmanuel Goldstein in the last cycle. A similar fate awaits any of the four contenders; the key will be to counter-attack and not let ABM's narrative become the campaign narrative.

One thing worth mentioning -- in an ordinary year, you'd likely have a bunch of DFLers voting in the Republican primary to pick their preferred opponent for Dayton, but that won't necessarily happen in this cycle, because there's a contested primary on the DFL side. Our old pal Matt Entenza, who has burned many bridges in his career, is taking on Rebecca Otto for the state auditor job. The DFL doesn't want Entenza to win and has needed to expend a fair amount of effort to bolster Otto. DFL voters will need to stay involved in this primary, which limits the potential for mischief.

For now, let's take a poll:

Your preferred candidate for governor in the GOP primary is....
  
pollcode.com free polls 
You can vote for more than one candidate, but it's probably better to vote for just one. Share your rationale in the comments section, if you'd like.


6 comments:

Gino said...

vote for me. it would be like having no governor at all, and thats a good start.

W.B. Picklesworth said...

We drove from Worthington to Alexandria last week. I saw a ton of Seifert signs and nada from anyone else. I don't know what that means. I'm just a humble reporter.

Mr. D said...

That's Seifert country. Actually, there are about five Seifert signs strategically placed along Burnsville Parkway, which is a road I use to get to my office. I've seen a few more Johnson signs in the last few days, here and there, in the metro area. Also, a Rebecca Otto sign just popped up in my neighborhood.

If Seifert wins, it will be a very interesting thing to see what happens. He really angered a lot of people in the Republican party, but in some ways he's well equipped to deal with Dayton, because I think he's pretty ruthless. That's my greatest fear with Johnson -- he's a nice man and that's asking for trouble if you're up against the Dayton goon squad.

First Ringer said...

I seriously doubt Seifert wins. He's pursuing a rural vote strategy, which is fine, but his virtual non-presence in the metro (every candidate but him is now running ads) means he's counting on winning the outstate vote by an overwhelming margin. That's simply not likely to happen.

At this point, I'm thinking it's either Johnson - due solely to the party's "victory centers" making turnout calls on his behalf - or Honour uses the $500,000 he just gave himself to good effect.

Mr. D said...

I suspect you're right, FR.

Gino said...

if you want to know the success of rural/semi-rural strategies... just look at CA and the GOP.