Lucy and the football in Minnesota

While the wave of Republican success came through strong elsewhere, we appear to love our Better Minnesota here, as it looks like the DFL got just about everything it wanted in this election, with one notable exception. A few thoughts:

• Mark Dayton limped home, but he had enough support in the metro area to hold off Jeff Johnson. Life gets more complicated for Dayton now, about which more in a moment.
• Al Franken won easily, but as I've mentioned before, he's now returning to a very different Senate. There are going to be a lot of temptations to emulate Paul Wellstone, but Franken isn't Wellstone -- he's much less of a happy warrior type than Wellstone was. Since constituent service doesn't really interest him that much, I'm not sure what he'll do, other than try to elbow Chuck Schumer out of the way when the cameras set up.
• It looks like Steve Simon is going to squeak by Dan Severson and become Secretary of State, but Severson's campaign is something the Republicans really ought to study. He ran well ahead of Johnson and the other statewide candidates, primarily because he made an effort to reach minorities and voting blocks that the party hasn't actively courted in a while. It almost worked and suggests that a little more outreach could tip the balance in future cycles.
• The Republicans are going to take back the House, which is big news, because it now means that they can force the Better Minnesota crew to consider some measures that would otherwise die. Meanwhile, look for likely House Speaker Kurt Daudt to be come the most hated man in Minnesota, as he is blamed for everything that goes wrong in the state.
• Once the results are final, we'll know if the Independence Party is going to be a "major" party any more. Looks like they got close to the magic 5% in one race, but perhaps not close enough. That's a future post.