The Star Tribune reports today that Endorsement is only first round in GOP struggle to knock off Walz. After watching GOP congressional candidates state Senator Dick Day and state Representatives Randy Demmer on Almanac (video of the show is online), several of our more polite readers wrote to tell us how much they too thought the contenders were struggling.
We will not share what the our less genteel readers said, even though the folklorists who frequent this site would appreciate the vernacular.
Turning back to the Star Tribune article, there's the basic set up:
Two of the contenders, state Rep. Randy Demmer of Hayfield and Mayo Clinic doctor Brian Davis, have agreed to support whomever the party endorses.
But with greater name recognition, a rebel attitude attractive to some voters and more money than his opponents, state Sen. Dick Day is waiting in the wings.
Day, of Owatonna, is skipping the GOP endorsement process and running in the September primary.
That leaves Demmer and Davis in Albert Lea this weekend. Day and Demmer appeared on Almanac; Davis, he of the lesser name recognition, declined the invitation.
The criticism of Walz is simply that he's too liberal:
Walz's challengers criticize him for voting more with congressional liberals than his 2006 campaign had indicated, but [WSU political science professor] Downs said Walz's back-and-forth is necessary in a district that, before Gutknecht, was represented by Democrat Tim Penny, who served the southeastern Minnesota district from 1982 through 1994. Gutknecht won election when Penny retired.
The Star Tribune article doesn't point out that other sources deem Walz a centrist. The National Journal, for instance, recently issued its rankings. Walz was among the centrists. Conservatives have often used these rankings to decry Democrats in the publication's "Liberal" bracket, but they've been mum about this particular ranking system, Vote View, maintained by UC-San Diego political scientist Keith T. Poole and Princeton's Howard Rosenthal. It places Walz at in the 199th position in a spectrum ranging from most liberal (1) to most conservative (437). In short, he's pretty close to the middle of the spectrum.
Part of the struggle for the Republicans are the numbers:
In a telephone interview from Washington, Walz said that he's been focusing on his work in Congress but expects to unleash his force of 2,000 volunteers on a door-knocking campaign as soon as Republicans endorse their candidate.
"We're highly organized," he said. "We're highly energetic."
With incumbency on his side, he's managed to amass a much greater campaign treasury and a grass-roots campaign organization, far outpacing the Republicans' reported dozens to 100 volunteers.
Walz has large money edge
According to their campaigns, Walz has raised $1.1 million, Davis has raised about $160,000, Day $210,000 and Demmer about $205,513.
"There's no point in [Walz] displaying the image of a candidate that's panicky," Downs said. "Tim Walz has an edge at this stage of the race."
Matter of fact, the neighbor-to-neighbor campaign isn't waiting for news of the endorsement. It's scheduled for that day:
On Saturday, March 29 Tim Walz for U.S. Congress will begin mobilizing volunteers across southern Minnesota to start having one-on-one conversations with voters about the issues that matter most. The campaign will build the largest volunteer-driven grassroots campaign in the history of the Minnesota First Congressional District. Sign up to volunteer on March 29 to help Tim Walz talk to voters in Winona, Mankato or Rochester about his positive vision for a better future, please click here.
And there's the race to the right by the Republicans the Strib reports:
All three Republicans call themselves social conservatives who take a tough stance against illegal immigration and are against a firm timetable for the U.S. military pulling out of Iraq . . .
. . . "It comes down to a personality contest," [Sarah] Janecek said of the Republican candidates. "I don't see a front-runner.
Let's recap: there's an accessible man-of-the-people working hard in Washington D.C. who spends congressional recesses in his swing district conducting dozens of listening sessions. He enjoys a cash edge, and both incumbency and the virtue of a fresh face. The GOP contenders are PeaPod Republicans, tilting distinctly right ward, who are in a personality contest. That bodes will for Congressman Walz.
And then there's the Other Money Problem confronting the Republican's federal campaign committee. We read in this morning's CQ Politics' article Dem House Campaign Unit Gained While GOP’s Drained in February:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which helps fund the campaigns of Democrats who are running for the U.S. House, reported raising $6.2 million in February. That compared to $4.6 million raised by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the partisan counterpart to the DCCC, which also filed a campaign report Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The NRCC expected to have had a bit more at the end. But the House Republican organization revised its cash-on-hand total downward by about $740,000, following the results of a preliminary investigation that alleged financial mismanagement by former NRCC treasurer Christopher Ward.
Given their money disadvantage, Republican officials also may wish they had taken back some of the $1.1 million they invested in February on the campaign for March 8 special election in Illinois’ 14th District. Democrat Bill Foster went on to win that contest by 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent over Republican Jim Oberweis — an outcome widely described as a setback and even an embarrassment to the GOP, as the Republican-leaning district had long been held by Republican J. Dennis Hastert, the former House Speaker, who resigned from Congress last November. . . .
The Democratic committee has held a steady fundraising lead since its party’s 30-seat gain boosted it into its current House majority. And the February figures show that the imbalance between the two parties, in terms of money that each House campaign committee had left to spend on races across the nation at the end of last month, grew to its widest yet. The DCCC began March with $38 million left to spend and had $763,000 in debts, compared to $5.1 million for the NRCC, which reported $1.9 million in debts.
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