Now that I've caught up with my sleep after posting, tweeting, phoning and doorknocking for Tuesday's special election, it's time to congratulate Mike Parry on his win, then wrap up the news.
The local papers all used the same story, found here at the Waseca County News. The final totals:
Parry captured 43.04 percent of the vote compared to 36.5 percent for DFLer Jason Engbrecht and 20.32 percent for Independence Party candidate Roy Srp.
Watching returns come in while looking over the shoulders of friends who had built a precinct-by-precinct model of how well Engbrecht would have to do to win the election, it soon became clear that some DFL-leaning precincts underperformed in terms of turn out, while more conservative areas had higher turn out, and that Srp was taking a portion of the vote that Engbrecht would have had to capture in order to win the contest.
The OPP's Clare Kennedy catches the mood in the room in Where do they go from here?:
The dust is still settling from the special election for Senate District 26, but the political season is just gearing up.
Tuesday was a grim night for the local Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and their candidate, physics professor Jason Engbrecht. Engbrecht lost to Republican candidate Mike Parry, 43.04 to 36.5 percent. About 20 percent of the vote went to Independence Party candidate Roy Srp.
Engbrecht’s campaign chair, John Coffey, addressed the crestfallen crowd at the Elks Club, telling them to keep their spirits up and try again in November. But the party is not wasting any time on regrets, said Vicki Jensen, chair of the local DFL.
“I don’t consider it a regrouping. The work of the DFL goes on all year long,” Jensen said. “We won’t know really what the next step is until Jason decides if he wants to run again. In the meantime we’ll go on with regular work.”. . .
Of all the assessments of the results, I thought Jason Hoppin's post at Political Animal, Parry wins, but what does it mean? to be the most judicious. As sample:
. . .to get to the two-thirds number Republicans say rejected the tax and spend policies of Democrats, you'd have to add Parry's figure (43.1) to Independence Party candidate Roy Srp's (20.3). That gets you almost to 64 percent. The Democrats could just as easily crow that an overwhelming majority (56.8 percent) rejected the anti-tax stance of Republicans in St. Paul, by adding Srp's totals to Jason John Engbrecht's (36.5).
But there are a number of complicating factors that make this difficult to do any tea-leaf reading in this election:
1) Day, a Republican, held the office for 20 years. He was epoxied to the seat. This wasn't a situation like Massachusetts where a Kennedy seemed to have been handed that Senate gavel during his baby shower.
2) Parry's Twitter comments about President Obama being a "power hungry arrogant black man" and another grouping Democrats with pedophiles. Had they run a stronger candidate, this race might not have been even this close (and it wasn't, really).
3) It was a special election that turned out about 30 percent of the voters as in the last SD 26 vote, in 2006.
4) There was a strong third-party candidate. . . .
The seat is up again in November, and then two years later in 2012 because of redistricting. For the moment, however, Senator Parry will focus his attention on lawmaking, having to get up to speed for the opening of the session next week.
If you are one of his constituents, wish him well and let him know what's on your mind. Regardless of whom you voted for (or if you voted at all), he is there to serve the district. (I'll post contact information when the Senate web staff lists it on the body's web page).
Thank you, Jason Engbrecht and Roy Srp for running, and thanks to all the volunteers from all campaigns who gave their time to make democracy work. And a special thanks to Emily Jensen, the Engbrecht field worker, whose humor and hardwork made covering the campaign a pleasure.
Readers can watch Parry's first St. Paul press conference via Senate Media Services in *Senator-elect Mike Parry Meets Capitol Media.
Note: comments on this post are closed. The election is over, and Mike Parry is the senator. The people had the final say at the ballot box.
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