At his gubernatorial campaign kickoff this afternoon in Maple Kurt Zellers didn't quite go so far as to say he was a poor North Dakota sharecropper's son who moved to Minnesota when he heard Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra play "Crazy Rhythm."
Instead, he cast himself as Underdog, according to GOP Rep. Kurt Zellers launches 2014 campaign for governor, a report by Politics In Minnesota staff write Briana Bierschbach:
Zellers joins Republican Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson and Wayzata businessman Scott Honour in the GOP field for governor, with other candidates expected to announce as early as this week.
Zellers tried to differentiate himself from the rest of the GOP field by talking often about his family and his personal struggles. “I worked hourly jobs, I dealt black jack in college, I delivered pizzas, I bagged groceries. I don’t know if the rest of the folks in the race can say that,” Zellers said. “I think that’s what makes me different.”
Zellers said he plans to seek the GOP endorsement but is prepared to run in a primary election. “I’ll prepare for the convention first, the primary second and then Mark Dayton lastly,” he said. . . .
Unlike candidates like Honour, who runs a successful business and raised money for Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign last year, Zellers said he doesn’t have the personal wealth to back his own campaign.
“I consider myself an underdog candidate because of that,” he said
Bluestem has obtained an exclusive impression via Google Image of Zellers fighting Scott Honour and reproduce it above. Honour is the one in the suit.
Life was pretty tough for young Zellers, that's for sure. In 2010, Forum Communications Capitol Chatter political reporter Don Davis noted in A new Legislature: Zellers’ past made him next Republican speaker:
Much of his Devils Lake High School experience centered on sports. UND recruited him as a football walk-on, and he played until being injured.
He began studying accounting at UND, and switched to political science after he did a little work for Republicans and was elected to the Student Senate.
At first, Zellers’ political attention was split between North Dakota and Minnesota. While he walked in a parade for then-U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger of Minnesota, his roommate was Jim Poolman, who in recent years was North Dakota insurance commissioner. Drew Wrigley, a former North Dakota U.S. attorney and the state’s next lieutenant governor, recruited him to his fraternity.
Zellers quickly concentrated on Minnesota, where he worked for Republican U.S. Sen. Rod Grams and Norm Coleman.
There's nothing like being a poor boy without friend or fraternity. A similar story in the Pioneer Press spoke of the "hardscrabble" farm boy but also noted:
. . .He joined a fraternity filled with political activists and quickly became involved in campus and Republican Party politics. . . .
. . . After starting out as a pre-law and accounting major at UND, Zellers switched to political science, in part because he enjoyed the social aspects of politics. While there, he met then-Sen. Dave Durenberger and Rep. Jim Ramstad of Minnesota at campus events and volunteered to work on Durenberger's 1988 re-election campaign.
He earned money for college as a "pit boss," dealing cards and overseeing black jack, bingo and pulltab operations at charitable gambling venues near campus (an experience that may help him spot cheaters in politics).
After graduating from UND in 1993, Zellers moved to the Twin Cities to become a management trainee at Menard's. But friends soon talked him into applying for a job on then-Rep. Rod Grams' 1994 U.S. Senate campaign.
A total underdog, indeed. He's different, that's for sure.
Image: Underdog takes out the riff raff.
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