Eric Lucero

There is open defiance of the state Republican Party’s urging that all GOP activists support endorsed candidates, and it’s coming from the most unlikely setting —Wright County, heart of the Sixth Congressional District where endorsements are next to godliness.

The Wright County Republican Party has taken the unusual step of denying support to Eric Lucero, the Dayton City Council member who won the Minnesota House District 30B endorsement over incumbent Rep. David FitzSimmons in a contest that hearkened back to the 1980s culture wars of Republican politics.

“The board is not very fond of Mr. Lucero,” said Eric Boone, event coordinator and board member of the Wright County GOP. “It stems from how he attacked David FitzSimmons.”

The attack came in the form of a pamphlet, distributed by the Minnesota Family Council, at the county’s endorsing convention in March, decrying FitzSimmons’ acceptance of campaign contributions from groups supporting him for his vote in favor of same sex marriage in the 2013 legislative session.

'An ugly attack'

“It was an ugly attack,” said one delegate who preferred not to be named. “They talked about Fitz getting paid off with ‘gay money.’’’

Party leaders are equally upset with Lucero’s earlier campaign statements about the role of women. A section of his website (which has been removed) cited government “assault against the family unit,” including “gay marriage and the homosexual lifestyle” and “blending the gender distinctions such as women in combat and homosexuals openly serving in the military.”

“The party really can’t afford that kind of embarrassment,” Boone said.

When Lucero approached the Wright County GOP board last week, he asked for some of that “gay money,” in the form of financial support for his campaign. He was turned down.

“It would be hypocritical of Lucero to take this,” said Boone, who said that FitzSimmons had given his contributions to the Wright County GOP and other county groups. “He would be asking for the money he criticized.”

Leading the charge

Lucero, who did not return a call for an interview, has a primary opponent. Kevin Kasel is a St. Michael City Council member and a FitzSimmons supporter who was approached after the endorsing convention. He or Lucero would face DFLer Sharon Shimek in November.

“Challenging an endorsed candidate is tough, but I heard from enough activists … that the endorsing convention was extremely divisive,” said Kasel. “I was asked to lead the charge.”

A pamphlet distributed by the Minnesota Family Council decrying FitzSimmons’ acceptance of campaign contributions from groups supporting him for his vote in favor of same sex marriage in the 2013 legislative session.

Brad Herold

A staff change is under way at the top of Republican Mike McFadden’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. Campaign manager Brad Herold is leaving that position.  

Tom Erickson, the McFadden campaign communications director, confirmed the Herold departure in a statement.

“Our plan has always been to retool the campaign after becoming our party’s nominee. Under Brad’s management, our campaign was able to win the convention endorsement and effectively win the GOP nomination for Senate,” Erickson said. “Brad will still be involved in his new position as a senior adviser to the campaign. We look forward to making an announcement about our new campaign manager in the coming days.”

One name that’s surfaced as Herold’s replacement is Bob Schroeder, former chief of staff for Gov. Tim Pawlenty and deputy chief of staff for Gov. Arne Carlson.

Schroeder has worked closely with the campaign in a volunteer capacity and was active on the floor of the state Republican convention in May, helping McFadden secure the GOP endorsement.

The campaign change coincides with new, expanded duties for Conor McFadden, the candidate’s son. As recently as yesterday, the younger McFadden, who graduated this spring from Stanford, described his campaign position on LinkedIn as “policy director, surrogate candidate,” although that description was taken down today.  

The Republican Party of Minnesota may not be a well-oiled machine, but the parts are moving again. 

It received $719,000 in contributions during June, “the best fundraising month in recent years,” according to a statement from party chair Keith Downey.  Contributions for the first six months of the year totaled $1.9 million.

Downey credits the uptick in fundraising to “recent poll results showing tightening races for governor and U.S. Senate.”

The party’s endorsed choice for governor, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, picked up the support of arguably the most popular Republican lawmaker in the state: Third district congressman Erik Paulsen.  Johnson and Paulsen served together as state legislators and Johnson resides in Paulsen’s congressional district.

Karin Housley

Minnesota DFL party chair Ken Martin wanted to know what GOP lieutenant governor candidate Karin Housley was “hiding.”

In a news release, Martin pointed out that Housley, a state senator from St. Mary's Point who is running for the office as Scott Honour’s running mate, had not yet filed a "statement of economic interest" with the state campaign finance board. 

Candidates are required to file an economic interest statement within two weeks after their filing, and Housley filed for office on June 2. 

“It was a campaign oversight and it has now been filed,” Housley said Monday. “My statement of economic interest was on file with the state for being a state senator. Nothing’s changed from that one. So we processed it and re-filed it."

Housley’s economic interest statement from her senate filing shows an array of securities investments including Apple, Merck, Pfizer, and Berkshire Hathaway as well as ownership of properties in Afton, St. Paul, St. Mary’s Point and Walker.

Bob Frey

As far as hot button issues are concerned, the Republican primary race for governor has been a snooze, with the four candidates steering clear of controversy like gay marriage. But that’s not the case in a couple of legislative primary contests.

In house district 30B in Wright County, Kevin Kasel is challenging Eric Lucero, who won the party’s endorsement, in part, by criticizing incumbent David FitzSimmons’ vote for same sex marriage.   

Then there’s Carver County’s house district 47A, where Waconia Mayor Jim Nash is facing off against Norwood Young America businessman Bob Frey, a race in which “sodomy” has become one of the campaign issues.

Neither Nash nor Frey could win the party endorsement last spring. Their respective websites state their allegiance to the GOP positions on taxes, health care and gun rights. But Nash maintains that his opponent “is more focused on social issues than the issues that Minnesotans care about. I am more of the conviction that they are interested in the issues that I'm interested in — education, transportation, taxes.”

“[Nash’s] comment is, of course, false,” Frey said.

Frey says he’s also talking about business and taxes. He says education is a particular passion, developed while working with then-state senator Michele Bachmann to defeat the “profiles in learning” education platform.

But when questioned about his position on social issues, Frey added that it “does certainly need to be addressed for what it is. It’s not about the gay agenda but about the science and the financial impact of that agenda. It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle.”   

Frey then explained his view: “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it's the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

(This explanation of AIDS has no scientific validity, but it may strike a familiar chord: It is essentially the same one given by Bob's son, Mike Frey, in testimony given before the House Civil Law Committee last year during the debate over gay marriage.)

Mike Frey's testimony given before the House Civil Law Committee.

Of the financial impact, Bob Frey says, “It’s about sodomy. It’s huge amounts of money. AIDS is a long term illness, causing pain, suffering, death, a long-term illness that’s very expensive to treat.”

Both candidates say they prefer to talk about their experience and accomplishments. Nash has won his previous elections for mayor of Waconia by large margins. “The Taste of Minnesota came to Waconia. They didn’t come because it was a poorly run city,” he said.  

Frey is not without supporters, though. Carver County commissioner Tom Workman has endorsed him, as have state representatives Glenn Gruenhagen, Cindy Pugh, Jim Newberger, Joe McDonald, and Steve Drazkowski.  

Frey has also received the endorsement of the district’s retiring representative, Ernie Leidiger, perhaps best known for inviting anti-gay pastor Bradlee Dean to serve as guest chaplain for the House prayer, a prayer that was stricken from the record after Dean questioned President Obama’s faith.

For now, the candidates have stayed away from overt attacks on conservative credentials. “They have yet to attack my record as a conservative because they can’t,” said Nash.

Frey says that when his direct mail starts arriving in voters’ homes, the topics will be, “Second Amendment rights, pro-life, the responsibility to reduce the size of government.” 

But the primary race in 47A race shows that even in Carver County, one of the most conservative in the state, there is friction among Republicans — a schism between traditional and socially conservative Republicans that won’t close.

The Mike McFadden U.S. Senate campaign has made lemonade from lemons with its latest ad, which shows the Republican coaching youth football. 

Despite the fact that the ad has drawn snickers for apparently showing McFadden taking a hit to the groin from one his young players (and quickly dubbed "groin gate" on social media), Time.com named it one of the six best political ads of the summer.

“He nails the all-American dad image with this advertisement, and when you are running against comedian-turned-senator Al Franken, it’s always good to be funny,” the magazine noted.

McFadden communications director Tom Erickson acknowledged the controversy about the alleged groin hit even while maintaining that the ad depicts a hit to the stomach. McFadden’s Facebook page shows a dozen comments, positive and negative, though Erickson didn’t deny a report in Buzzfeed that early negative comments about the ad had been taken down. 

“As with everything in life, there’s going to be something some people don’t like,” he said.  “We’re just happy to talk about Mike’s background.” McFadden has been coaching the Mendota Heights Youth Athletic Association for 13 years.

The ad, created by Something Else Strategies, an agency based in Washington, D.C., will continue running this week statewide in what Erickson called a “significant six-figure buy.” 

Erickson suggested that future ads would continue with a light-hearted approach to the campaign, similar to the ads that Bill Hillsman created for Jesse Ventura in the 1998 governor’s race.

“We’re getting a lot of feedback, especially when people remember the 2008 [Al Franken-Norm Coleman] Senate campaign that got so nasty so quick,” he said.  “We’ll continue to show the light hearted side that you don’t see too much from politicians.”

With primary election day in Minnesota a little more than three weeks away, one might expect to hear voters complaining about all those campaign ads.

Not this year. 

Blame (or credit) the Republican primary for governor. The four candidates vying to take on Gov. Mark Dayton this fall might normally be expected to place a total ad buy well into six figures, but only one has made a substantial purchase of television time so far. 

Scott Honour, the GOP candidate who currently has the most money on hand, has purchased $15,000-$20,000 of airtime on Fox News statewide, according to Honour campaign consultant Pat Shortridge. Shortridge says the ads will expand to statewide broadcast outlets in the coming weeks and complement current radio and on line advertising. 

“The ads are a clear declarative statement of how Scott sees things, the problems and how he’d be different,” Shortridge said. 

Former House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, meanwhile, has eschewed a significant TV purchase for now. “With 85 percent of the state likely not voting in the primary (and even fewer choosing the Republican side of the ballot), sometimes expensive shot gun approaches in broadcast media are not the best uses for primary campaign expenditures,” he said.

Seifert said the campaign would target his ads online, on cable, and broadcast “as resources are available.” 

Former Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers appears to be following much of the same strategy. He announced on Twitter that he’s re-releasing his ad via YouTube rather than spend money on a large television ad buy.  

Then there’s the GOP-endorsed candidate Jeff Johnson, a Hennepin County Commisioner, who's raised the least money among the Republican candidates so far. Johnson's website features two ads that have aired so far only online.

“We have a smart statewide voter contact program in place that will increase Jeff Johnson's name ID and turn out our voters,” said campaign spokesman Scot Crockett. “I am not going to comment on timing or the mix of media that we will be using.”

Michelle MacDonald

Leaders of the Republican Party of Minnesota are performing some political triage in an effort to distance the party from the drama around state Supreme Court candidate Michelle MacDonald, whose DUI charge was not revealed prior to her being the party's endorsee to challenge Justice David Lillehaug.  

At a meeting last week, the state GOP executive committee debated changing the way judicial candidates are selected for endorsement. The group also signaled to delegates that support for MacDonald, an attorney, is limited after further revelations of unusual behavior inside and outside the courtroom.

The controversy began at the state party convention in May, when the 20-person Judicial Elections Committee offered MacDonald's name for endorsement — but did not reveal to convention delegates that she was facing a DWI charge. At the time, the committee chair, Doug Seaton, wanted to offer a minority report revealing the arrest to delegates, but was voted down by the rest of the committee. 

“The minority wanted to disclose to the delegates her DWI, which would have provided the transparency that the delegates deserve,” said Bill Jungbauer, member of the state executive committee that took up the matter last Thursday.  “I’d want to know — damn straight.”

At the party executive meeting last week, the committee and party officers read two emails that further eroded MacDonald’s standing as an endorsed candidate. 

The first, purported to be from the Judicial Elections Committee, was addressed to convention delegates. And rather than backing down, it used the DWI charge as further justification of MacDonald's candidacy to be a judge.

“A recent Star Tribune article erroneously claimed that our Committee was unaware of attorney Michelle MacDonald’s DWI charge,” the email began. “That claim is false. We knew a lot about it, and we are convinced that she is innocent.”

“In spite of a lack of evidence, a city attorney from Rosemount … threw the book at her, falsely charging her with a DUI and other spurious charges,”

 The email was signed by 17 of the committee members.

But committee chair Seaton has disputed that MacDonald’s email was an official committee document. In an email to Republican Party of Minnesota chair Keith Downey, Seaton wrote that the “decision to recommend endorsement of Michelle MacDonald was not unanimous and was opposed by several members of the [Judicial Election Committee].”

“Although the opponents of the nomination sought permission to present the minority report nonetheless, because of the gravity of the issues…the majority refused to permit this action," wrote Seaton. 

So just who is this majority that didn’t want to reveal MacDonald’s arrest? By the rules of the state party, they are representatives of each the state’s judicial districts.  As a result, party insiders say, committee members end up being activists who often volunteer to be on a judicial committee because they feel they’ve been wronged by the justice system in the past — a microcosm of how party activists wield inordinate influence throughout the state GOP.

The executive committee quickly agreed to circulate Seaton’s opposing response to all party delegates. The email supporting MacDonald “came off as coming from the committee itself,” Jungbauer said.  “It was misleading on two levels. After the convention, the committee no longer exists. New members need to be named for the next convention.”

That may not happen at all, if some insiders get their way. Party leaders are acknowledging the judicial endorsement system needs to be changed, and privately are considering other ways of vetting judicial candidates.

Jungbauer, for one, has suggested that the party’s nominating committee handle all the vetting, a change that is gaining support but would require a change in the party’s constitution.  

The Minnesota Tea Party Alliance is warming to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden. Or at the very least, its leaders are no longer actively opposing him, as they did during the GOP endorsement process.

Some history: After McFadden appeared at a Tea Party event in May, Jake Dusenberg, executive director of the Tea Party Alliance, took to Facebook to warn his followers: “Folks, Mike McFadden is bad news. He has dodged the tea party and conservative base. He's flip-flopped on multiple issues. And he is the establishment's choice for the Senate.” 

But in a recent email fundraising message, Tea Party Alliance president Jack Rogers opened the door (a crack) with regard to supporting McFadden. The email asks for contributions to defeat incumbent Democrat Al Franken, labeling him, “a radical 60s-style liberal.”  

Does that mean that Rogers, who supported Chris Dahlberg for the GOP endorsement and was openly dismissive of McFadden during the state Republican convention in May, has changed his mind?

“I am not for or against Michael,” he said. “But I don’t know what he stands for — or his principles — and that makes it hard for me to make a personal decision.”  

Rogers then added, “Let me make it perfectly clear: There are three men running for that office [in the primary]. Whichever one wins is the one I’m going to support and help to victory in November.”

GOP-endorsed candidate McFadden is facing state representative Jim Abeler and St. Paul teacher David Carlson in the August 12 primary. 

Rogers said the Minnesota Tea Party Alliance will not weigh in on the Senate race until after the primary. “The primary battle for the Senate is less important for us than the gubernatorial,” he said.  In that race, the Tea Party is backing endorsed candidate Jeff Johnson.  “One thing – Johnson is abiding by endorsement,” Rogers said.  “That’s the fine line of difference with McFadden.”

The MN Tea Party PAC reports just over $1,000 in cash on hand as of the end of May.  But money isn’t everything, Rogers points out.  

“We have no big money,” he said, though the group does boast an active membership of 4,500 statewide, most of them active in social media, and Rogers said he believes Tea Party support will make a critical difference in both the Senate and governor’s races.

The Jeff Johnson campaign for governor thought it had something worth bragging about: “More legislators support Johnson than the other GOP gubernatorial candidates,” was the headline in a recent news release announcing that 44 state senators and state representatives, current and former, have endorsed his candidacy.

But wait. Johnson’s Republican primary competitor, former state Rep. Marty Seifert announced Wednesday that he had procured some new legislative endorsements of his own, bringing his list of legislative supporters to 21.

Meanwhile, former Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers has picked up 16 legislative endorsements, all of them current and former Minnesota House members. 

Not unexpectedly, Scott Honour — the one primary candidate without a legislative background — lists no legislative endorsements on his website, though his running mate, Karin Housley, is a State Senator. “As an outsider and a business leader, Scott has not sought the endorsement of political insiders," said Valentina Weis, Honour’s deputy campaign manager. “Quite the opposite. All across the country we are seeing business leaders elected to serve because people want results, not just empty political promises."

All of which brings up a question: Do endorsements even matter these days?

Former governor Arne Carlson would say so. In 1994, as incumbent governor, Carlson was denied the Republican endorsement, largely for the sin of being too moderate for party activists. So for his primary contest with Allen Quist, Carlson’s campaign amassed the support of virtually every Republican legislator — a way of shoring up his credentials with primary voters. [Full disclosure for those readers that don’t already know this: I was the Carlson campaign communications director at the time.]

“Campaigns put a lot of effort in getting to the primary voter,” Carlson said. “The endorsement of other Republicans gives them a credence, so it has considerable value.”

Former speaker of the house Steve Sviggum helped Carlson round up those GOP legislators. Now he’s doing the same thing for Jeff Johnson, as chair of the Johnson campaign.

Unlike endorsements from trade or issue groups, Sviggum said, legislative endorsements, “speak volumes, because they’re from people that you work with, people that you served with, people that know you pretty well.”

That was the case with Carlson, Sviggum added. “We had worked with him and we trusted him,” he said. “He empowered our agenda and we upheld his vetoes.” 

Carlson won that primary with more than 60 percent of the vote, an unlikely outcome for any of the candidates this year.

But that’s all the more reason why candidates are touting endorsements so aggressively this time around. “I consider these four very good people,” said Sviggum. “I recruited three of them and I door knocked for three of them. I think these endorsements mean more than in a two-way race.”

State Rep. Jenifer Loon

For a small legislative district in Eden Prairie, there’s some relatively big money in play for the Republican primary contest between incumbent state Rep. Jenifer Loon and challenger Sheila Kihne. 

The candidates for House District 48B together have raised close to six figures — with outside groups also spending on their behalf.

The spark for this primary playoff (and all that money)? Loon’s vote in 2013 to legalize same-sex marriage.

Loon defends the vote as reflecting the will of her district. “I needed to understand what my district was telling me when they rejected the marriage amendment [the 2012 referendum to amend the state constitution to make same sex marriage illegal] 60 percent to 40 percent,” Loon said. “I met with people, went to town hall meetings, sent out surveys, and the results were that the district supported same-sex marriage.”

Kihne comes from a different perspective. Though she did not respond to a request for an interview, her conservative positions are well articulated on Facebook, Twitter and various blogs. And her campaign website specifically notes her opposition to same sex marriage: “The vote to redefine marriage was a bad one,” she writes.

For a period following Loon’s vote to legalize same-sex marriage last year, it appeared that she would not face an endorsement challenge, unlike state Rep. David FitzSimmons of St. Michael, whose yes vote on gay marriage cost him the GOP endorsement for his seat. (Pat Garafolo and Andrea Keiffer were the two other GOP yes votes on marriage: Garafolo had no endorsement challenge, and Keiffer retired.)

But on the day of the endorsing convention, Kihne stepped in and succeeded in blocking the endorsement for Loon, forcing the lawmaker into a primary and a vigorous schedule of fundraising and name-dropping.

Sheila Kihne

Those names read like a “Who’s Who” of Minnesota establishment Republicans. Former U.S. Senators Rudy Boschwitz and Norm Coleman, current and former congressmen John Kline, Erik Paulsen, and Mark Kennedy, and Minnesota Senate and House minority leaders Kurt Daudt and David Hann were honorary hosts of a Loon fundraiser in May.

The result: As of July 21, Loon reported $66,224 cash on hand with $56,196 in contributions since the first of the year. For the same period, Kihne had a cash balance of $15,304 with $23,944 in contributions (figures that might be typical in a two-party House race, but not for a primary). But those numbers are only part of the story. In addition to direct contributions, both candidates are getting support from outside groups. The Minnesota Family Council, for example, has sent out mailings on behalf of Kihne.

Then there’s Freedom Minnesota, a PAC formed specifically to help Loon. The group raised $17,000 as of July 21 and spent all but $3,800 on polling, research and mail on her behalf. “Freedom Minnesota PAC’s focus will be to ensure the voters of Minnesota House District 48B have all the information they need to make a good decision when they vote in the Republican primary election on August 12,” said Brian McClung, the former Tim Pawlenty staffer who is serving as PAC’s treasurer. Most notably, the chair of Freedom Minnesota is Wheelock Whitney, the one-time Republican gubernatorial candidate who worked to defeat the marriage amendment two years ago.

Loon breezed to victory in 2012 with 60 percent of the vote. But she said she knows a primary victory, even with her fundraising advantage, is not a given.  “I’m doing all the same things I normally do,” she said.  “I’m just doing more of them.”

Video of the MPR candidate roundtable courtesy of the UpTake.

Now we know: It’s the pragmatist, the populist, the battle-proven, and the outsider.

Otherwise known as Jeff Johnson, Marty Seifert, Kurt Zellers and Scott Honour, the men vying to be the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota drew plenty of distinctions in their personalities — if not their policies — in their first big debate Wednesday.

The four participated in an hour-long roundtable on Minnesota Public Radio, the first of several get-togethers prior to the August 12 primary. They offered voters an indication of their governing style, even while making it clear that the substance of their policies would be very similar. 

“We’re all Republicans,” Zellers observed.  “We’re not going to go off on a tangent.”

On improving the economy, for example, all four agreed the state should cut taxes and regulations. But how they got there revealed much about themselves, and the personas of their campaigns.  

Former Speaker of the House Zellers relived former battles, recounting his work to reduce the growth of the state budget in 2011 and 2012. 

Seifert, showing a populist edge often employed by former Gov. Jesse Ventura, responded, "I would have vetoed the budget that Kurt Zellers passed."

Honour replied like a man who is used to running the show, and described a budget plan that would immediately reduce ten percent of the state’s administrative costs.

Johnson acknowledged that there are political realities, and said he’d do a top to bottom audit of the state budget, starting with the human services budget.  

Perhaps nothing revealed the gaps in style rather than substance more than the candidates’ approach to MNsure — the Republicans’ number one talking point when it comes to criticizing the Dayton administration. All want to dismantle it, but each offered a different shade of gray when it comes to how their administrations would approach doing so.

“What I have said I would do is, number one, apply for a waiver from Obamacare,” said Johnson, the lawyer and the technician. 

“I am the only one that’s calling for the elimination of MNSure,” said Honour, the executive. 

Zellers offered another war story.  “I fought against it from ever becoming a law,” he said.  

Don’t sweat the details, was Seifert’s advice.  “We need to start talking about health care, not about insurance companies and policies.” 

And so it went: On transportation, education, and right-to-work policies for state employees. Notably, almost as if pre-arranged, the four candidates paired off, two-by-two, for the obligatory pecking order, with Seifert taking on Zellers, Honour taking on Johnson.

On the issue of right-to-work, for example, Zellers said he’d advocate “paycheck protection," which would prohibit unions for state employees from automatically deducting union dues.    

“There's a better chance of me having hair than a DFL controlled Senate in passing right to work,” responded the bald-as-Ventura Seifert. 

Johnson also acknowledged the challenge of changing union requirements for state workers with a DFL Senate. To which Honour responded, “Jeff, you have a defeatist attitude here.”

Johnson’s comeback: "There's a difference between having a defeatist attitude and being honest with everyone."

So here’s a little test.  Each candidate was asked to summarize his credentials to take on Mark Dayton.  Which candidate gave which response?

A. “I’m the only one that faced off against Mark Dayton and won.”

B. “I was endorsed by the most active, engaged Republicans because they see me as having the best chance to beat Mark Dayton.”

C. “I’m the only candidate with the full Minnesota life experience.” 

D. “I’m the only candidate with business experience.”

The Answers: Kurt Zellers, Jeff Johnson, Marty Seifert, Scott Honour. And if you didn't figure it out, don't worry. There are still several more debates before the primary. 

In next week’s primary election for the Republican nomination for governor, the results will be close, the participation minimal.

That’s the prediction David Sturrock, chair of the political science department at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall.

“I thought at first a voter turnout of 300,000 but now, best guess is a turnout of 250,000 to 275,000,” said Sturrock, who has made voter turnout a niche topic in his classes and who was a Republican congressional candidate himself in 2004. If those figures hold, that would represent less than 9 percent of registered voters in Minnesota. 

It comes down to money, Sturrock said, using the 2010 DFL primary for governor as a baseline. That year, more than $10 million in total was spent in the three-way race for the DFL nomination, with 446,000 voters going to the polls.

“This time, the four Republican candidates [Jeff Johnson, Marty Seifert, Kurt Zellers, and Scott Honour] will spend a couple million dollars among them, maybe,” Sturrock said. 

So, which candidate has the advantage in a low turnout election?

“Lower turnout is best for the endorsed candidate, but there is a plausible path to victory for all four candidates,” said Sturrock who noted that each candidate has his own strategy to shave a winning margin.

As the endorsed candidate, the Hennepin County commissioner Johnson has access to the Republic party’s voter lists, its volunteer operations, and its get-out-the-vote call centers.

Scott Honour’s independent financing of his campaign — he’s contributed $900,000 of his own money so far – can buy him the same infrastructure, plus substantial exposure with radio and TV ads.

Seifert, the candidate with lowest amount of cash, has put in what Sturrock calls “windshield time,” visiting rural counties that have a history of higher voter turnout and areas with hot local contests. Seifert spent Sunday at the Derby Days parade in Shakopee, where two GOP candidates are competing for the nomination for state representative.

Zellers’ appeal to voters, according to Sturrock, is “an interesting message: ‘I’ve stood up against Mark Dayton and I’ve won.’”  Zellers also has raised enough money to communicate that message online and on television.

As for the spread of victory, “I don’t think we’ll see a very big spread, ten to 15 points between high to low and a very close spread between the top two candidates.”

Very close, he said, but adding, “hopefully not so close as to prompt a recount.”

Eric Lucero

In case we needed further confirmation that St. Michael is not like suburban Minneapolis, campaign finance reports indicate that the Republican primary for the state house seat in Wright County is a poor cousin to a similar face-off in Eden Prairie. 

In House District 30B, candidate Eric Lucero — who wrested the endorsement away from incumbent David FitzSimmons because of the latter's yes vote on same-sex marriage — has raised $14,340. 

His primary opponent, Kevin Kasel, has raised $6,779.

Contrast that to the GOP primary in House District 48B in Eden Prairie, where incumbent Rep. Jennifer Loon has raised $59,196. Her opponent, Shelia Kihne — who has made a Loon's yes vote on marriage central to her campaign — has raised $26,944.

Both Kihne and Loon are getting outside help. As reported by Bluestem Prairie, the Minnesota Family Council has aired cable TV aids in the southwest metro in support of Kihne.

But the winner in the money race on same-sex marriage as a campaign issue in 2014 appears to be Loon.  Freedom Minnesota, a PAC established specifically to support Loon’s candidacy, has raised $79,500. 

Kevin Kasel

And it's most recent donations include $25,000 each from Daniel Loeb, the New York hedge fund manager, and Seth Klarman, a Boston investment manager, as well as $10,000 from Minnesotans United, the group that defeated the marriage amendment and went on to help pass same-sex marriage legislation. 

Though both races have been altered by the 2013 gay marriage vote, there's a simple explaination when it comes to the money: Loon actually cast a vote, drawing the attention of donors like Loeb and Klarman, who both have a history of supporting the same-sex marriage movement.

The value of debates is debatable. 

I came to that conclusion this morning after learning that three of the four Republican candidates for governor had declined to participate in a debate on WCCO Radio Wednesday. 

Jeff Johnson, Kurt Zellers, and Scott Honour have decided to skip the last debate before the August 12 primary. One the debate’s moderators, Blois Olson, lamented in his daily newsletter, “The trail of debate dismissals by candidates of both parties suggests something more troubling. Candidates have become so handled and fearful of gaffes or tough questions that they hide behind ads and media statements.”

The trail of dismissals he's referring to is the decision by both Sen. Al Franken and Gov. Mark Dayton to skip the State Fair debates — and by Dayton to forgo the Farmfest debate.

Here’s my take. 

Having covered a few political debates myself and worked directly with candidates during my stint as a political operative, I don’t think it’s fear or overweening handlers that produced the great debate dodge of 2014.

From the campaign’s perspective, it’s a question of best use of time. Particularly in a primary with a low voter turnout, a candidate may be better off with narrow-casting rather than broadcasting the message. (Although I would have advised a candidate to take advantage of 90 minutes on WCCO radio.)

As to the perception that a candidate is more spontaneous in a debate format: I know that I’m not alone in being frustrated at the lack of spontaneity these days. In this Republican primary in particular, the candidates’ responses have been predictable to the point of sounding hollow.

Olson said this is a chicken-and-egg question.  “Is it that debates are boring because candidates are scripted or are candidates boring because they are so scripted?” he asked.

Fair point, and it’s one that underscores the fact that in live debate a candidate has the opportunity to convey a passion that a voter cannot perceive in a mailing or even a television ad.

Furthermore, when a candidate backs out, he or she risks giving the opposition a brief moment of high ground, as the fourth Republican candidate for governor, Marty Seifert, occupies today.

“I understand why the candidates are not interested in any further debates with me,” Seifert said in a statement.  “I ask every undecided primary voter to listen to these debates and make a decision regarding who is best prepared to debate Mark Dayton and actually be the governor of Minnesota." 

Seifert’s statement is about as close to a direct hit as any of the GOP candidates has made.  In a campaign without any sparks, one that will culminate in a low voter turnout on lazy Tuesday in August, the debate about debates is what passes for excitement.  

Don’t expect Mardi Gras. In fact, waiting for the results of today’s primary for the Republican nomination for governor — or for the other contested races in today’s primary — could be as quiet an affair as the campaign itself.

Even the party isn’t holding a party. The state GOP will not hold a centralized poll-watching event. Instead, the candidates will host their own election night parties. Republican Party chair Keith Downey and his staff will monitor the returns privately then head out to victory parties as the winners are announced.

In what is probably the most watched race of the primary season, the four-way race for the GOP governor’s nomination between Scott Honour, Marty Seifert, Kurt Zellers, and endorsed candidate Jeff Johnson, started the day with last minute pleas to voters at campaign stops, on Facebook and Twitter, and, in the case of Seifert, via text messages.      

Tonight, Honour will station his team in St. Paul, Seifert in Mankato, Zellers in Maple Grove, and Johnson in Plymouth.

The other Republican races to watch? It will be interesting to see how well endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden does against Rep. Jim Abeler, who managed to secure some high-profile endorsements. And in the race to represent Eden Prairie in the state House, a contest between incumbent Rep. Jenifer Loon and conservative activist Sheila Kihne, we’ll see how a lot of money affects a smaller race — and if gay marriage still brings out voters.

For more, check out MinnPost’s roundup of the most contested races of the primary season. And tonight, don’t forget to check out to our campaign dashboard to keep tabs on the results as they come in. 

In the race to be the Republican nominee for governor, Jeff Johnson took the lead over his three opponents almost immediately after polls closed Tuesday night — and never lost it.  In an election marked by low voter turnout, Johnson, a Hennepin County commissioner, had just over 30 percent of the vote when the race was called.

Former Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers was holding on to 24 percent of the vote, followed by former state Rep. Marty Seifert with 21 percent of the vote and businessman Scott Honour, also with 21 percent.

Johnson reached out to his competitors in his first comments in accepting victory.

“They ran great campaigns, they ran substantive campaigns, and hopefully they will be walking side by side with us across the state,” he said to a crowd of about 150 supporters who gathered at Digby’s Bar and Grill in Plymouth.

Then Johnson took aim at his opponent in the November election, Gov. Mark Dayton.

“Mark Dayton is a fairly popular incumbent … but we can beat him,” he said.  “I have a vision of a state where government isn’t taking more and more … to feed its insatiable appetite for spending. I have a vision of a state where we have ended this obsession of anger and envy over income differences.”

In an interview, Johnson said he doesn’t accept the premise that the state’s low unemployment numbers give Dayton an edge.

“Half the people are working in jobs they don’t want to be in, either part time or at a level or pay lower than where they should be,” he said.  “We don’t need more minimum-wage jobs in Minnesota. We need more good-paying jobs and careers in Minnesota.”

Johnson will join Zellers, Honour, and Seifert tomorrow in St. Paul in what’s being billed as a “unity event.”

The DFL Party will follow with its own response to the primary, not to extol the DFL primary winners, but to talk about  “GOP policies that weakened the middle class and communities.”

DFL party chair Ken Martin was working hard to portray Jeff Johnson, the Republican nominee for governor, as “a Tea Party extremist,” an “affable” one, but an extremist nonetheless, one who would take the state backward.

Martin’s comments followed the Republican party’s “unity” news conference in which Johnson, flanked by the three men he beat in Tuesday’s primary, laid out his vision for defeating Gov. Mark Dayton in November.

“We have to be united as a Republican party” Johnson said, but added, “We need a vision that will bring in independents.”

The GOP primary candidates, Scott Honour, Kurt Zellers, and Marty Seifert, all pledged unequivocal support for Johnson’s candidacy. 

Johnson made it clear his campaign will carry on with the themes of his primary campaign. On education reform he said, “A great education should be available to every kid in this state regardless of where that kids lives.” On reforming MinnesotaCare, he said that patients and doctors should make healthcare decisions “not insurance companies, certainly not the government.”  

He said he wanted to reign in government’s “insatiable appetite for growth and abandon the principle that the poor are poor and the rich are rich and all we can do is redistribute the wealth.” 

Johnson said that his recent hospital stay for stomach infection would have no effect on his general election campaign.  When asked whether his mild-mannered presence could be a hindrance if the campaign gets feisty, he replied, “I am a nice guy.”  He said he wanted to talk about a positive message that he described as a “big picture of balance and common sense reform.”

That is not what the DFL’s Martin wanted to talk about in the party’s response to Johnson’s victory lap. Martin delivered his criticism solo and dodged a question about when Dayton himself would emerge to join the fray. “The GOP, under Jeff Johnson’s leadership… wants to take us back to the days when people were kicked off their health insurance because of pre-existing conditions,” Martin said.  “They want to take us back to the days of balancing budgets through gimmicks and smoke and mirrors, back to the days of shutdowns and borrowing from our school districts.”

As Martin referenced votes Johnson made as a state legislator and county commissioner, he signaled that while Dayton’s record was wide open for scrutiny, so was Johnson’s.  

Indirectly, however, the Republicans and Democrats agreed on improving one outcome of Tuesday’s primary: low voter turnout.  Just fewer than 10 percent of the state’s registered voters went to the polls. 

While GOP party chair Keith Downey tried to put a positive spin on the turnout, citing improvement over 2010, he has been working with Martin to move the primary to a date in June.  Dayton and Johnson also support a June primary. “Yesterday’s results in terms of turnout were not a good thing,” Martin said. “In terms of democracy, it’s not a good thing when you have just the hard core partisans who show up.”  

DFL Party Chair Ken Martin

“I made a commitment when I ran for this position that we were going to put value behind our party endorsement.”

Who said it?

If you follow inside-the-ball-park politics, you might assume the speaker is Keith Downey, chair of the state Republican Party, whose endorsement process was challenged head-on this year when three candidates — Scott Honor, Kurt Zellers, and Marty Seifert — ran against the party’s endorsed candidate for governor, Jeff Johnson.

You’d be wrong. DFL party chair Ken Martin said it in a post-primary wrap-up. “Last evening, everyone of our endorsed candidates prevailed,” he pointed out.

While the state’s caucus system and the endorsing conventions that follow are criticized for attracting the political extremes, Martin defends the activist base with the same vigor as Downey.

“We feel very strongly about making this grass roots process [that] we have, the caucuses and convention process, continue,” Martin said. “It’s a unique process that allows ordinary people to have a say in the political process.”

Technically, Minnesota is not unique in the caucus route to endorsement. Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, and Maine have similar processes. In all other states, candidates for office go directly to a primary.

Downey says the system works.

“I think we have displayed over the last six to 12 months that the endorsement carries a lot more oomph behind it, there’s more power behind it,” he said. “We displayed the ability at our convention to endorse great candidates; we captured the imagination and energy of the activist base, the donor base. Those are all good signs that the endorsement has regained some its impact.” 

If endorsed candidate for governor Jeff Johnson hadn’t won, Downey acknowledged there would be calls to reconsider. “Had the race gone the other way, I’m not sure that would mean everything,” he said. “Evaluating the value of the endorsement is a long cycle.”

Republican Party Chair Keith Downey

But he was satisfied with the results this year: all but one of the party’s endorsed candidates beat their primary challengers.

To be sure, Martin’s forceful defense of the DFL endorsement was heightened by the contest for auditor. Challenger Matt Entenza lost to incumbent and endorsee Rebecca Otto. Entenza spent nearly $700,000 on the race, forcing Otto and the party to respond in kind in a campaign that became testy and confrontational.

“We’re unified as a party,” Martin said. “Maybe Matt should have thought about that before taking on an incumbent.” 

Martin and Downey want the state’s primary to be moved to a date in June, for political pragmatism. The August 12 primary turnout was so miniscule that there’s little information a campaign can glean from examining the votes. And the late date gives non-incumbent candidates only about ten weeks to make a claim they deserve election.

With their advocacy of an earlier primary, the two party leaders also reveal acknowledgement of another political reality — no matter how hard they try to keep the endorsement process relevant, the party’s candidates of choice will continue to draw outside challengers.

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Barb Sutter

Candidates for public office in Minnesota are often proud of the endorsements they receive from various interest groups.

But they also pay a price for them: Not in promises they’re forced to keep, but in the hours required to fill out the surveys that lead to those endorsements, be they from the Minnesota Farm Bureau, the Minnesota Dermatological Society, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, or one of the other dozens of special interest groups that ask candidates to elaborate their positions via often-extensive questionnaires (like this one from the AARP [PNG]).

The inundation in a candidate’s in-box led Barb Sutter, Republican candidate for Minnesota House District 49B, which covers parts of Bloomington and Edina, to send an email to her supporters explaining why she’s opting out of some responses.

“I have an inch-thick folder of these questionnaires, ranging from the Soybean Growers to the Minnesota Dermatological Association,” she said. “I am completing any questionnaire that deals with an issue that affects the lives and welfare of Minnesotans generally. However, I am not answering questions on topics about which I don’t feel competent to comment or that require more time for research than I have at the moment.”

Her opponent, DFL state Rep. Paul Rosenthal, says the sheer number of questionnaires can be “overwhelming.” He’s received “about 30 or 40,” and like Sutter, he often gets them from groups with no direct relation to the district.    

“Some of them are from groups that I don’t come into contact with in my committee assignments,” Rosenthal said. “Some of those farm groups, for example. My district doesn’t really have any family farms anymore. And if I’m not comfortable or I’m not fluent, I tend to stay away.”

State Rep. Paul Rosenthal

The National Federation of Independent Businesses does get a high response rate to its endorsement questionnaire, even though it’s five pages long. “These are general business questions rather than technical questions,” said NFIB state director Mike Hickey. “If it’s really industry specific, I can see why some one would choose not to fill it out.”

For a candidate for governor, the requests and the paperwork are doubled. “We’ve been swamped, they keep flowing in,” said David Strom, chief researcher for Republican Jeff Johnson’s campaign for governor. Strom said he anticipates the campaign will receive up to 80 questionnaires before election day.

“The way that they come, they have to be triaged, drafts have to be done and it goes to Jeff, who obviously completes the questionnaire,” he said. “You make sure you speak to all the voters, but you can’t answer five different surveys from groups on the same issue.” 

Johnson, Sutter, Rosenthal, and many other candidates share a dislike for one questionnaire technique in particular: the pledge.

“I will not take any pledge,” Rosenthal said. “I think that’s out of bounds because you never know what’s going to come down the line.”

Sutter has a similar strategy. “I am not completing questionnaires that only allow for ‘Yes’ or “No” answers and do not allow for comments,” she said in an email. “I am not signing any pledges.”

Johnson refused to sign a no-tax pledge requested by Americans for Tax Reform, the group founded by anti-tax advocate (some say dictator) Grover Norquist. In refusing, Johnson said his record stands for itself.

The candidates, though, are sensitive to the perception they may not care about these special interest groups. “I understand different groups want to send them,” Rosenthal said.

Sutter went a step further. In her explanation of how she deals with the surveys, she  closed with this postscript: “P.S. I am all for soybean growers and dermatologists!”