DFL’s Kelly Doran to run for governor

"Campaign Races"

09/22/2005

Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
September 22, 2005

After struggling to establish himself in the crowded DFL U.S. Senate field, real estate developer Kelly Doran ended his nearly four-month-old Senate bid Wednesday and announced his candidacy for governor.

Despite peppering the state all summer with billboards that proclaimed him a Senate candidate “for all Minnesotans,” Doran said he had come to realize the job would mean too much time in Washington away from his four children, who range in age from 4 to 17.

“Our family is very important to us,” Doran said at a State Capitol news conference, “but we still strongly believe that our state and country are going in the wrong direction.” That, he said, and not any political calculation, motivated his switch.

After pouring $750,000 into his Senate campaign, Doran, 47, said he also will self-finance his gubernatorial bid and will not abide by spending limits.

Although he will seek his party’s endorsement, Doran—who has never run for elective office before—said he would decide later whether to enter a primary election should he fail to gain DFL backing.

Unlike the DFL Senate field, which includes such high-profile candidates as Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, child advocate Patty Wetterling and nonprofit leader Ford Bell, the DFL gubernatorial race has only state Sen. Steve Kelley, DFL-Hopkins, former legislator and nonprofit leader Bud Philbrook, frequent candidate Ole Savior and the specter of Attorney General Mike Hatch, who has yet to make a formal entry.

Republicans were gleeful about the chance to paint political neophyte Doran as a dilettante who couldn’t make up his mind which seat he wants.

“Kelly Doran, who failed in his bid for U.S. Senate, is now taking his lavish political shopping spree to the governor’s race,” state GOP Chairman Ron Carey said in a news release. “Unfortunately for Doran, Minnesotans aren’t interested in giving away the governor’s office to an impulse buyer.”

Carey also called Doran’s switch a “multimillion dollar wrecking ball for Mike Hatch’s lifelong gubernatorial aspirations and throws the DFL party into further disarray.” By contrast, he said, Republicans remain unified behind Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

‘Spring training’

Indeed, the Doran switch could gum up the primary season for DFLers, said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Humphrey Institute.

“This could make Hatch’s job three times as hard,” Jacobs said. He noted that Hatch, a veteran politician, lacks Doran’s personal wealth, which has been listed at $57 million to $210 million.

But Jacobs described Doran’s decision as a prudent political move: “Like a good fisherman, he sees a lot of rods in the Senate pond,” Jacobs said. “In the gubernatorial pond you’ve got two things: fewer rods and an incumbent who looked very strong a year ago, but who looks a little more vulnerable now.”

As for average voters, he said, “this will barely register. It’s all spring training stuff right now.”

Sarah Janecek, publisher of Politics in Minnesota and a Republican activist, called the switch “bizarre” but said the final contest is so far off—November 2006—that it probably will do no lasting harm.

“But it’s almost a worse place for him,” she said. “The governor’s race could be more difficult.”

Hatch was the top DFL vote-getter in the state in his last election and already has staked out a moderate Democratic agenda, she said.

A business-friendly moderate, Doran said he is better suited to an executive role. A supporter of abortion rights, Doran said he opposes a gay marriage ban in the state constitution and favors a 10 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax rise to beef up roads and transit. Pawlenty vetoed such a move this year.