Gas prices fall, the pain remains

"B-log"

09/29/2006

But few Minnesotans consider fuel costs a top campaign issue

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Although gasoline prices have been plummeting for the past eight weeks, half of Minnesotans say fuel costs have caused them financial hardships this year, according to a recent poll for the Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio.

Take Minneapolis retiree Patrick Ryan, for example. “I’m on a limited income,” he said this week, “and having gas go up 50 percent this summer really affected my pension. Made me cut back in other areas.”

Three-fifths of Minnesotans surveyed said higher gas prices had forced them to cut back on driving since the start of the year, according to the poll of 625 registered state voters Sept. 18-20.

Todd Bradshaw, a machinist from Oakdale, said he and his family take more walks, bike rides and day trips to “stuff that’s closer and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, instead of, say, going to Duluth.”

Half the respondents said they stayed closer to home for a vacation this year.

Mark Anderson, an ambulance company financial manager from Maple Plain, was one of them. “We were going to go camping in Montana or somewhere out West, and we didn’t go as far,” he said. “We went to Lake Okoboji in Iowa because gas prices were so high.”

Half of respondents also said they considered buying a car with better gas mileage.

But only 1 in 4 said they had gotten out of their cars and adopted other means of transportation, such as biking, walking or taking mass transit.

Emily Ahlsten, an office assistant from Coon Rapids, usually takes the bus, and she walks or bikes to her destinations when she can.

“I don’t own a car,” Ahlsten said. “Why would I want to pay that much money on gas?”

One in 10 respondents had joined a car pool.

Minnesotans are more concerned about gas prices now than they were two years ago, when gas cost less than $2 a gallon. In a 2004 Pioneer Press-MPR survey, a third of the state’s voters said they cut back on driving and a third reported staying closer to home for vacations.

At that time, just 1 in 6 respondents said they used mass transit, bikes or other forms of transportation, instead of their cars. And 7 percent belonged to a car pool.

This year, gas prices were a hot issue in early August, when they shot up to more than $3 a gallon. Since then, however, prices have steadily declined to around $2.17 a gallon in Minnesota and $2.21 in the Twin Cities, according to minnesotagasprices.com Wednesday.

What does that mean for the Nov. 7 elections? The drop in gas prices probably has diminished the significance of an issue that Democrats have been stressing for months. They tried to link high fuel costs to record oil company profits and big tax breaks.

But the survey showed only 1 percent of Minnesotans considered gas prices the most important issue in the U.S. Senate race. It was overshadowed as an issue by the war in Iraq, health care, the war on terror and taxes and government spending.

The gas price issue didn’t work for former U.S. Rep. Bill Luther when he ran for attorney general this summer. He campaigned on a promise to target oil company price gouging if elected, but he finished a distant third in the Sept. 12 DFL primary.

“I’m the only candidate in the country who took on the oil companies, and by doing so, the prices just kept coming down,” Luther joked in an interview last week.

While he lost the election, he said he still believes fuel costs remain a salient political issue.

“Most of the people I talked to about gas prices felt that any reduction couldn’t be relied on or trusted over time. They couldn’t understand any justification for the spikes and the wild price changes,” he said.

Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar and U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy, Minnesota’s Democratic and Republican U.S. Senate candidates, respectively, still consider energy costs an important issue.

“Has the chatter decreased over the past month? Sure, but Mark remains focused on long-term solutions, not just looking to score political points,” Kennedy campaign press secretary Heidi Frederickson said. “Energy prices and dependence on foreign sources of oil are things Kennedy was concerned with long before gas prices were hovering around $3 dollars a gallon and remain a focus with prices closer to $2.”

To Ben Goldfarb, Klobuchar’s campaign manager, those prices are part of a broader array of politically potent pocketbook issues.

“Gas prices are still up 50 percent since Congressman Kennedy took office in 2000,” Goldfarb said. “When you add that to skyrocketing health care, college tuition and home ownership costs, Minnesotans are definitely hurting. People know that people in Washington, including Congressman Kennedy, haven’t done enough on any of those issues to affect long-term change.”

Gas prices remain a hot topic at water coolers across the nation. A Pew Research Center poll released Sept. 16 found that “gasoline and energy prices are far and away the most talked about issues among Americans today.” Three-fourths said the subject comes up frequently in conversations with family and friends.

But fewer see it as the biggest issue. In May, 14 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew said gas and energy prices were the most important problem facing the country. This month, only 7 percent gave fuel prices top billing.

About the poll

This poll of registered Minnesota voters was conducted for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio from Sept. 18 through Sept. 20. The polling was done by telephone by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C.

The survey included 625 Minnesotans chosen through a random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers.

Quotas were assigned to reflect voter turnout by county.

The margin of error is 4 percentage points.