Spoiler alert: Entenza could wreck Kelliher’s evening on Tuesday

08/08/2010

by Britt Robson
Politics in Minnesota
Published: August 6,2010


Ever since Margaret Anderson Kelliher captured the DFL endorsement for governor at the party convention in April and turned her attention toward a primary challenge from two well-heeled rivals, Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, the dynamics of the race have remained relatively stable.

Dayton has consistently led in the polls by a clear if not always comfortable margin, with Kelliher a solid second and Entenza a respectable third. The latest poll results, released August 5 by KSTP-TV and SurveyUSA, paint the spread this way: Dayton 43 percent, Kelliher 27 percent and Entenza 22 percent, with 7 percent undecided.

Last week, as the campaigns entered the home stretch of primary season, the conventional wisdom was that the outcome of the race would come down to whether Kelliher’s vaunted “ground game” and her broad base of support in labor as the DFL endorsee would be enough to overcome Dayton’s superior name recognition and campaign cash advantage, not to mention the fond memories he engenders through his family name and his history as an office-holder at the state and federal levels.

Which begs the question: What is Entenza’s role in this drama? Although he has already reported a whopping $4 million in campaign expenditures, and has added another $1 million to his campaign coffers since, precious few people outside of his campaign believe he has a chance to win.

But that’s a far cry from irrelevance. Indeed, if the distance between the top two candidates tightens up considerably when the primary votes are counted, as many insiders are predicting, Entenza will become the prospective spoiler for either Dayton or Kelliher. As longtime Iron Range DFL political consultant and lobbyist Gary Cerkvenik puts it, “Anyone who is getting 17 percent [in the polls] certainly has the power to swing the election one way or the other.”

Pundits: Entenza hurts Kelliher’s chances

At first glance, it would appear that the votes Entenza garners are likelier to come out of Dayton’s hide than Kelliher’s. Kelliher, after all, is the lone woman among the three, the only one with official party support, and the lone current office-holder. The race could be seen as Margaret against a couple of rich white male outsiders trying to buy their way to victory. This scenario looks roughly analogous to what in fact transpired in the 2006 primary for DFL attorney general, when Lori Swanson defeated a pair of established and reasonably well-funded white males, former congressman Bill Luther and former legislator Steve Kelley.

But the coterie of pundits PIM spoke with - all veteran observers of state DFL politics - are unanimous in their belief that if Entenza is going to spoil the party for anyone on primary night, it will be Kelliher. In large part that’s because Dayton, despite lacking his party’s endorsement, is thought to have a more loyal and extensive base of support than either Kelliher or Entenza.

(It appears the Entenza campaign shares that view of the electoral calculus, if the anti-Kelliher attack ad it released Thursday is any indication.)

“I think that, hands down, [Entenza] hurts Margaret more,” says Blois Olson, a longtime DFL analyst and consultant as the executive vice president of Tunheim Partners. “There is an institutional relationship between Dayton and the DFL base that is tough to sever whether he is endorsed or not. These people have voted for Mark Dayton multiple times, so he is the known entity. To beat him, Margaret has to draw a clear contrast between them. A three-way race makes that more difficult.

“Although,” Olson adds wryly, “if at the end of this, Margaret hasn’t convinced [primary voters] that these are two rich guys and that she is the one worrying about how to put her kids through college, then that’s political malpractice.”

But it isn’t just Dayton’s institutional history that is safeguarding his candidacy from inroads by his two rivals; it’s the way he has run this season, according to Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Governance and Politics at the Humphrey Institute on the U of M campus. “Dayton’s coalition has firmed up a bit - DFL, liberals, seniors. He all but said outright he was going to appeal to these groups and his campaign did [so] with very clear messages geared to them,” Jacobs wrote in an e-mail to PIM.

“This has given Dayton the advantage of a solid base so that even as Entenza climbed from the low single digits [in polls], [Dayton's] lead remains. For Margaret, Entenza’s rise has drained fish from the pond that she planned to fish in. In other words, voters unsure about Dayton are now splitting between Entenza and Kelliher rather than going to Kelliher directly. The bottom line - Entenza has clearly hurt Kelliher most.”

Hamline University political science professor David Schultz also cites shifting poll numbers as one reason to think Entenza is hurting Kelliher more than Dayton. “A quick and dirty eyeball of the polls shows you Entenza’s gain has come slightly more out of Kelliher’s numbers than Dayton’s,” says Schultz, who also buys into the notion that Dayton is the established name and known commodity in the race, which solidifies his own base while splitting the votes of those who oppose him. “Entenza’s ads go after Pawlenty and what has happened at the State Capitol,” notes Schultz. “That hurts all incumbents and certainly Kelliher,” who was speaker of the House for much of Pawlenty’s tenure.

Living on the Iron Range has given Cerkvenik the most tangible appreciation for the relative strength of Dayton’s base. “He has a wide range of support throughout the Iron Range and northeastern Minnesota because of his support of economic development here going back to the Perpich years. People here remember that, and seniors feel very good about him because he has based a lot of his campaign around support for senior issues,” Cerkvenik says. “So if Dayton has high visibility, high name recognition, and has been ahead in this race since day one, one would have to say the person Entenza is hurting the most is the one not named Mark Dayton.”

But if the clear consensus among pundits we interviewed is that Entenza hurts Kelliher more than Dayton, how bad is the damage? Entenza’s base of support seems clearly skewed toward a younger demographic not interested in the traditional system of caucuses and conventions; if those people can’t be motivated to come out and vote on a Tuesday in the middle of August, then his negative impact on Kelliher stands to be less than feared.

Opinions differ on the real strength of Entenza’s candidacy. Up on the range, Cerkvenik reports, “I haven’t seen one Entenza [lawn] sign. The only thing I’ve heard about Matt Entenza up here is from a friend of mine who runs an organization dealing with environmental sustainability issues, who said that Entenza came up and attended one of their meetings.”

“I’m obviously a believer in the value of purchasing media,” Olson says, but points out that the millions spent by Entenza in this instance may not have been the most efficient use of resources. “A DFL primary voter is a very specialized thing. If there are 300,000 primary voters” - a frequently cited ballpark estimate; there is no precedent for a primary in the middle of cabin season in Minnesota - “you’re broadcasting to a state with 5 million people trying to get those 150,000 people who are your primary voters.” Put simply, Olson believes Entenza’s poll numbers won’t translate into actual primary votes. “If Entenza gets double digits, Margaret is in trouble,” he predicts.

By comparison, Schultz is relatively bullish on Entenza’s potential showing, in part because he lives in Entenza’s former legislative district, an area of particular focus for the insurgent campaign. “Entenza is exceedingly smart,” says Schultz, “and I think does a better job of target marketing than Kelliher and Dayton. He is heavily targeting his old district - I’ve gotten 13 or 14 mailings. In a low-turnout race, the logic of moving small groups of hard-core voters could be a strength for him. I think he is going to make it a closer race than people are saying it will be.”

And that would be bad news for the DFL endorsee.