All bets are on a clash of political titans

11/14/2005

by BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

“The idea that Mike Hatch would represent himself as a healer is laughable. He’s been one of the most notorious, bare-knuckles political street fighters in the state’s history.” — Gov. Tim Pawlenty

“Tim Pawlenty has done more to divide this state than any politician I have known.” — Attorney General Mike Hatch

Although the next election for Minnesota governor is a year away, the prospect of a colossal clash between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Attorney General Mike Hatch already has the political class chattering.

They are two of the best-known political figures in the state. The first-term governor is considered a rising star on the national Republican stage. Hatch, a major player in state politics for a quarter-century, is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s highest state-office holder, and he holds the record for getting the most votes for a partisan statewide office — nearly 1.2 million in 2002.

“I think it will be a no-holds-barred, energetic, contentious race,” said Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. “They’re both savvy campaigners, and they know the issues inside out. Both have strong convictions, and they have strong bases of people who really believe in them.”

“It’s clearly a heavyweight bout,” said Weaver, who should know. He was Pawlenty’s first chief of staff and the Republican candidate for attorney general whom Hatch defeated in 1998.

The bout is not a done deal. While Pawlenty is a virtual shoo-in for the Republican nomination, Hatch faces a battle for the DFL party’s backing. But, as former state DFL Chairman Mike Erlandson said last week, Hatch “has to be considered the 800-pound gorilla in the race.”

A Pawlenty-Hatch match-up probably would be an unusually spirited race for one simple reason: These guys really don’t like each other.

First, Hatch criticized Pawlenty’s Commerce Department for negotiating a lower fine for an insurance company that had contributed $15,000 to the state Republican Party during the 2002 governor’s race. Weaver responded by blaming Hatch for a confidentiality agreement that barred the state from revealing the terms of its settlement with the insurance company, which was accused of deceiving elderly Minnesotans into buying unnecessary policies.

Next, Hatch accused the governor’s administration of prematurely releasing sex offenders from state treatment programs. Weaver, in turn, accused the attorney general of playing politics with the issue.

More recently, Pawlenty questioned whether Hatch could fairly represent him in court during a government shutdown because the attorney general had “divided loyalties.” Hatch replied that he would represent the state, not the governor, whom he blamed for the eight-day partial shutdown in July.

In August, Hatch said the governor could have avoided a tobacco industry lawsuit against the state if he had simply called Minnesota’s new 75-cents-a-pack “health impact fee” a tax. Pawlenty press secretary Brian McClung responded that “any aggressive first-year law student could win this case.”

Throughout the back and forth, Pawlenty and his allies have suspected that Hatch was trying to undermine the governor while laying the foundation for his next campaign. Hatch believed that Pawlenty was orchestrating a Republican campaign to tarnish his reputation.

“There’s a compelling personal drama attached to this race,” said Gustavus Adolphus College political scientist Chris Gilbert. “Mike Hatch has been nipping at Pawlenty’s heels for four years.”

The two candidates hardly disguise their disdain for each other.

Noting that Hatch launched his career as state DFL chairman in 1980, Pawlenty said his opponent “came up through the ranks as a political hack.”

He said Hatch earned his reputation as a street fighter in 1990, when he “tried to knee-cap (Gov.) Rudy Perpich” by challenging him in the DFL gubernatorial primary after Perpich gave Hatch a plum Cabinet job as commerce commissioner.

Here’s Hatch’s take on Pawlenty: “He has a nice, pleasant personal demeanor, but his politics are very flawed. He’s all politics all the time.”

He accused the governor of focusing on issues that “inflame people,” such as gay marriage and illegal immigrants, instead of the state’s basic needs.

Pawlenty does indeed raise some of those issues. He said of Hatch: “He’s going to be for increased taxes. I’m not.

“He’s going to be for more illegal immigration. I’m not.

“He’s going to be for more welfare … for gay marriage. I’m not.”

And he asserted that Hatch would push for a government-run health care system, while “I’m for making sure that consumers and purchasers have the power in their hands.”

Hatch said that’s a complete misrepresentation of his positions.

“Anyone who would make the fulcrum of the debate to be welfare, gay marriage and illegal immigrants is simply trying to divide and scare people,” he said.

Hatch said he is not planning to raise taxes or expand welfare.

“As far as I know, we have identical positions on gay marriage. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said. But he declined to support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that Pawlenty backs.

He’s bewildered by Pawlenty’s emphasis on illegal immigration, he said, because governors “have nothing to do with that issue.”

Unlike the governor, Hatch said, he will focus on the “basic bread-and-butter issues” of health care, education, clean water and transportation.

Pawlenty said health care and education also would be top-priority campaign issues for him.

Here are some of the candidates’ political assets and liabilities:

PAWLENTY

Pawlenty is the incumbent, and Minnesota voters tend to be kind to folks they’ve elected before.

While the state has gone through some rocky financial times on his watch, it’s relatively stable now.

He’s likable. “Even though I disagree with him on issues, he’s a personable, self-deprecating, ‘average Joe’ kind of guy,” said Democrat Jeff Blodgett, executive director of Wellstone Action.

On the downside for Pawlenty, recent polls show his job-approval rating hovering around 50 percent, a bare minimum for a governor heading into an election, said Minneapolis pollster Bill Morris.

Some Minnesotans blame him for the partial state shutdown last summer, which contributed to a “growing perception that state government is dysfunctional,” said Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier.

As Pawlenty has said, the national Republican Party is “on the ropes” because of President Bush’s political problems. If those troubles persist next year, it could be a “bit of a psychic weight” on Pawlenty’s campaign, said Gilbert, the Gustavus professor.

Then there’s what Morris calls the “six-year itch.” A president’s party often fares poorly in the elections in the sixth year of his term. In Minnesota during the past 50 years, Morris said, the president’s party has won the governorship only three times in 12 “sixth-year” elections.

HATCH

Hatch heads into the race as a popular, well-known officeholder and an aggressive consumer advocate.

“He comes from the old and honorable DFL tradition of sticking up for the common people,” Gilbert said.

He’s politically ambitious. Republicans say he’s in it for Mike Hatch, not for the public good. But Gilbert said others view it as the “right kind of ambition, that he wants to move up to do things for people.”

Hatch has an anti-establishment appeal, said veteran Republican strategist Tom Horner, co-founder of the Himle Horner public relations firm. If voters are mad at politicians and government next year, he said, “Mike Hatch is a great candidate for angry voters.”

But the combative and outspoken Hatch has made enemies over the years. He has angered many in the business community with aggressive lawsuits and annoyed many DFLers by challenging their endorsed candidates in three primary elections.

Hatch has an edgier personality than Pawlenty. He can be short-tempered.

“We’re going to see whether he can blow a fuse in public,” Schier said. “Certainly, his circuits are going to be tested.”