Hatch in for fight for DFL backing

03/09/2006

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

The day after Minnesota’s precinct caucuses adjourned and the straw ballots were counted, it was clear that while Attorney General Mike Hatch is the front-runner for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor endorsement for governor, he isn’t going to win his party’s backing without a fight.

Hatch won the DFL’s nonbinding gubernatorial “preference poll” with 39 percent of the vote, but state Sen. Becky Lourey received 23 percent of the ballots and state Sen. Steve Kelley polled 22 percent. Real estate developer Kelly Doran, who plans to run in the Sept. 12 DFL primary, got 6 percent.

The two senators held Hatch far short of the 60 percent majority he would need to be endorsed at the state DFL convention in June.

“This race is wide open,” Lourey asserted Wednesday.

“Forty-five percent of the caucus attendees selected two state senators over a sitting attorney general. I think that’s an indication that he’s got some challenges,” Kelley said.

State Republican Party Chairman Ron Carey added, “The air of inevitability surrounding Mike Hatch is gone.”
Hatch shrugged off his opponents’ assessments, saying, “Everybody spins.”

But he may have lost the expectations game. Before the caucuses, he had released results of a survey that showed 45 percent of 7,000 previous DFL delegates favored his candidacy. Had he met or exceeded that number, his campaign most likely would have gained greater momentum and made it harder for the other candidates to catch up.

Nonetheless, Hatch pronounced his campaign “in good shape.” He noted that he won with a volunteer organization and, unlike the other DFL candidates, he had no paid staff. He again said he is saving his money for his fall campaign against Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Pawlenty had no intraparty opposition, so the state GOP proclaimed him the winner at its caucuses without a straw poll.

In the DFL race for the U.S. Senate endorsement, Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar outpolled veterinarian Ford Bell by more than a 4-to-1 ratio. With 86 percent of the precincts reporting, she received 77 percent of the votes to Bell’s 17 percent.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy has only token opposition for the Republican endorsement for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Mark Dayton.

The DFL straw polls results suggest about 30,000 voters attended the party’s caucuses. That’s down from the near-record 56,000 that turned out in 2004, but it exceeded the 15,000 to 25,000 that participated in 2000 and 2002.

State GOP spokesman Mark Drake estimated 20,000 people attended Republican caucuses, while Independence Party Chairman Jim Moore reported nearly 400 voters turned out for that party’s meetings and 107 more signed up to be delegates on the party’s online virtual caucuses.

Overall, fewer than 2 percent of the state’s 2.8 million registered voters attended the neighborhood political meetings.

In the DFL straw polls for other offices, Mark Ritchie, a voting rights and family farm activist, led the balloting for secretary of state with 38 percent of the votes, followed by attorney Christian Sande with 16 percent and perennial candidate Dick Franson with 5 percent.

In the DFL race for state auditor, former state Rep. Rebecca Otto received 46 percent of the vote to 12 percent for Reggie Edwards, a local government finance specialist from St. Paul.

State Rep. Matt Entenza of St. Paul, the only announced DFL candidate for attorney general, got 82 percent of the straw votes for that office.