Hatch makes offer to Wetterling

01/25/2006

He asks Wetterling to be running mate

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Attorney General Mike Hatch has asked children’s safety advocate Patty Wetterling to be his running mate on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party ticket next fall.

“I’ve told her that if she’s interested in running for lieutenant governor, I’d love to have her,” Hatch, a DFL candidate for governor, said Tuesday.

Wetterling, who withdrew from the U.S. Senate race Friday, said Hatch’s offer is one of a “lot of options” she is considering. Other possibilities include running for Congress in the 6th District or for secretary of state. She said she also has some “interesting offers from the private sector.”

She plans to make a decision “within a week, 10 days max,” she said.

The St. Joseph, Minn., woman, who transformed the 1989 abduction of her 11-year-old son, Jacob, into a national crusade for child safety, is one of the best-known and most popular public figures in the state.

“This is a life-changing decision for me,” Wetterling said. “It’s not something I take lightly.

“My life has been passionate and open about caring for children and grandchildren and the world we’re turning over to them. To me, that’s the very future of this nation. So what I’m looking at is how can I be most effective in fulfilling my mission in life.”

Hatch said a “huge number of people” from DFL “stakeholder groups” want her to be his running mate.

In a related development, Hatch said he would run for governor even without the DFL endorsement, as long as he made a good showing at the party’s state convention in June.

The party’s leading vote getter and its highest state officeholder, Hatch said he seems to be gathering the support he’ll need to win the endorsement. A survey by his campaign of 7,000 DFL activists who have been delegates or alternates to party conventions since 2000 showed “we had about 50 percent support,” he said. “That’s pretty strong, but you don’t know whether they’ll be delegates again.”

Three other DFL gubernatorial candidates — state Sen. Becky Lourey, shopping center developer Kelly Doran and perennial candidate Ole Savior — already have announced they would run in the Sept. 12 primary, regardless of who the DFL convention endorses. Hatch said that factor influenced his decision, as did pressure from potential contributors and interest groups considering endorsements who want assurances that he will be a candidate after June. State Sen. Steve Kelley of Hopkins is the only candidate who said he would abide by the endorsement.

“Endorsement once served as a bright-line test of viability,” Hatch said. “You had to have the endorsement in order to run. People would work through the party to make sure the endorsed candidate prevailed in the primary and went on to win the election. Today, not only does it not serve as a bright-line test, it doesn’t even serve to winnow down candidates.’’

Hatch also noted that 1970 was the last time a nonincumbent, DFL-endorsed candidate was elected governor, when Wendell Anderson won.

Hatch ran unsuccessfully against the DFL-endorsed candidates for governor in 1990 and 1994, and he defeated the DFL endorsee for attorney general in 1998.

If he does not get strong support for governor at the DFL convention, he said he would seek re-election as attorney general.

“I really like this job; it’s a great job,” he said. “But I am not at all happy about the direction of this state. I think I’m in a good position to become governor, and I’d be in a good position to change the state’s direction as governor.”
State DFL Chairman Brian Melendez acknowledged, “The party’s track record in getting its endorsed candidates elected is not that great.”

But he said the solution to that problem is to endorse the strongest candidate. In the past, DFL delegates often have picked ideologically pure candidates or those with the longest records of service to the party instead of those with the best chance of winning.

Melendez predicted the endorsement will carry more weight this year because — following a record turnout at the 2004 precinct caucuses — he expects more people to participate in the endorsing process.

“Candidates should seek the endorsement because, while it is not sufficient for the nomination (which goes to the primary winner), it gives a big boost to whoever gets it,” he said.