Hatch must work to win DFL backing

11/14/2005

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Before Attorney General Mike Hatch can take on Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a match of political heavyweights next year, he will have to fight his way into the ring.

While Hatch is the early favorite to win the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nomination for governor, he must get past two and probably three credible contenders to reach the championship round.

His announced DFL challengers are state Sen. Steve Kelley of Hopkins, one of the state’s brainier legislators, and millionaire real estate developer Kelly Doran of Eden Prairie, who convinced political insiders he’s a serious candidate last month by spending $500,000 of his own money for a television ad campaign to introduce himself to voters.

State Sen. Becky Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, is almost ready to announce her candidacy. The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and a leader of the antiwar movement, she is a genuine liberal who’s very popular in the DFL’s progressive wing. She has scheduled a press conference Tuesday to announce her “future political intentions.’’

Minneapolis artist Ole Savior also is running. But after going 0 for 7 in statewide and congressional elections since 1984, the perennial candidate has no visible base of support.

Kelley and Lourey, if she runs, would compete with Hatch for the DFL endorsement at the party’s state convention June 9-11 in Rochester. Doran said he would run in the Sept. 12 DFL primary with or without the party’s endorsement.

All three agree on one point. In Doran’s words, “This (DFL nomination fight) is not over by a long shot.”

Hatch, who made his long-expected candidacy official Oct. 24, has already been endorsed by three of the state’s largest labor unions, about half the DFL legislators and a long list of past and present party leaders.

Lourey, who has been crisscrossing the state to build a campaign organization, said those endorsements are impressive.

“He has been running for a long, long, long time, and it is good organization on his part to have all this sewed up before we really even start the debates,” she said.

But the folks endorsing Hatch now are many of the same people who threw their early support to failed gubernatorial candidates Skip Humphrey in 1998 and Roger Moe in 2002, she said. “Their track record hasn’t been too good.

“What we have discovered is that the endorsement of the people is not locked up,” she said.

She also discovered a lot of people are fed up with rancorous, confrontational politics.

“They see me as someone who can bring people together,” she said.

Kelley said the race for the endorsement is wide open because Hatch has made a lot of enemies during his 25-plus years in DFL politics and many of roughly 45,000 newcomers to the party’s 2004 precinct caucuses are not committed to any candidate. If Kelley can raise $260,000 and organize a strong campaign operation by the end of this year, he said, he believes he can convince delegates that he could unite Democrats and appeal to the independent and moderate Republican voters that a DFLer needs to win.

Doran, who made a fortune developing shopping centers around Minnesota and left his business last summer to campaign full time, has the financial wherewithal to overwhelm his opponents. He listed assets worth between $57 million and $210 million but has not said how much of it he’s willing to spend.

Asked what distinguishes him from Hatch, Doran said: “I come from a business background. I know how to bring people together. I know how to get things done.”

Replacing Pawlenty with Hatch would simply be “trading one partisan for another,” he said