Hutchinson declares run for governor
01/26/2006
Third-party hopeful aims to break gridlock
BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press
Peter Hutchinson, a former Minnesota state finance commissioner and Minneapolis schools superintendent, formally declared his Independence Party candidacy for governor Wednesday. He told a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters and inquisitive onlookers at the Minneapolis Hilton Hotel that he wants to take partisanship — at least the bitter sort that has deadlocked state government — out of Minnesota politics.
“I’m a candidate because politics in Minnesota is broken,” Hutchinson said. “Minnesotans know what to do with it; they know how to fix it. They know that to get our politics back we have to stand up and claim our independence from the gridlock, from the partisanship, from the paralysis that is taking our state nowhere.”
He urged the audience to “reject the claims of the party extremists that tell us that what matters most in Minnesota is whether we go left or right, when we all know the direction we need to go is forward.”
The large crowd included many moderate Republicans and Democrats, including former Cabinet members from the administrations of Govs. Al Quie, Rudy Perpich and Arne Carlson, plus leaders from Gov. Jesse Ventura’s Independence Party.
Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican leaders contend Hutchinson is a very long shot to win the race and is more likely to be a spoiler. Both sides predicted he would siphon votes away from the DFL candidate and help re-elect GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Anticipating the spoiler charge, Hutchinson told the audience, “It’s sort of hard to imagine how you could make this spoiled system even more spoiled.”
A new poll shows Hutchinson starts the race far behind the frontrunners. A survey of 625 Minnesota voters, conducted
Jan. 2-9 by Decision Resources Ltd. of Minneapolis, showed 39 percent supported or leaned toward Pawlenty and 29 percent favored DFL Attorney General Mike Hatch, while just 4 percent backed Hutchinson. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points. It did not ask about the other DFL candidates.
It did, however, show some openings for Hutchinson. For one thing, more than 1 in 4 voters has not picked a favorite candidate.
Also, nearly as many voters identified themselves as independents (30 percent) as Democrats (34 percent) or Republicans (31 percent).
And Hutchinson’s moderate message could appeal to a large bloc of voters. Forty-four percent of the survey respondents identified themselves as moderate, compared with 34 percent conservative and 14 percent liberal.
In his speech, Hutchinson, 56, a public policy consultant from Minneapolis, said he would focus on solving the most critical problems facing the state — education, health care, transportation, energy and the environment — and not get sucked into debates over deeply divisive social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage.
Social issues are important, he said, but it’s impossible to get people to agree on their fundamental beliefs. Instead, he said he would try to get both sides to find points of agreement.
He supports abortion rights but said he’d try to get the factions warring over that issue to agree to do more to prevent unwanted pregnancies and encourage adoptions.
He opposes a constitutional ban on gay marriage but said, “I’m for marriage,” and pledged to try to reduce the number of divorces.
He advocated broadening the sales tax base to more goods and services to provide a more stable source of state revenue.
To ease traffic congestion, he supports a gas-tax increase and would use part of the new revenue — now constitutionally dedicated exclusively to highways — for bus and rail transit. He also would consider a regional sales tax for transit.
He opposes state subsidies for professional sports stadiums but would build roads and sewers to service them. And he’s against expanding gambling.
Born in Faribault, Hutchinson is a former vice president of public affairs for the Dayton Hudson Corp. After serving as Perpich’s state finance commissioner, he co-founded the Public Strategies Group Inc., a consulting firm that has advised hundreds of state and local governments across the country to redesign their services and systems. He is the co-author of the 2004 book “The Price of Government.”