Independence Party candidate halts bid for Senate

08/18/2005

Dane Smith,
Star Tribune
August 18, 2005

Jack Uldrich, an Independence Party candidate for the U.S. Senate contest in 2006, dropped out Wednesday, citing the difficulties of running while simultaneously caring for his children and pursuing his writing career.

“I simply cannot afford to give the race 100 percent of my time, attention and commitment,” he said in an e-mail to supporters. “To win a seat in the U.S. Senate you have to pour your heart and soul into it ... and I don’t have that kind of energy in me at the moment.”

Uldrich, who was considered a viable candidate by many observers, has no heir-apparent in Minnesota’s durable but always struggling third party. The IP has been a force in statewide elections since 1992 and peaked with the election of Gov. Jesse Ventura in 1998. Uldrich was deputy director of the Minnesota Planning agency in Ventura’s administration and was chairman of the party from 2001 to 2003.

“Losing Jack is real loss,” said Jim Moore, the current IP chairman and a Senate candidate in 2002 who got just 2 percent of the vote. “He would have been a refreshing presence in the race. We do have 15 months until the election and I do think we will find a good candidate.”

The party’s statewide candidates for governor or the U.S. Senate have been performing well enough to affect the eventual outcome, typically getting more than the 5 percent necessary to qualify the party as major and therefore eligible for public campaign subsidies. Gubernatorial candidate Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman, got 16 percent of the vote in 2002.

Uldrich speculated that the party may concentrate next eyar on the governor’s race, where Peter Hutchinson, government consultant, author and a former superintendent of the Minneapolis public schools, is exploring a race.

A factor in Uldrich’s decision to drop out after just four months was the extraordinary early start in this year’s Senate race, he said, owing to Sen. Mark Dayton’s early announcement that he would not seek reelection, and Rep. Mark Kennedy’s aggressive and apparently successful effort to become a prohibitive favorite to secure the Republican nomination.

“The length of this campaign is absolutely insane ... it’s not healthy for the process,” Uldrich said.

He is enjoying some success as an author of both fiction and nonfiction. He recently completed a book on World War II General George C. Marshall and has two others in the works.

Concern about being away from his 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter also was a decisive factor, Uldrich said. “I found it much more difficult to be away from them than I imagined,” he wrote to supporters. “I tried to justify my absence from them by saying that what I was doing was for their and for all children’s benefit. I still feel that way, but at the end of the day my children’s development is one responsibility that I can’t delegate.”