Kennedy, Klobuchar quicken pace of race
07/25/2006
Two U.S. Senate candidates took significant steps, launching a TV ad and copping an endorsement.
Patricia Lopez, Star Tribune
Last update: July 25, 2006 – 12:03 AM
DFL U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar launched her second statewide television ad on Monday, while Republican candidate Mark Kennedy nabbed the endorsement of the Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police, indicating a quickening pace in the Senate race.
Kennedy’s endorsement was the first the statewide organization has made since its inception in 1991, said Gary Cayo, the organization’s president.
Cayo said the order, which has about 2,000 members, mostly outstate officers, agreed on Kennedy because he had supported law enforcement initiatives on ballistic vests, secured grants to eliminate methamphetamine labs and promoted full Social Security benefits for police officers. Cayo said Klobuchar had not sought the organization’s endorsement.
Klobuchar spokeswoman Tara McGuinness said the campaign intended to seek the endorsement of other public safety organizations, including Minnesota’s largest, the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association.
Cayo said his order will endorse candidates in congressional races but not for governor, attorney general or other statewide or legislative races because “the whole group chose not to.”
Kennedy said that he welcomed the group’s endorsement and that promoting law enforcement objectives fits with the heightened emphasis on national security.
Versus insurance industry
Klobuchar’s newest ad touts her role in helping pass a 1996 state law requiring hospitals to offer a minimum 48-hour stay for new mothers. Klobuchar, who gave birth to her daughter in 1995, was forced to leave the hospital even though her newborn was in an incubator, because her health maintenance organization would not cover a longer stay.
Klobuchar testified before a state legislative committee in 1995 and organized pregnant mothers to show up. The ad features pictures of her daughter in the incubator and, at the end of the ad, as a strapping 10-year-old. A narrator says that “Amy Klobuchar took on the insurance industry.” At the end Klobuchar hugs her daughter, who holds two thumbs up for the camera.
New GOP headquarters
State Republican Party officials celebrated the opening of their election headquarters in Plymouth on Monday, with about 70 volunteers cheering on Kennedy and other statewide and legislative candidates.
David Gaither, Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s chief of staff and a former state senator, told the crowd that volunteers would have to work hard for victory.
“Make no mistake,” he hold the crowd, “We are a purple state. We’re trending Republican, but we are no way there yet.”
He predicted that Democrats would outspend Republicans and send thousands of “paid mercenaries” into the state to canvass for support, but that Republicans would counter with grass-roots and “kitchen-table selling” of the party’s candidates.