Kiscaden returns to DFL as Doran’s running mate

01/09/2006

As expected, DFL gubernatorial candidate Kelly Doran named state Sen. Sheila Kiscaden as his running mate.

Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
Last update: January 09, 2006 – 11:55 AM

Sen. Sheila Kiscaden, the Independence Party’s lone presence in the Minnesota Legislature, said today that she will switch to the DFL and run for lieutenant governor with gubernatorial candidate Kelly Doran.

Kiscaden, of Rochester, who started her elective career as a moderate Republican, switched to the IP in 2002 after being denied the GOP endorsement for reelection. She won and since then has crept steadily toward the DFL Senate majority, caucusing with DFLers and chairing the State Government Budget Division of the Finance Committee.

She characterized her official conversion as “coming back to my roots.” Kiscaden has said she was raised in a large family of Democratic trade unionists, but became a Republican as an adult because “the Republican Party had an active moderate wing that believed strongly in the role of government, in creating opportunity so that all can propsper and in assuring social justice.” That party, she said in an e-mail to supporters on Sunday night, “has changed.”

Doran, a real estate developer in his first bid for elective office, said today that his choice of Kiscaden was at attempt to “do away with the excessive partisanship that has divided us, crowded out good ideas and led to a government that has literally shut down for the first time in state history.” He and Kiscaden, he said, would lead a campaign with “hope, with ideas, with respect and with energy and civility.”

Kiscaden’s announcement elicited a swift and harsh response from the state Republican Party, which in a news release accused her of “clearly undergoing some sort of midlife political crisis.”

GOP state Chairman Ron Carey said in a news release that that both Kiscaden and Doran were “experts in political expediency” and that together they made for “the most opportunistic and unprincipled ticket in DFL history.”

IP state Chairman Jim Moore said in a news release today that Kiscaden, his party and citizens of Rochester all had benefited from her time in the party. Kiscaden and the IP “share the same goal of setting aside partisanship for the best interests of Minnesota,” Moore said. “But we fundamentally disagree on the means to achieve it.”

Although Moore did not name him, IP member Peter Hutchinson is expected to formally enter the gubernatorial race before long. Moore said only that leaving partisanship behind would require “a maverick,” and that such a maverick would enter the race at the end of the month.