Red or Blue? MN Cities changing stripes

10/23/2006

Dane Smith,
Star Tribune
Last update: October 22, 2006 – 10:14 PM

Few battlegrounds will be as crucial on election day as the environs of St. Cloud and Rochester, boom towns outside the metro area whose political personalities are changing.

German-Catholic central Minnesota once was strong DFL territory. But Stearns County, which encompasses St. Cloud and its western suburbs, went solidly for George Bush in 2000 and 2004. Five of the eight legislators in the St. Cloud area are Republicans.

Rochester used to be reliably Republican. But Olmsted County favored Bush over John Kerry by just 5 percentage points in 2004 and DFLers now control half of the legislative seats in the greater Rochester area.

Each city anchors a hotly contested congressional district. St. Cloud is in the open Sixth, where Republican state Sen. Michele Bachmann faces child safety advocate Patty Wetterling. Rochester is in the First, where six-term Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht is trying to stave off a challenge from Tim Walz, a high-school coach and National Guard veteran.

An assortment of residents of the two key cities recently shared their views of the candidates and the election with the Star Tribune. B3

Back to the DFL

Republicans have to be hoping that Don and Kathy Nuernberg are not typical.

They were hanging out last week at a coffee kiosk in the sprawling Crossroads Center in St. Cloud.

The Nuernbergs are unhappy about the war in Iraq, peeved about a recent 23 percent property tax increase on their house, and worried about health-care costs as they enter their retirement years. They voted for Democrats like U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey in the 1960s and ‘70s, but shifted toward Republicans in recent years, along with others in their region.

This year they are planning to vote for DFLers Mike Hatch for governor and Patty Wetterling for Congress. They’re still undecided in the Senate race between DFLer Amy Klobuchar and Republican Mark Kennedy, who is currently their congressman.

“We got ourselves in a war where we can’t get out,” said Kathy, 57, who works for a company that makes eyewear lenses. Wetterling has grown as a candidate since she ran in 2004 and is “showing us something now,” Kathy said.

In the governor’s race, Republican efforts to portray Hatch as an angry and ruthless bully aren’t persuasive, 66-year-old Don says. “He fights for what he’s after. And it’s not a bad thing if he goes after what people want.”

Typical or not, the Nuernbergs may not be unique. Steve Frank, co-director of the St. Cloud State University Survey, said he is about half-finished with a pre-election poll and so far it looks like Democratic party support is much higher than it’s been in recent years.

‘They’ll come to their senses’

About 150 miles away at a food court in downtown Rochester, hard-charging food sales rep Dan Lovik, pausing now and then to enter data on his laptop, voiced confidence that Republicans will pull another one out of the fire, just as they did in Minnesota in 2002, when polls showed Democrats ahead.

“No president has ever been subjected to events like these,” said Lovik. Voters are temporarily taken with a multitude of expensive “bleeding heart” Democratic promises, he added, but “something will happen,” a positive development in Iraq or the economy, and voters will “come to their senses.”

Several Republicans in St. Cloud, even those with concerns about the war, were similarly resolved to vote all or mostly red again.

Chuck Rau, 51, from Rice, north of St. Cloud, drinking coffee with friends at a coffee shop, is the owner of two small technology companies. Like many business owners, he likes Pawlenty and thinks he “delivered on what he said he’d do. He managed our spending and didn’t make taxes go away but he diverted the decisions to cities and local governments.”

Rau is also likely to vote Republican in the congressional race, but he suggests that social conservatives like Bachmann “overplay” social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Abortion’s staying power

Those social issues, by most accounts, have played an important role in the Republican trend in the St. Cloud area since the 1970s. Kathy Carton, 49, mother of five and office manager at a St. Cloud radio station, says her opposition to abortion remains key in her voting and she’ll be sticking with Pawlenty, Kennedy and Bachmann.

She admits that she’s “a little concerned about the polls” that show Republicans in trouble but doesn’t want to see candidates wavering over the war. “It’s where we need to be. We need to finish. We need to follow through.”
The staying power of the abortion issue was evident a few miles northwest of St. Cloud in Collegeville, where three sophomore women in the student center of St. John’s University talked about their upcoming first trip to a voting booth.

Ally Diers, 18, from Lindstrom, Laura Schneider, 19, from Cannon Falls, and Robin Posey, 19, from St. Paul, said they share the GOP’s philosophy opposing abortion. Not far from the front door of the center, a section of lawn is staked out with 180 small black crosses, representing the number of abortions performed every hour in the United States.

Diers may not vote a straight Republican ticket, though. Her aunt is Maureen Reed, who happens to be the Independence Party’s candidate for lieutenant governor. So Diers says she “might just go independent” and vote for IP gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson, even though he favors abortion rights.

Middle class blues

As St. Cloud has become more fertile territory for Republicans, the Rochester area has become more politically competitive. Steve Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College, about half way between the Twin Cities and Rochester, said the area’s reputation for being “rock-ribbed red” is out of date not only for Rochester and Olmsted County but for all of southern Minnesota.

“The First District as a whole is available,” Schier said.

“Republicans understand their vulnerability down here or Pawlenty wouldn’t have traveled to Rochester two dozen times in the last year,” Schier said. “Republicans can’t afford to have their margins erode further in such a large, and getting larger, county.”

One Rochester voter the Republicans are at slight risk of losing is Muhammed Abu, 19, a Somali immigrant who has been in the U.S. just six years. A pre-med student at University Center Rochester, he was shopping with his family in the tiny Tawakal Halaal International Grocery store off Hwy. 14 in southeast Rochester.

Abu said he liked Peter Hutchinson’s ideas but has a problem with his low poll ratings. He said he would only vote for Hutchinson “if he were to step up his game.”

Otherwise, Abu said Pawlenty has made important overtures to the Somali community and he’s likely to get his vote, even though “he raised taxes on cigarettes and property.” Abu said he likes how Pawlenty is “always there for the troops.” In the Senate race, Abu prefers Klobuchar over Kennedy.

At the Dunn Bros. coffee place north of downtown, Mike Frisch, a 46-year-old executive director of a home for chronic chemical dependents, said some very personal experiences are influencing his vote.

Social service funding under Pawlenty has been pinched and Frisch said he “can’t provide the resources we used to have for people who need it.” School funding cuts have changed the limits for school bus transportation, so his son can’t ride the bus.

“Right now, I’m voting for Hatch,” Frisch said. “Sure, he’s gonna raise taxes, just like Pawlenty did, after he said he wouldn’t.”

Chris O’Brien had similar views. Studying an anatomy textbook in the lounge of the University Center Rochester, she said she and her husband were forced to get out of dairy farming because they couldn’t compete with large factory-style operations. She’s now working on cardiovascular research at the Mayo Clinic and is going back to school so she can advance in the field. Tuition increases under Pawlenty “have been a big bite for me,” O’Brien said.

“My husband hasn’t worked for a year and he doesn’t feel with his education that he should have to work for $8 an hour,” O’Brien said. “There is no middle-class anymore.”