Tight race is bad news for Pawlenty, Hatch

09/22/2006

Poll finds key disadvantages for GOP, DFL hopefuls for governor — and IP’s Hutchinson is barely known

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

For the third time this week, a new poll shows a tight race for Minnesota governor, and that means trouble for the three major candidates.

For Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, undecided voters are poised to determine the election, and they traditionally vote against incumbents.

DFL voters are fragmented, so Democratic Attorney General Mike Hatch must appeal to more independents.

And half the voters can’t identify Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson.

The close race suggests a frantic battle for the hearts and minds of voters in the 46 days leading to a Nov. 7 election.

The latest poll, conducted this week for the Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio, shows Pawlenty and Hatch running neck and neck with Hutchinson trailing far behind. That mirrors the results in polls unveiled earlier this week by the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune and the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Policy.

“There’s no good news in those poll results for anybody,” Hutchinson said Thursday. “It’s clear that name recognition continues to be our challenge.

“But frankly, there’s no good news in there for Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch, either. After all this time and the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars they’ve spent on TV advertising, they’re right where they were six months ago. Here are two of the best-known politicians in Minnesota, and they can’t get above 40 percent positive approval.”

The latest poll showed 42 percent of Minnesota voters would vote for Pawlenty, 39 percent back Hatch and 5 percent favor Hutchinson, with 11 percent undecided. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C, conducted the survey of 625 registered Minnesota voters Monday through Wednesday.

The Pawlenty-Hatch race is a virtual tossup because the governor’s 3 percentage-point lead is within the poll’s 4-point margin of error.

Susan Phillips, a political independent and occupational therapy assistant from Forest Lake, said she’s supporting Hatch because “I have a problem with (Pawlenty).” His semantic argument about whether certain government charges are taxes or fees “insults my intelligence,” she said.

Pawlenty will get Kevin Gerdeman’s vote. A retiree from Coon Rapids who voted for President Bush in 2004, he supports the governor, he said, because “over the years, Hatch has rubbed me the wrong way. Something about the man I have never warmed up to.”

The results didn’t surprise either campaign.

“As we’ve always expected, this is a close race,” Pawlenty campaign spokesman Brian McClung said.

A dead heat is a “very good place for Mike Hatch to be at this point in the race,” said his campaign manager, Jon Youngdahl. “I think the pressure is on the governor.”

But outside observers said the poll showed pitfalls for all the candidates.

Not only is Pawlenty faced with the anti-incumbent tendencies of undecided voters, but the poll also suggests he has not expanded his political base since he was elected with 44 percent of the vote in 2002. Forty-six percent of poll respondents rated Pawlenty’s job performance good or excellent, while 53 percent ranked it only fair or poor.

“Pawlenty’s percentage of the vote this year probably will have to go up for him to be re-elected because the (Independence Party) candidate this time doesn’t appear to be as strong as Tim Penny (who got 16 percent of the vote in 2002),” said Mason-Dixon managing director Brad Coker. “But Pawlenty doesn’t seem to have broadened his base beyond where it was four years ago.”

Pawlenty’s GOP base, however, is solidly behind him. Eighty-seven percent of the Republicans surveyed said they would vote for the governor.

Only 71 percent of Democratic voters said they support Hatch. He loses DFLers to both Pawlenty and Hutchinson.

“Pawlenty has solidified his base; Hatch hasn’t,” said Minneapolis pollster Bill Morris.

He said the Pioneer Press-MPR poll is the first one that shows Hutchinson taking more votes away from Hatch than from the governor.

“To win, Hatch has to stop hemorrhaging votes to Hutchinson,” Morris said.

Hutchinson has a steeper hill to climb than the last two Independence Party gubernatorial candidates. At this point in the 2002 governor’s race, Penny was locked in a three-way tie with 30 percent of the vote. In October 1998, Jesse Ventura trailed the DFL and GOP candidates but was supported by 15 percent of the voters.

The latest poll showed that only 51 percent of voters recognized Hutchinson’s name, and of those, just 10 percent had a favorable opinion of him, while 5 percent viewed him unfavorably.

Kathleen Miller, a St. Paul homemaker, is a Democrat who supports Hutchinson. She distrusts Hatch but has confidence in Hutchinson.

“I think he has a really excellent plan for education. I think he’s a person of scruples and integrity,” she said.

Ninety-eight percent recognized Pawlenty’s name; 95 percent knew Hatch.

In the poll, 51 percent of the respondents said Minnesota is headed in the right direction, while 37 percent said the state was on the wrong track.

A plurality of voters — 35 percent — said taxes and the state budget are the most important issues in the governor’s race.

Education and schools were ranked most important by 24 percent of the respondents. Health care came in third, with 9 percent calling it the top issue.