Withdrawal creates debacle for DFL Party

07/19/2006

But leaders hope anointing new candidate can overcome setback

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Rep. Matt Entenza’s abrupt withdrawal from the attorney general’s race Tuesday gave the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party a black eye.

It cost the party one of its most promising young leaders and called attention to the foibles of DFL candidates.

Nonetheless, the party’s graybeards breathed a sigh of relief after he stepped down. They believed, as did Entenza, that he was tangled up in a controversy that would have plagued his campaign through Election Day.

“Matt was pretty much fatally wounded,” said former state DFL Party chairman Mark Andrew. “He was not electable under the current circumstances. He would have been a significant drag on the statewide ticket.”

Three things did Entenza in. First was the revelation that he had hired a Chicago opposition research firm to investigate Attorney General Mike Hatch, the DFL-endorsed candidate for governor.

Second was his mishandling and misstatements about why he hired that firm.

Finally, if elected, he would have faced a conflict of interest because the attorney general’s office is conducting an investigation into UnitedHealth Group, the Minnetonka-based firm where his wife, Lois Quam, works as a high-level executive who has received millions of dollars in stock options.

“I see no way of thinking of this as anything but bad news” for the DFL, said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. “It’s another way that they shot themselves in the foot.”

With President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress losing public support, Democrats nationally and in Minnesota should have the wind at their backs, Jacobs said. But with a series of damaging news stories plaguing Entenza for the past week, DFLers have been “trying to do damage control on self-inflicted damage.”

Moreover, he said, they just lost a candidate who had spent years preparing for this race and appeared to be the front-runner.

A gleeful state Republican Party chairman Ron Carey said Entenza’s withdrawal is yet another sign that the DFL is in disarray. Other recent indicators were Senate DFL Majority Leader Dean Johnson’s public apology for misstatements about conversations he claimed to have had with Minnesota Supreme Court justices about gay marriage and 5th District DFL congressional candidate Keith Ellison’s traffic tickets and campaign finance law violations.

“It’s one bombshell after another for the DFL,” Carey said. “It’s hard for them to make the case right now that they are ready to lead the state of Minnesota.”

But DFL leaders believe they have put Entenza’s problems behind them and now have plenty of time to find another candidate and shift attention back to the issues that work in their favor. State DFL chairman Brian Melendez said the party’s setback is momentary and it should fully recover by the time it endorses another attorney general candidate in a few weeks.

To do so, the DFL must unite behind a strong candidate, help him or her organize and finance a campaign from scratch and avoid a multi-candidate brawl in the Sept. 12 DFL primary.

“That’s very doable; three and a half months is an eternity in politics,” said former Attorney General Warren Spannaus, referring to the Nov. 7 election.

First-time attorney general candidates tend to ride on the coattails of top-of-the-ticket candidates for governor and U.S. senator. Spannaus was elected in 1970 largely because former Gov. Wendell Anderson and the late U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey led a DFL landslide. When Spannaus stepped down in 1982, Skip Humphrey won the job thanks to Rudy Perpich’s landslide victory in the governor’s race.

“Most people focus on the races for governor and senator,” Anderson said, “and if our candidates for those two offices run well, that will help our candidates for attorney general and other state offices.”