Minnesota, the nice tea party state

I was talking to Al Franken the other day—OK, it was a few months ago and it was the one and only time I have spoken to the man—and he said something like, “you know, we have tea party types here, but they’re nice tea party types.”

And it does seem that the extremes of tea partiers are a little less extreme here. I mean, we do have the tea party queen in Michele Bachmann, but other than her the crazy gets dialed down quite a bit in Minnesota.

Bachmann is cruising against Taryl Clark in the 6^th district. Clark may make the race a bit tighter than former opponents, but I agree with those who say that in the year of the Republican Wave, Bachmann is not going down. Bad timing for Clark.

Tim Walz seems pretty secure down in the 1^st district, probably because he’s so likable and down to earth that the R’s can’t make much traction in arguing he’s part of the problem. The problem is supposed to be out-of-touch Washington insiders who don’t listen to their constituents, and Walz just doesn’t allow himself to get tagged with that. He is dogged in his attempts to stay tuned in with his voters, even if he doesn’t always take the most popular stance.

It is a sign of the times that even Jim Oberstar up in the 8^th district is seeing a challenge, but that seems to be the case with his race against Chip Cravaack. Some internal polls released by the Cravaack camp suggest he was within a point or two of Oberstar. But like Derek Wallbank, I really doubt the underdog can pull this off. I was just up on the North Shore and there can be no doubt that Oberstar brings home the bacon to his district. I have never seen nicer roads than the county highways north of Duluth. I mean, they were amazing. I felt like I was in a car commercial. Of course, some might say that proves that Oberstar is a pork-addled Washington insider, but somehow I doubt he’s going to lose tomorrow. If I’m wrong, it is REALLY going to be a long night for Dems.

Those are the closest congressional races. And except maybe for Walz, I would expect that they end up not being that close.

The governor’s race looks like it will be tight to the end. I have to give credit to Mark Dayton. Despite being far from the smoothest public speaker, despite his rather risky stance on raising taxes on high earners, despite his less-than-stellar track record in office, he has managed to run an efficient and effective campaign. He hasn’t made a major mistake, as Hatch did four years ago.

Tom Emmer also deserves credit. Early in the race, it looked like he would implode and lose his support to the more moderate Independence Party candidate, Tom Horner. But Emmer shored up his base, stopped shooting himself in the foot, and turned on his considerable charm and enthusiasm to make a close race of it. As others have pointed out, when it comes to Minnesota, if the R’s and D’s both turn out the base, the D’s just have the numbers, so they win. That will probably happen tomorrow.

Horner has to be disappointed that he didn’t make more headway with voters. I think a lot of political observers thought that policy-wise, he was the most articulate and made the most sense. You could say he “won” a lot of the 472 debates (a mild exaggeration of the numbers there)

From my viewpoint as someone observing the health care industry, it surprised me that Horner pulled in the endorsement of both the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) and the Minnesota Hospital Association. When that happened, I thought he might actually have a chance to pull in a lot of more moderate voters. But he’s never come close to cracking 20 percent and making this a real 3-way race.

What that tells us, I think, is that even in Minnesota, where Jesse Ventura once shocked the world, people are comfortable with our two-party system. For all the talk about tea parties and independent voters, we’re still a red and blue electorate.