It's been a big week in the Minnesota State Senate race and a very inconvenient week to be having laptop troubles. Al Franken and Mike Ciresi released their TV ads. Mike was able to pip Al by releasing his first. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer released his Q4 fundraising numbers: $284,000. This is enough to run an endorsement race and shows that there are three viable candidates.
The week culminates with today's debate at the Riverland Community College in Austin. With my laptop problems a distant memory I drove down with sunny skies a NW tailwind and 0o air temp (-15o or so windchill). So I got a Franken sticker to put on my shirt and wandered into the auditorium.
Al's first ad goes for the quirky, warm feeling with the "Mrs. Molin" and hits the personal stories nicely in the second one. Their both a great way to introduce Al.
Same for Mike's ad. While I'm glad Mike didn't go cute because that would fail horribly, he's very earnest and the ads are a good way to introduce him to Minnesotans.
Polling indicates that more Minnesotans know Al than Mike. Mike is reminding us that he's fought for the little people and won. Al wants to show what a nice sense of humor he has and the he'll fight for the little guy. Both these approaches are important as Mike needs to improve his name recognition and Al needs to eliminate any negative impressions people have of him.
Jack's Q4 fundraising numbers are good enough in my opinion. In September, supporters had pledged $150,000 which was enough so that Jack would declare. So they made those promises real and raised another $134K in the remaining 3 months.
The great thing about having Jack in the race, is Al and Mike are responding to him. He's pushing them to tightening what they have to say and how they say it.
As per usual, I won't talk much about Jim Cohen. I don't understand why Jim Cohen is in the race. He has no constituency and misunderstands the nature of the partisan divide in Washington. I just don't see how he's relevant.
Al Franken
Al's presentation today was droll as usual, but also passionate. Jack supporters have always said how "dead" Al seemed and the six or seven debates that have occurred have clearly improved his delivery. His standard line in his stump speech that he "wants Bush's enablers like Norm Coleman to go" always gets chuckles and applause.
His answer about what his top priority once he's gotten into the Senate shows how well he understands the job. He doesn't know what will be before the Senate when he arrives. This is an honest answer. He wants to solve the healthcare crisis, deal with global warming, "we'll likely still be in Iraq in 2009, so I'll likely have to work on getting us out" and he mentioned we could be in a recession by then which would need to be dealt with.
I also liked his answer about to the question "in 2006 we elected Congress to get us out of Iraq, but Congress hasn't done this. Will you do what your constituents want or work to protect your career?": "We blinked." He thinks that Congress became scared that the Republicans would accuse them of cutting of our troops on the battlefield. "This isn't true," Al said. "President Bush would leave the troops on the battlefield by vetoing the withdrawal plan." I like it that Al clearly sees that the Senate Democrats have been gutless. It's a good sign that he wouldn't be.
Al brought up the McNamara Fallacy when answering a question about No Child Left Behind. "The McNamara Fallacy is to test what is easy to test and give this a higher importance," Al explained. "You also then disregard the things that are more difficult to test. This is clearly what No Child Left Behind does." Furthermore, Al claims that NCLB doesn't measure improvement and assumes that a homeless inner-city child starts at the same place as a kid in a wealthy suburb.
Mike Ciresi
Mike is still earnest. This is no surprise as its natural for him. Mike tried hard to differentiate himself in this debate and especially over healthcare. This seems a strange tactic to me as his solution is the mainstream solution. I don't see that he understands that the insurance companies, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are at the root of our healthcare crisis. From how he describes his solution, I assume they will be a part of it.
Mike is far better on talking about education, tax breaks for the wealthy and calling the Republicans on the carpet for their filibuster threats. He wants to force the Republicans to actually filibuster and not just threaten it. He made it clear he's sick of the Republicans blocking everything the Dems want to do.
Mike is also especially believable on the ""in 2006 we elected Congress to get us out of Iraq, but Congress hasn't done this. Will you do what your constituents want or work to protect your career?" question. He reminded the audience that he's always stood up for what he believes in and would continue in the Senate. This is the man who beat Big Tobacco, won the Dalkon Shield case and represented the government of India in the Bhopal Disaster case and won.
"We shouldn't ask a child to jump this high," Mike said while holding his hand at about knee height in answer to the NCLB question. "We should ask them how high can you jump? What is the full magnitude of your potential?"
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
Jack is excited and much more coherent than I'd seen him previously. Obviously, six or seven more debates will do that for a candidate. Previously, it had seemed to me that he was trying to talk so much truth to power, that his answers were rushed. He's slowed down a smidge and is giving his audience a little more time to digest. He's still irate at the course of our country and his views are spot on.
It was also instructive to see how he'd do when his Twin Cities supporters hadn't packed the venue. He got just as loud applause as Al and Mike. When he calls the Bush Administration "the worst administration in US history" or calls for a Marshall Plan for changing to a renewable energy economy or when he reminds the audience how everything we Dems want to do would easily be funded by a tiny fraction of the vast sums being wasted upon the Iraq War, he gets spontaneous and enthusiastic applause. Jack definitely excites the DFL base. Then again, so does Al. Mike's not so shabby at it, either, but didn't get the same applause that Jack and Al got.
The problem
The problem is that these candidates are fairly similar on all the issues except for healthcare. On healthcare, Jack wants universal single-payer healthcare. Al wants to mandate that all states figure out their own universal plan. He thinks that states will adopt the programs that work the best and thinks it very well might be a single payer system eventually. Mike wants portable health insurance and universal coverage, but misses the essential point that the insurance companies, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are the root of the problem.
Is that enough for DFLers to decide?
What about style? All three are extremely intelligent and well-spoken. All are running hard and fair campaigns.
Al is droll, can really deliver the killer line and has a vast memory-bank full of arcane political data. The idea of Al in the Senate is really compelling for me. I can hardly wait for a debate between Al and Norm. His sense of the absurd and his ability to communicate it is what Al is all about.
Mike is Minnesota's greatest trial attorney. He's a scrapper. Few people can claim they've achieved as much as he has. He's a businessman. Mike is earnest and can occasionally be funny, but never forces it. As a trial attorney, I can imagine him skewering Norm time and again in a debate.
Jack is a dedicated activist who clearly understands the crisis looming over our civilization. He communicates it in a way that excites people. I'm not so sure about Jack in a debate with Norm.
What about electability? I hate to decide who should be a candidate based upon who we think would win. A better way to look at it is how are the three campaigns being run.
Al has obviously raised a ****load of dough. He is running a grassroots campaign that is criss-crossing the state. He's got the best campaign I've seen in regards to engaging the netroots. His staff understand the ever-increasing importance of the internet and have exploited it. He picked up the Blue America endorsement before the Ciresi campaign knew anything about it. He's getting huge turnouts to his events and is working hard to help candidates in all kinds of other races. He will have huge coattails. He has the most endorsements by a long shot.
Mike is running a much more traditional campaign. They are building as much of a grassroots effort as possible, but are not drawing as many people as Al. Mike's fundraising is respectable. I am sure that the Ciresi staff would not make the same kind of mistakes that the Hatch campaign made in relying on major ad buys and occasional press conferences. They know Mike has low name recognition and are working hard to improve it.
Jack is running a classic grassroots campaign. He's strongest in the Twin Cities where the peace community is strongest. He is branching out into the rest of the state, but he has a huge deficit to make up. A candidate like Jack needs to run for a long time so that word of mouth can spread the news.