CQ Politics has a pretty good profile on the current state of things in Minnesota's Third congressional district. There are a few things to take issue with in the piece, but we'll get there.But even as [Congressman Erik] Paulsen defeated Democrat Ashwin Madia by an 8 percentage-point margin, the same voters favored Barack Obama by 6 points over Republican John McCain - making the 3rd District one of 34 in the nation that went Democratic for president but Republican for the U.S. House. District voters that same year gave an edge to Norm Coleman, the incumbent Republican senator, over Democratic challenger Al Franken in their hotly disputed statewide contest that was just decided in Franken's favor on June 30 by a state Supreme Court ruling. Establish that this is a competitive, ticket-splitting district. Good. This race is going to be Paulsen's first attempt at reelection, always a tricky proposition for freshmen members of Congress.
The piece is generally a pretty fair assessment of where things stand, other than Paulsen's ridiculous assertion that a diverse employment base makes his Bush-era economic policies the right way to go...and a few other little things. Here's an interesting quote from the beginning of the article... Paulsen, a longtime state representative before his election to the U.S. House, is a GOP centrist. He once was an aide to Jim Ramstad, the nine-term House Republican moderate whose retirement set up the open-seat race that Paulsen won in 2008. The piece goes on to note that Paulsen has opposed every single major initiative from the (huge) Democratic majority and the Obama White House -- that doesn't sound like a centrist to me; that sounds like a mainline conservative foot soldier for the right-wing congressional leadership.
And CD3 DFL chair Marge Hoffa gets it. Marge Hoffa, the DFL's 3rd District chairwoman, said that the stimulus vote was an example where Paulsen could have taken a stand to "step back from the bosses in his party who insist on saying 'no' to every proposal President Obama and House Democrats have put forth." Hoffa went on to say that Paulsen should consider Obama's success in the 3rd District during the 2008 presidential contest "to be a great argument for a bit more flexibility in his voting patterns in the House." Indeed.
A single win does not a safe district make. This race is going to be competitive, despite breathless observations that Paulsen does not yet have an announced opponent |
