| Monday's endorsement of Ashwin Madia by the United Auto Workers kicked off an active week in the race to replace nine-term congressman Jim Ramstad.
The UAW endorsement has been seen by several DFL activists in the 3rd as a good, albeit small, win for the Madia campaign. Union membership is not extremely high across many parts of the 3rd, and the more affluent suburbs in the southwestern part of the district are not generally regarded as fertile pastures for a populist, working-class message. But the DFL endorsement is fought door to door, delegate to delegate, and the UAW endorsement means that upcoming endorsements from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) could be in play -- and those endorsements could move significant delegate numbers, especially in working-class areas like Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center.
Late Monday the gamesmanship started, and just wouldn't quit.
A post on my site late that night drew an email to my inbox containing allegations against Ash Madia for attitudes out of sync with union workers. A link to a 1997 MN Daily article was included; the article cited Madia, then the Minnesota Student Association's President, praising a deal in which Aramark privatized some service jobs at the University of Minnesota. In another linked article contained in the email, young Madia expressed opposition to plans for a faculty union at the U.
This is a bit insulting to the UAW and the Teamsters, isn't it? The implication here is twofold: one, that Madia is not really on the side of working class families; two, that the Teamsters and UAW must not have looked very carefully at Madia's past before deciding to endorse him over two generally qualified opponents.
The gamesmanship didn't end there: DFL activists from across the 3rd district were discussing an alleged push poll from Terri Bonoff's campaign targeting Madia and seeking to dispel what "some people are saying about Terri" or words to that effect. I haven't been able to confirm much more about the call, other than that it did happen, and an activist who received the call confirmed that it was paid for by the Bonoff campaign.
I spoke to Madia Tuesday to discuss the implications of these articles and the accusations that are using them as support. He didn't mince words: "Did I grow up in a Republican household? Yes. Did I identify with the Republican Party when I was younger? Yes. I left the party after the 2000 election disaster, after they started attacking Max Cleland, messing up the national budget, and doing a lot of things I couldn't stand. Do all the candidates believe the same things they believed when they were 18? It's not a sign of weakness to constantly evaluate and reevaluate one's political beliefs...Is this contest really going to be about who's been a Democrat for the longest? That's a bunch of classless nonsense."
Madia went on to lament the state of affairs in which a candidate chooses to run a clean campaign, with no push-polls and none of this type of back-handed attack, and the candidate is put at a disadvantage for having to respond to the attacks instead of actually addressing the substantive issues in play.
Without making statements of support one way or the other, it's difficult to disagree. We saw what happened in the 2004 presidential election -- faced with the choice of responding to outright lies from the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John Kerry chose to keep the focus on the substantive issues, but since a well-funded organization beat the drum and turned the attention of an army of slavering media figures toward their lies, they made Kerry appear weak for not responding. The tortured logic of negative campaign tactics will never cease.
And now it's come home to roost in the 3rd district. In what's seen from coast to coast as a huge pickup opportunity, some in this race just can't keep themselves from shooting themselves, their party, and their nation in the foot because they won't or can't accept that running a clean campaign is vastly superior in the end to running a dirty one. Closed circuit to activists and campaigns: leave the smears to the other side. They'll have plenty.
And lucky for us, I doubt those smears will include the words "your candidate once agreed with what our party used to advocate." |
