| The UpTake's live feed has been moved into the extended entry of the post below and the liveblog has ended -- that must mean the debate is over.
Overall, I thought all three candidates got their point across -- Paulsen, that Congress has low approval ratings and he wants to fix it; Madia, that we need fundamental change in our economic policies; and Dillon, that he doesn't have the institutional backing that either of his opponents has, but he still knows a bit about the issues.
Fundamentally, I don't think anything said or done tonight changes the nature of the race. Madia is outworking Paulsen on the ground and holds his own in debates against a guy who has legislative experience to bring to bear on the race but seems to have been waiting for "his chance" at this seat. As I noted in the live blog, it appears that Dillon agrees with Paulsen more often than not on the issues, but is more than happy to toss a few grenades both ways in debates. Dillon also has zero chance of victory in this race -- without a strong party organization, ground troops like the union guys that showed up tonight for Madia, or a whole lot of money, Dillon simply cannot garner the necessary momentum to get much beyond the 8% at which he's currently polling.
One really interesting thing about tonight's debate was the Republican tracker, shown here:
That is not a camera trick -- that is actually how close this guy was standing to Madia from the end of the debate until Madia exited the building. You'd think they'd be able to afford some good microphones so they didn't have to be quite so invasive...
 After the debate, Madia communications director Dan Pollock noted that Paulsen had adopted several of Madia's talking points and phrases during the debate. It will be interesting to review the video and see how many times this actually occurred -- I could only recall one at the time, but I have no doubt Dan was taking more copious notes on the topic than I was.
I did have a chance to speak with Edina Mayor Jim Hovland, who was previously a candidate for the DFL endorsement in this congressional race. He faces token opposition in his race for another term as Mayor from a gentleman who it doesn't seem has too great a grip on science, let alone public policy. Hovland should win easily and continue doing great work for Edina.
The congressional candidates meet once more on Monday on MPR's Midday program, and then from there it's a sprint to the finish eight days later. |
