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
VoteVets.org, a veterans' and war policy advocacy group out of Washington D.C., is pushing for an end to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the American military -- and a local figure is helping lead the charge.
The policy, which allows for the immediate discharge of active-duty service members if they publicly state that they are gay or lesbian (or are outed), has previously been targeted by the Obama administration for termination, but there have been some signs of backpedaling by the new administration.
To be fair, the current economic recession, ending the major U.S. military presence in Iraq, stabilizing Afghanistan, and numerous other issues rank a bit higher than DADT on President Obama's To-Do list. But VoteVets is pushing the issue back to the fore, with the help of 2008 DFL congressional candidate Ashwin Madia.
Madia, an attorney and Marine veteran, successfully defended a gay Marine against DADT during his time in the Corps, and in the VoteVets message sent today, Madia detailed the organization's support for a bill being pushed by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) which would eliminate the policy, and said "military intelligence is constantly short-handed when it comes to translators. And yet, hundreds of translators have been dismissed since the policy was enacted, including many who speak Arabic, Persian, Pashto, and other languages that will help our military intelligence protect our troops and America."
I spoke to Madia briefly on the phone this afternoon, and asked if this was a sign of a formal working relationship with VoteVets. He said he has none other than being a member of the organization, but that he's willing to help when needed in support of goals like this one.
The full letter can be found after the break -- might be worth your time.
In my previous post on what went wrong in the Third district race in 2008, I left out a few things -- namely, what factors are working in favor of making a strong challenge to Erik Paulsen in 2010. But there were other things too, and I think they merit further discussion -- which can be found after the break.
My conclusion, which is way down at the bottom of the post, is this: we need to tone down the hangings-in-effigy of Ash Madia's staff and consultants, because there are more concrete issues that call for some real critical thinking first.
In the comments of TonyAngelo's great starter piece on the 2006 and 2008 House races (I am looking forward to the next such piece with great interest), I got into it a little with lams712, who wrote of the 2008 race:
[Madia] DID NOT WIN a WINNABLE race, so by definition it wasn't that well run or else he WOULD HAVE WON. You can accuse me of "painting with broad brushstrokes" but the end result is still the same. Maybe the dispute lies as to whether the race was winnable (I think of the 3 Republican-held seats it was the best chance---NO incumbent and held for a long time by a moderate Republican).
My intention wasn't to make accusations, only to highlight the fact that in some races, you can run a solid campaign and still lose. However, lams712 is right about at least one thing -- some things went wrong in CD3 this year, and I've been sorting through what I saw on the front and back ends of the Madia campaign and how we might prevent the same problems from happening in 2010 (if Dems want any chance to beat Erik Paulsen before he becomes entrenched in the seat).
Listening to other political luminaries (and Al Franken -- sorry, AB, I couldn't resist) speak at the Madia Holiday Party in Osseo on Sunday afternoon made me think back to a year ago when I first met Ashwin Madia at a somewhat smaller holiday gathering at his family's home in Plymouth.
At the time, Madia, an Iraq War veteran, was viewed as a long-shot candidate for the DFL endorsement in the 3rd Congressional District -- mainly by naysayers who hadn't yet met him.
Of course the underdog label lasted right up until the first Senate District convention, when Team Madia, of which I was a member by this point, squeaked out a narrow victory at Eden Prairie High School over the heavily favored State Sen. Terri Bonoff. A few weeks -- and nine Senate District convention victories -- later Ashwin was the DFL-endorsed candidate in one of the most hotly contested congressional campaigns in the country.
While Ashwin ultimately fell disappointingly short in a district that Democrats had hoped to turn "blue" for the first time in half a century, his campaign inspired thousands across the Southwest Metro and beyond. A platform focused on new patriotism, common-sense reform and tough sacrifice did win genuine support in an era in which empty platitudes, meaningless gestures and cheap pandering generally carry the day. His brave effort was meaningful and important even if the story didn't end in the way we all would've liked.
I hope this isn't the end for Ashwin. Perhaps he wasn't meant to be the representative from the 3rd Congressional District. But he still has something to offer and hopefully he gets the chance soon because we sure as hell need him. For my money, the 2010 DFL gubernatorial hopefuls would be hard-pressed to find a better lieutenant than the former Marine Corps captain.
The breadth and depth of President-elect Barack Obama's victory last week is still resonating across America.
But here in Minnesota, something didn't go quite right -- we had several competitive races at the federal level, two of which resulted in frustrating losses and another which is still being figured out. The DFL won five state legislative races, but lost three others, gaining just two seats in their quest for a veto-proof majority.
It's become clear that Democratic campaigns in Minnesota underperformed the rest of the country -- but why?
The U.S. Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken is still outstanding, with an extremely tight margin and an upcoming recount. But the races in the Third and Sixth districts were expected to be much more competitive than they ended up being -- so what went wrong?
The Sixth is easy. A quirk in Minnesota election law prevented the Independence Party's endorsed candidate -- DFLer El Tinklenberg -- from appearing on two parties' lines in the Sept. 12th primary. As a result, an unknown candidate filed on the IP line, spent next to nothing on his campaign. That candidate ended up getting 10% on Tuesday, plenty more than the three-point margin between Tinklenberg and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who will no doubt return to her twice-a-year trend of opening her mouth at inopportune times.
Should Minnesota allow candidates to appear on more than one party's primary election line? Good question. Perhaps only in the scenario where a candidate has been cross-endorsed by multiple parties? Clearly, someone was playing games with the Sixth district race.
The DFL's problems in the Third were, surprisingly, similar, albeit with different candidates and trends. In short, Republican Erik Paulsen's attack on Ashwin Madia alleging that he was a liar on taxes worked. It doesn't matter that it was a cherry-picked, half-true almost-smear, it just flat-out worked. In this effort, KSTP made themselves an accomplice by badly screwing up a fact check and asserting that some negative ads were coming from Madia's campaign when they actually came from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. When KSTP gave these ads a failing grade on the truth test, it reinforced Paulsen's "Madia is a liar" frame.
But the issue is deeper than that too. Negative ads in a two-way race have a predictable effect. Some voters decide to whom their vote goes based on whom they like more. Some decide based on whom they hate less. Negative ads reinforce one side of that equation. But with a third-party candidate, that equation gets imbalanced. Paulsen's "Madia is a liar" attack forced Madia to respond in kind -- but against the backdrop of Independence Party candidate David Dillon's presence and KSTP's brutal misconceptions and refusal to publicly correct themselves, Madia's counterattacks fell on deaf ears.
Worse, it appears that the back-and-forth between Madia and Paulsen drove some DFL-leaning voters into Dillon's column on election day. In Anoka, which (somewhat surprisingly, I might add) has a 50-percent Democratic performance index, a solid 14% of the vote went to Dillon, with 45% to Paulsen and just 40% to Madia.
Bob Collins' theory holds up under empirical investigation: Independence Party candidates in tightly contested races mean Republicans win. Tim Penny, Peter Hutchinson, Bob Anderson, David Dillon...here's to hoping that Dean Barkley breaks the trend. In Dillon's case, based solely on vote totals, it may not have mattered -- even splitting Dillon's votes 8-2 for Madia would have produced a 51-49 win for Paulsen -- but his presence on the ballot allowed Paulsen to fight from the uphill position, playing games with DFL-leaning voters and muddying the contrasts between himself and his real opponent, Madia.
I'm still breaking down some of the precinct-level and city-level numbers, but I may ask our resident mapping guru Jeff Rosenberg to take a stab at producing some illumination on Tuesday's results.
On tonight's 10 o'clock news, KSTP (channel 5) will tell you about a new poll in the Third district congressional race.
What they probably won't tell you are the details that call into question the integrity of the station's entire news-gathering operation.
A SurveyUSA poll done for KSTP will show Republican Erik Paulsen leading by 5 points, with a margin of error of about 5 points. According to sources, the poll does not take any account whatsoever of same-day registrations, which is a big deal -- assuming 2004 turnout models, same-day registrations will account for around 18% of total turnout. Assuming even greater excitement for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama in the suburbs, that number very well could be higher than 18% -- that is a potentially HUGE error in SurveyUSA's methodology.
However, the issue with KSTP is a little more nefarious -- according to sources, they pre-released the poll results to Paulsen's campaign ahead of time, and not to the campaign of Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia. The Madia campaign had to call the station directly to get the results after finding out that they had already been given to Paulsen. This is a HUGE error in judgment at KSTP, and deserves all the negative attention it should and will receive.
I haven't bought into the theory that since KSTP's owner, Stan Hubbard, donates mainly to Republican candidates, the station is a GOP shill. However, this sequence of events, so close to a huge election, has us wondering about the integrity of their news operation.
Bottom line: Watch for the presidential numbers in this poll. If they feel too close, they probably are, and the entire poll should be treated as crap until KSTP and SurveyUSA explain themselves.
Those that have received an e-mail from me may have noted I end each message with:
It's A Great Day To Be A Veteran
It's just before the privacy disclosure; it's also at the bottom of my comments to others on threads at MnBlue, too.
And it came from an old saying back when I served on active duty; a saying that we repeated proudly when the duty was cold, or wet; when we were miserable, tired, hungry and hadn't slept for God knows how long; when we were low on supplies, outmanned or outflanked, or any and all of the above - "It's a great day to be a soldier." It served as a motivation tool - that when the going got tough, the tough got going.
I thought of this after Erik's "Veterans for Paulsen" rally, yesterday. In a room full of veterans, Paulsen addressed the crowd and whined:
"They're lying about me; they're smearing me!"
Cry me a river, Erik.
Paulsen started his campaign denying who he is - a far right extremist. Even the right-leaning Star Tribune didn't buy that one:
"Paulsen was a fiscal and social conservative in the Legislature, voting for measures that this newspaper opposed. Why he's casting himself as a moderate in this race is unclear. His conservative credentials are solid; he should have run on them."(Star Tribune Editorial)
Paulsen started his campaign distorting his record:
"Paulsen launches this bid after years of working in bipartisan fashion, across the aisle, to get results in the business world and in the Minnesota legislature."(PaulsenForCongress)
Yeah, "right."
If anyone knows someone that thinks Erik Paulsen rose within Republican ranks to the role of Majority Leader in the State Legislatute during this decade by "...working in bipartisan fashion, across the aisle..." send 'em my way - I got some swampland "waterfront property" I'd like to sell 'em.
All this, and more, yet Paulsen has the nerve to run a TV ad, whining "My opponent is LYING about me!"??!?
Seems like Paulsen's been doing some lying himself, about himself.
Not just content to distorting who he is and what his record is, Paulsen reached a new low with a recent ad: according to an October 29th Twin Cities Public Television ("TPT") press release, Paulsen's campaign was using TPT copywrited video footage in a different campaign ad. TPT reports they twice asked the Paulsen campaign to essentially cease and desist; the campaign didn't - which necessitated the press release. From that release:
As a non-partisan public television station, tpt has never consented to use of our copyrighted materials by any political candidate or party. In previous campaigns, we have requested that candidates - Democrats, Independents and Republicans - cease use of similar material, and all have complied.
Twin Cities Public Television has sent two formal requests to the Paulsen campaign to remove all tpt footage from their ad; as of today, that request has not been honored.
We are therefore issuing this statement, taking appropriate legal action, and would like to alert all stations broadcasting the ad that it represents a clear copyright violation. We furthermore request that broadcasters cease airing the spot until our proprietary footage has been removed.
We would show you the ad, but TPT's tenacity has paid off. After notifying YouTube of the copyright violation, the website pulled down the ad. "Since the Paulsen site was using an embedded version from YouTube, the ad was effectively removed from their site as well," says TPT spokesman Stephen Usery.
And I'm not going to bother to detail the disgusting spectacle of Republican Party Chair Ron Carey's nor Republican Geoff Michell's thinly vieled bigotry concerning Paulsen's opponent, the honorably discharged Marine, Ashwin Media. Suffice it to say Paulsen didn't have the spine, nor guts, to do the despicable himself; he hid behind others doing his dirty work.
It's no secret I'm not a fan of Erik Paulsen, but that's only because I've followed his political career since he first doorknocked me in 1994. For fourteen years I've watched Paulsen and followed his record, so I'm not surprised at the shenanigans he's pulled this during this election cycle.
But I was surprised to see and hear him whine in front of veterans. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
By the end of this cycle, the race for Minnesota's Third congressional district is going to be one of the most expensive in the country, if not the most expensive.
Sometimes it's difficult to see why here on the ground. But in the past few days I've spoken with some interested folks outside the district and outside the state, and they've given me some new insight into just how important this race is. To everyone.
Make no mistake about it -- the Democratic Party and its allies want this seat badly. To win in the suburbs, in an area that was once solidly Republican in its voting patterns, is the way of the future for Democrats in Congress and at the state level, and an already moderate district is a perfect opportunity to make a long-term change in the political dynamics in Minnesota, across the upper Midwest, and America.
But the Republicans are fighting hard for this seat, and not just because it would be a loss of a Republican-held seat. Jim Ramstad is an old-school Republican -- fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and willing to work across party lines on a regular basis.
Erik Paulsen, on the other hand, would be, as the candidate himself put it in a recent interview, an "ideological upgrade" over his former boss for conservative Republican leaders. He is not a moderate. He works hard for the right wing, and not to find consensus -- as has been noted frequently around the blogs, one does not become Majority Leader of the House Republican caucus by being a moderate, bipartisan worker. One accomplishes that by being a fire-breathing partisan with a friendly face.
Conservative leaders are desperate to get this firebreather with a friendly face into Congress -- even in a weakened state, the silver lining to impending Republican losses would be to replace a moderate Republican with a strongly conservative Republican instead of a moderate, well-spoken, politically savvy Democrat.
There are numerous districts around the country where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other organizatons have made a single move, and the NRCC backs off -- without the resources to compete, they simply cannot afford to defend those seats. But not the Third. "Desperate" really is the best word to describe their efforts in this district -- the NRCC and Paulsen's campaign have spent all their time attacking Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia -- cherry-picking quotes that feed their base's abhorrence at the word "tax", messing with DFL-leaning voters to get them to vote third party, and refusing under any circumstances to admit their opponent's honorable record as a Marine who served a tour in Iraq.
And they refuse to do large-scale field work. Their volunteer base is depressed from a lackluster presidential campaign, and their brand is damaged. The only thing they have to throw at the effort is money. Money buys misleading mailings, money buys TV ads with grainy, darkened, scary images of one's opponent, but it doesn't buy the facts. It doesn't buy truth. It can't buy hard work.
And it won't buy a win on Tuesday.
Head to Madia for Congress to find out how you can help make sure of it.
A second NRCC mailer "attacking" Independence Party candidate David Dillon is in the wild, showing off positions the Republican Party hopes will convince DFL-leaning voters to throw their votes away on Tuesday.
And this one didn't take any reports from sources -- it showed up in my mailbox today. There are two choices here -- the NRCC's list managers are abject idiots, and can't tell that people like me and my wife are not GOP-leaning voters, or they know full-well the're sending these mailers to DFLers and are playing sleazy political games as usual.
Hint for undecided voters looking for a final push over the finish line and into the voting booth: if you care about affordable health coverage, if you want to see expanded stem cell and therapeutic research, vote for Ashwin Madia, whether you are a DFLer, a Republican, or independent.
If there was any doubt as to the NRCC's goals with the first mailer, that doubt is gone -- they are trying their damnedest to screw around with DFL voters in a desperate attempt for a win-by-third-party-spoiler.
It won't work, and we will send Ashwin Madia to Congress on Tuesday.
***PRESS RELEASE***
Ashwin Madia Raised over $600,000 in October 2008;
Breaks his own one-month Record
Supporters are energized heading into Election Day even as
Republicans increasingly face criticism for their unprecedented attacks
MAPLE GROVE ? Ashwin Madia, the DFL-endorsed candidate in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District, today announced that his campaign had raised $623,968.55 during the single month of October 2008. Federal law does not require the public reporting of funds raised during October.
Since announcing his candidacy in October 2007, Madia has raised a total of more than $2.6 million. Madia's fundraising is even more impressive due to the fact that he continues to refuse corporate PAC contributions, unlike his Republican opponent.
Amidst the good news for Madia came new criticism for his Republican opponent. Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) announced on October 29th that it would take any appropriate legal action against the Erik Paulsen for Congress campaign for its refusal to stop using copyrighted material in a recent campaign television advertisement.
Roll Call is noting that the NRCC spent a little money on a mailer attacking Independence Party candidate David Dillon in the Third district:
The National Republican Congressional Committee's independent expenditure arm has started spending money to knock a third-party candidate in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional district, where one of the most competitive races in the country is under way to fill retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad's (R) seat.
...
The NRCC's IE unit spent $11,200 in mail opposing businessman David Dillon, the nominee of the Independence Party, according to online finance records. Although that is a small amount of money considering the millions of dollars both parties are investing in Congressional races, the spending suggests that Dillon is likely taking votes away from Paulsen.
There's more to this story, however. This mailer may or may not have been sent to Republican-leaning voters who may be voting for Dillon instead of Republican candidate Erik Paulsen. Sources indicate that this mailer has definitely been sent to strong Democrats.
Why would the NRCC be sending mail to strong Dems? It's entirely possible their lists are just bad. On the other hand, my sources indicate that the mailer (visible at right) attacks David Dillon for being too liberal on the issues -- that doesn't sound like the NRCC is worried about conservative voters crossing over for the third party. Rather, it sounds like they're trying to encourage a little dissention in the ranks of strong Democrats, and get Madia voters to vote third party. Under this theory (which, admittedly, is what it is), the NRCC doesn't care about Dillon, but are trying to play reverse-psychology games with the DFL base in CD3.
Sneaky, but not out of character for the NRCC. I'm waiting on Here's a scan of the mailer so you can have a good look at it. For $11,000, the NRCC gets maybe 20,000 pieces of mail, perhaps 40,000 voters. Not a huge universe for a mail piece like this one, unless they're really, really worried about losing by a couple of points.
This story is going to dominate the rest of this campaign's news cycle: The National Republican Campaign Committee, operating on behalf of Erik Paulsen's campaign, darkening photos of Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia to instill fear of the Other in voters.
A Republican attack ad invites viewers to "meet the real Ashwin Madia," but the still photos featured in the spot present a noticeably darker version of the 3rd District DFL congressional candidate.
"At least three of the photos of Madia were obviously darkened, using one method or another," public affairs and media consultant Dean Alger told KARE 11.
He said the viewing public has grown accustomed to hearing distorted claims, or statements and votes used out of context. However, Alger asserts the altered images of Madia, the son of Indian immigrants, crosses a line.
"There is an attack ad tactic that goes beyond distortion, and frankly, is a betrayal of what Minnesota politics is all about."
The commercial, produced by the National Republican Congressional Committee, borrows footage from Madia's own ad which features him running in his Marines sweat shirt.
In the NRCC ad, entitled "Running to Raise Taxes," the word on his shirt is obscured in darkness in some angles and cut off by graphics in others. Three still pictures of Madia, borrowed from his campaign website's photo gallery, are added to a visual montage supporting the ad's claims that he'll bring higher taxes.
It's been done on the presidential level against Obama, and now it's being done against Madia. I particularly like, though, that the Republicans are unwilling to let their viewers know that Madia is a Marine veteran who served honorably in Iraq -- God forbid they actually discuss important issues like the economic and human impact of our continued involvement in Iraq. God forbid they compare Madia's real experience with world affairs to Erik Paulsen's travelogue and tired rhetoric about Congress being broken.
No, instead, they play dog whistle politics on race.
Nice. About time for a press conference with Jim Ramstad to denounce these ads...isn't that right, Mr. Paulsen?
