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Minnesota Republicans gear up for November
by Laura McCallum, Minnesota Public Radio
June 11, 2004

State Republican Party Chair Ron Eibensteiner said Republican support has been building for the last few elections. (MPR Photo/Laura McCallum )

About 3,000 Minnesota Republicans meet in St. Paul this weekend for the party's state convention. The convention will honor the late President Ronald Reagan and get party activists fired up for the November election. Republicans want to build on their electoral victories in 2002, and they hope the state will vote for a Republican for president for the first time in more than three decades.

St. Paul, Minn. — The 2002 election was a near-Republican sweep in Minnesota. The GOP captured a U.S. Senate seat and the governor's office, boosted their majority in the Minnesota House, and came close to gaining the majority in the state Senate.

Two years later, Republicans hope to achieve something that hasn't happened since 1972: secure the state's 10 electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate. U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, co-chair of President Bush's re-election campaign in Minnesota, said he thinks the president has a good shot of carrying Minnesota by appealing to conservative and independent voters. "You've got a president with a clear vision of growing jobs. You've got a president with a clear vision of fighting terror, with having the resolve to do it and supporting our troops in doing that, and I think Minnesotans will respond to that," Coleman said. "They did two years ago, it says that it can be done, on the other hand, history says that it will be a challenge."

Four years ago, Bush lost Minnesota to Democrat Al Gore by less than three-percentage points. A Minnesota Public Radio-St. Paul Pioneer Press poll taken last month showed Democrat John Kerry had a slight lead over Bush, but that lead was within the poll's margin of error.

Political scientist Lilly Goren from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul said the poll indicates that Republicans are doing pretty well in the state. She points to favorable approval ratings for top Republican officials such as Norm Coleman and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

"And Pawlenty's numbers were very good," Goren said. "His positives are 54 percent or so, and that's pretty strong, particularly after two years and particularly this last legislative session, which was kind of messy."

Pawlenty isn't up for re-election this year, and no statewide races will be on the ballot. But all 134 Minnesota House seats and all eight Congressional seats are up for election.

House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL-St. Paul, said the election will be a referendum of sorts on the Republican agenda in Minnesota.

	House Republican leaders Steve Sviggum and Eric Paulsen

"They have pushed the debate very far to the right, and so for the first time in generations, we've had real cuts in school funding, and in funding for police, snowplowing and other issues, and an obsession, I think, with social issues," said Entenza. "And I just don't think that's where our state is at, I think we're going to see a return back to the middle."

Democrats would have to pick up 15 seats to regain control of the House. Entenza says Democrats lost many close elections in 2002, and should win a number of swing districts this year.

But House Republican leaders say Minnesotans will respond to their agenda in November. House Majority Leader Eric Paulsen, R-Eden Prairie, said Republicans have held the line on taxes since they took control of the House six years ago, and most Minnesotans agree with their approach.

"In traveling throughout the state, I've noticed in particular, in rural Minnesota especially, is that there is a sense of optimism. There's a sense that we did the right thing," Paulsen said. "Families and businesses had to adjust to some tough economic times. State government had to do the same thing and become accountable and be more conscious of where we spent our dollars."

Both Paulsen and Entenza said legislative races will be affected by the candidates at the top of the ticket. If Bush does well, Republicans benefit, and if Kerry wins the state, DFLers will pick up seats. Many Democrats have argued that the 2002 election was an anomaly, and that some of the Republican gains were due to the unusual circumstances surrounding Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone's death just days before the election.

State Republican Party Chair Ron Eibensteiner disagrees. Eibensteiner says Republican support has been building for the last few elections.

"In 1998, we took control of the Minnesota House for the first time in a long, long time," Eibensteiner said. "We added a few Senate seats, and so we were always making progress. And so 2002 was just the culmination of the progress I think that we had made over the previous few years."

There's no data, other than electoral results, to indicate whether more Minnesotans lean Republican now compared to previous years. But the November election will indicate whether Republican themes are resonating with voters this year.

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