My Conundrum

Here's my conundrum: I love my city.

I think way too many of my neighbors are idiots.

Chris Coleman - longtime DFL bag man and scion of the Coleman political dynasty - won the Saint Paul mayoral primary going away, beating Randy Kelly by nearly 2-1. The Green candidate, Elizabeth Dickinson, scored 20%.

Granted, it was a primary, with about 15% turnout. These primaries are notoriously subject to party get out out the vote efforts.

But it's going to be a huge challenge for Kelly . First Ringer has a good wrapup:

How does this result compare to what may happen in November? Well, another 35,000 people will likely vote as 60,000 voted in 2001. Kelly will obviously have to win over a large percentage of those new voters and this major defeat tonight is going to make that extremely tough to do. Coleman won a double victory by surviving the huge liberal turnout that propelled Dickinson while still banging Kelly like a drum. If some liberal activists hoped that supporting Dickinson would force Coleman to do even more to placate them, this result worked against them by suggesting Coleman doesn’t need any more of St. Paul liberal base to not only win, but win convincingly.

However, Coleman still needs money, and lots of it. The scale of this victory will put his campaign in the spotlight and start talk of what a Coleman City Hall would look like---a definite positive for the Legacy Candidate, but also a breeding ground for tough questions on how Coleman will run his city. He won’t be able to just attack Kelly’s record now; he’ll be forced to answer such potentially tough questions on city management, including fiscal management, which might be his Achilles’ heel.

Couple that with Kelly likely spending his $400-600,000 on mostly negative mailers and ads and Coleman might have his hands full come November. But right now, it’s Chris Coleman’s campaign and he’ll deservedly savor the moment.

The negatives are definitely there; Coleman loves to spend - he'd kill the tax freeze that Kelly and Norm Coleman nurtured for the past 12 years. And while he tries to portray himself as a moderate on business (compared to the inexcusable Dickinson), he's clearly the ersatz business candidate compared to Kelly.

It's going to be an interesting two months.

Posted by Mitch at September 15, 2005 06:57 AM | TrackBack