Protecting The Brand

Caught this piece from the Forum Group’s Saint Paul bureau; Al Franken is shilling for money for Byron Dorgan:

Franken today sent an e-mail message to his supporters asking them to donate to Sen. Byron Dorgan’s campaign who last year, he said, “made the long trek from North Dakota to Minnesota and we spent some time talking to folks about helping small businesses and getting our economy moving again. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for his insight and support.”

“Look, we need genuine champions of the middle class in the Senate, and Byron Dorgan is one of the best,” Franken wrote. “Can you donate $5 or more today to help Senator Dorgan gear up for 2010?”

Federal Elections Commission reports indicate Dorgan’s campaign has $4 million in the bank.

Of course, there’s more to it than a simple repayment of a campaign favor.

Dorgan – who was a heavyweight in North Dakota politics when I was starting out in radio news in NoDak 30 years ago – is the king of the purple-dog Democrats.  He’s a Democrat, and a fiscally-liberal one at that, in a state that’s voted Republican for president almost every possible election since statehood; local politics in North Dakota tends to be also rigorously right-of-center. 

But since the eighties, the state has sent Byron Dorgan, and then Kent Conrad, to the Senate.  It’s about the money, of course; Dorgan and Conrad are champions of big farm bills; they have enough seniority between them to deflect light artillery fire.  NoDak’s voters (like those in South Dakota, Montana and much of the rest of the Midwest, who send plenty of socially-conservative, fiscally-profligate people to Washington) know where the loot is.

But this election, there’s a real challenge.  John Hoeven, North Dakota’s very popular and wildly successful Republican governor (who is, at the moment, the nation’s longest-serving state governor), is rumored to be interested in going to Washington.   He won his last gubernatorial bid by almost fifty points…

…and the rumors are causing strange things to happen in North Dakota Republican politics.  People are donating money, coming to meetings…

…and talking about doing to Dorgan what voters in South Dakota did to Tom Daschle not so long ago; “the unthinkable”.

And so Dorgan would seem to be calling in his markers, dipping into that bottomless pool of Twin Cities liberal money (which, dimes’ll getcha dollars, he’ll softpedal back home) to pad his war chest for what could be the biggest challenge of his long political career.

We’ll be talking with people from the NDGOP on the Northern Alliance in coming weeks.  This could get interesting.

5 thoughts on “Protecting The Brand

  1. doing to Dorgan what voters in South Dakota did to Tom Daschle not so long ago; “the unthinkable”.
    And, God willing, the people of Nevada do to the disgusting Harry Reid.

  2. If it looks as if Dems are in danger of losing the Senate, there will be a rush of cash from outside Dorgan’s district to protect his seat. He’ll get millions but never have to explain which out-of-state bigshots bought him the election.

    I wonder if Al sent one of those letters to the Boys and Girls Clubs who so generously supported his radio campaign?

    .

  3. Dorgan and Conrad came to their positions through a slightly different path than most senators. Dorgan was a public utilities commisioner and then tax commissioner. Conrad succeeded Dorgan as TC. Both of those jobs are considered slightly less partisan and more of a watchdog role than that of a governor or high powered legislator. I think this explains their success as the voters remember what they did to “protect” them against the utitlities and fight tax cheats. Could Hoeven defeat Dorgan? Maybe, but I think it would be based more on anti-Obama sentiment than the race’s own merits.

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