The Thin Blue Stain
By Mitch Berg
On the one hand, there’s no such thing as a “safe seat” for Republicans in Minnesota. Between a mercurial population given to flights of bizarro fancy (Jesse Ventura? Al Franken? Hello?) and a deep messianic liberal streak running through the population (Paul Wellstone? Aaagh!), no Republican should ever get too complacent.
One of the bright spots in the dismal ’08 election was Erik Paulsen, who ran to the right of conventional wisdom (the district was supposed to be much more purple than Paulsen, after nine terms of Jim Ramstad).
But Derek Brigham at the Dogs and True North warns against complacency:
Today I got a request from Katie Nadeau and Sheila Kihne who are heading up the GOTV effort for CD3 this year. They wanted me to make a map to illustrate the reality of just how blue CD3 had become to help dispel the myth that CD3 is an easy territory for the Republican party.
Image by Derek Brigham
I took the 2008 Minnesota House election results map showing the winning party by precinct and enlarged the northwest metro area. Next I cut out all the areas that were not in CD3 (there are a few flaws I left in like SD45 so I did not have to cut off the names). The results?
You see the results on Derek’s map.
I don’t know how many people believe that CD3 is “safe” for the GOP, although I think Paulsen is an excellent incumbent to have in place; he’s to the right of what the “conventional wisdom” said could win, but he’s crafted a pretty careful message to his very mixed district.
Derek goes on to note that there are infinite variables – it’s looking to be a better year for the GOP than ’08, for starters – but now’s no time to relax. If you live in the Three, and you care about the future of this nation, you need to get out and help not only keep Paulsen in office, but flip some of those baby-blue State House districts to red.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Benson and Ruud have got to go, as does Bonoff in the Senate. 43 used to be solidly and reliably red, but 43B has slipped away and drug the Senate seat with it. We’ve got two great candidates for the 43B house seat, and an incumbent in 43A that shouldn’t be at risk.
Ruud will be difficult to beat.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Don’t worry, when they nix the 6th they’ll draw you a nice gerrymandered Red district all bright and beautiful for ya LOL
January 26th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
At least Flush admits to the DFL gerrymandering.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
LOL
January 26th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I hope and suspect Gerrymandering will finally rid of us Bachmann, and may make CD-3 more likely to flip blue -which is absolutely fine by me. BTW, KR, before you break your arm patting yourself on the back for pointing out gerrymandering as a political tool, or more correctly before you throw out your voice shouting it, go look at what was done in Texas in 2001.
It’s a tool for both sides – always has been always will be, and Tom Delay wrote the book on abusive tactics and byzantine district definitions. It probably setup the massive shift in the US House in 2002 (in part at least) and without it, the Repugs would have been even more soundly thrashed in 2008.
Your complaints, as usual, are hypocrisy personified.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
BTW, Mitch, I live in CD-3, I think Paulson is yet another step-and-fetch-it for the corporate elite, much as most of the far right is, wittingly or unwittingly. He’s not the chattering soundbite boom that Bachmann is, and he at least seems to have some ethical standards on some social issues (such as, he doesn’t conflate ACORN with their contractors and accuse them FALSELY of voter fraud), but he’s still just another suit working to ensure the vastly wealthy continue to extract more wealth from the middle-class either thru predatory financial practices or, like Dick Cheney and Halliburton, by raiding the US treasury to do jobs for $1800/day which we used to pay soldiers to do just as well at $100-$200/day. Go free enterprise! Go competition! Go private sector! Yes, our logistical service in Afghanistan is FAR superior to that which we had in Desert Storm, and at a cost of $1m/yr/soldier, my god, what a bargain!!! Paulson and his ilk be praised.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I hope and suspect Gerrymandering will finally rid of us Bachmann
Which is kind of a funny thing to say; in your next comment, you bag on “the elites”, but in this comment you confess you look forward to “elites” – legislators and judges – stifling the voice of a whole district’s voters.
Your elitist tendencies are duly noted.
and may make CD-3 more likely to flip blue -which is absolutely fine by me.
Er, very likely not. Let’s assume we lose enough people that we lose a district (and that the DFL controls the legislature in 2010); all those Republican voters have to go somewhere. It’s for sure they won’t be changing parties.
Your complaints, as usual, are hypocrisy personified.
Pen, you really need to stop abusing the term “hypocrisy”. A hypocrite espouses moral and ethical constraints for others that he/she willfully flouts.
The Texas Legislature, being controlled as it was by the GOP, was well within its rights to redistrict as they did (as the MN Legislature will be if the census causes us to lose a House seat). It doesn’t say that TX Democrats or MN Republicans won’t have every right to complain about their other side’s approach. Since KRod isn’t telling Texas Democrats they can’t complain, he’s no hypocrite.
Please adjust your writing accordingly from now on. Thanks.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Well, folks, there you have it; Peni just admitted that he hopes the DFL will gerrymander our state in order to replace a republican with a Democrat.
Thanks, Flush and Peev for being such staunch partisan hacks.
I oppose gerrymandering. Period.
I wait for the day that second (and some first) ring suburbs are not gerrymandered into the urban metropolis districts.
I wait for the day that two very very similar core urban metropolises are combined into one district.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
They should combine Mpls and St Paul into on district. But then the liberals of those cities will have to decide between the stunning intelligence of Betty “angry teabaggers” McCallum and the ethics of Keith “X” Ellison.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Minnesota currently has about 600,000 people per legislator; Minneapolis and Saint Paul together are right around there; if we were to lose a representative, it’d be one way to divide things up…
…but that’d depend on having a GOP-controlled legislature…
January 26th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
…or a legislature that actually represented the people.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Minnesota currently has about 600,000 people per legislator; Minneapolis and Saint Paul together are right around there; if we were to lose a representative, it’d be one way to divide things up…
Got that right. If we were to lose the seat, that would be the best way to go, since I can tell you that Betty McCollum doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about anyone north of Larpenteur Avenue. And she doesn’t have to.
I’m not a big fan of Bachmann, but she’d represent the interests of our area a lot more consistenly than McCollum ever has, or will.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
I think Paulson is yet another step-and-fetch-it for the corporate elite
And who better to make that racist comment than a faithful droog of the party of Scrubs.
These gleeful admissions of their intentions to deprive people of their right to be properly represented through scumbaggery should be no surprise…it’s all they know.