{"id":24405,"date":"2011-11-16T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24405"},"modified":"2020-12-21T05:30:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T11:30:03","slug":"in-re-the-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24405","title":{"rendered":"In Re The Senate Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The upcoming Minnesota Senate race, say some, is a foregone conclusion. \u00a0A-Klo in a walkover, says the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The MNGOP has three candidates vying for the nomination, so far.. \u00a0Former State Representative Dan Severson is, by most accounts, the front-running. \u00a0Joe Arwood and Tony Hernandez round out the field of applicants so far.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve interviewed Dan many times; in a just world, he&#8217;d be the Secretary of State today. \u00a0Hernandez ran a tireless State Senate campaign last fall in Saint Paul &#8211; which is like saying &#8220;the Light Brigade sure charged with energy!&#8221;, sure, but Hernandez is an amazingly sharp, capable guy. \u00a0And I met Joe Arwood over the weekend; I think he has a future in politics, too. \u00a0 I could vote for any of them, after any of them gets nominated.<\/p>\n<p>But let&#8217;s spitball for just a moment here.<\/p>\n<p>What, according to the &#8220;conventional wisdom&#8221;, does the GOP need to win the Senate race?<\/p>\n<p>The candidate has to be&#8230;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Someone with some name ID.<\/li>\n<li>Someone with some fundraising mojo. \u00a0That&#8217;s huge; with the departure of Bill Guidera from the race, I&#8217;m personally not seeing a fundraising superstar in the line-up.<\/li>\n<li>Let&#8217;s be honest &#8211; conservative. \u00a0A-Klo has done a good job of fooling Minnesotans into thinking she&#8217;s &#8220;Center&#8221;-left,\u00a0although\u00a0she&#8217;s feeling confident enough in her chances that she&#8217;s actually come out and co-sponsored some Obama-blessed legislation &#8211; something she&#8217;s eschewed (along with most work of any kind) so far in her career in the Senate; she&#8217;ll have the media to cover for her and shade her to the center. \u00a0The GOP loses nothing by presenting voters a real ideological alternative.<\/li>\n<li>Female. \u00a0 Hey, it counts. \u00a0Minnesotans, I suspect, are hooked on the idea of their Senate delegation being a mixed doubles team.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So as I was thinking about this the other day, someone said &#8220;what do you think about Bridget Sutton?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sutton &#8211; a businesswoman who is currently on the Inver Grove Heights school board, is the wife of MNGOP chair Tony Sutton &#8211; which would be a two-edged sword, not only as a shrieking point for the DFL and media (pardon, as always, as always, the redundancy) but with elements of the MNGOP that are not happy with the current regime.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Sutton is smart, savvy, and would mulch Klobuchar in a debate.<\/p>\n<p>So what does the assembled multitude think?<\/p>\n<p>And who are we missing here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The upcoming Minnesota Senate race, say some, is a foregone conclusion. \u00a0A-Klo in a walkover, says the conventional wisdom. The MNGOP has three candidates vying for the nomination, so far.. \u00a0Former State Representative Dan Severson is, by most accounts, the front-running. \u00a0Joe Arwood and Tony Hernandez round out the field of applicants so far. I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,2,72],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-24405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-minnesota-politics","category-mngop","tag-a-klo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24412,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24405\/revisions\/24412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}