That’s what got Betsy Hodges the victory in Minneapolis’ mayoral election last night. \u00a0About a third (36.55%) of a 34% turnout in the first round.<\/p>\n
Cam Winton came in just under 10% with 7,500 votes. \u00a0Which is about ten percent better than a Republican did in the last Minneapolis mayor race. \u00a0Or the one before. \u00a0Or the one before that. \u00a0Ad infinitum <\/em>(or at least back to the nineties, which was the last credible GOP candidate I can recall in Minneapolis).<\/p>\n Now, we know there are more than 7,500 Republicans in Minneapolis. \u00a0240,000 people in Hennepin County voted for Mitt Romney, for crying out loud – and the “Republican districts” in Henco would fit into a phone booth and leave you enough room for someone to come in and ask you what a phone booth was. \u00a0If even 20% of those 240,000 were in Minneapolis, and they’d come out to the polls last night, Winton would have crushed Hodges.<\/p>\n But Republicans never come out for local races. \u00a0My theory: \u00a0they’re so used to getting beaten down in local, county and Congressional elections, they only come out for statewide and federal races, where their votes actually end up mattering; a GOP vote from Longfellow is worth exactly the same as a GOP vote from Dassel.<\/p>\n The upsides last night? \u00a0The fake Republicans, Bob “Let’s Build a Bike Skyway” Carney and Ole “Will Run For Office For Food” Savior, got less than a percent of the vote. \u00a0In a cycle in which the 5th CD GOP started out being run by people whose main goal was to destroy the GOP, that’s not a bad job of protecting the brand – although most of the credit goes to Winton, who ran a great race.<\/p>\n Nationwide? \u00a0I can’t be too disappointed. \u00a0Christie isn’t my favorite Republican, but he had my favorite result – crushing his opponents in a blue state.<\/p>\n Ken Cuccinelli outperformed expectations immensely last night, coming within two points in a race everyone counted him out of – and (this is important) losing to a Democrat vote surge in the only part of the country that’s doing well financially right now, the DC suburbs.<\/p>\n Takeaway? \u00a0 A good candidate is better than a bad candidate. \u00a0A well-organized party in an area is better than a party that’s a Bulgarian goat rodeo. \u00a0A two-party city is a better prospect for a challenger than a one-party cesspool. \u00a0 And all three factors matter, every election,every time.<\/p>\n And it’s going to take either a Detroit-style calamity, or several cycles of rebuilding the GOP as credible contenders, to change either Minneapolis or Saint Paul. \u00a0Which would mean spending less time in a circular firing squad shooting other Republicans and more time actually making a case to actual voters.<\/p>\n And I think I started saying that seven years ago, and it’s only gotten worse in the metro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That’s what got Betsy Hodges the victory in Minneapolis’ mayoral election last night. \u00a0About a third (36.55%) of a 34% turnout in the first round. Cam Winton came in just under 10% with 7,500 votes. \u00a0Which is about ten percent better than a Republican did in the last Minneapolis mayor race. \u00a0Or the one before. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,72,13,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minneapolis","category-mngop","category-republicans","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609","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=39609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39612,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609\/revisions\/39612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}