{"id":89314,"date":"2025-02-28T05:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T11:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89314"},"modified":"2025-03-03T06:53:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T12:53:56","slug":"opportunity-runs-into-the-door-like-a-battering-ram-at-the-front-of-an-mrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89314","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity Runs Into The Door Like A Battering Ram At The Front Of An MRAP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Piglet isn&#8217;t running for Senate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">NEW: Gov. Tim Walz will NOT run for MN&#39;s newly open U.S. Senate seat in 2026, spox confirms this AM.<br><br>He&#39;s still exploring a third term for governor.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/m5DHC0xP7h\">https:\/\/t.co\/m5DHC0xP7h<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Torey Van Oot (@toreyvanoot) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/toreyvanoot\/status\/1894734619452264878?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 26, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That leaves the field with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lt. Governor Flanagan, the one-time extremist who has drifted toward the center-left, at least as compared to<\/li>\n<li>Ilhan Omar and<\/li>\n<li>Leigh Finke.<\/li>\n<li>Al Franken is also riumored to be thinking about wanting to go back to DC.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Angie Crag, who just keeps barely portraying herself as &#8220;moderate&#8221; in defending her always vulnerable House seat.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The DFL&#8217;s big advantage is their chair has far more power to shape the election field than the GOP chair does.\u00a0 I suspect the wrangling before, during and after the DFL convention will reflect the wishes of whomever is the MNDFL&#8217;s sitting char.\u00a0\u00a0 If it were still Ken Martin, I&#8217;d suspect a lot of push behind Rep. Craig &#8211; I can&#8217;t see that the other three contenders aren&#8217;t going to have problems outside 494\/694.\u00a0 Franken&#8217;s a wild card &#8211; but he&#8217;s also 73.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are mainstream (i.e. less overtly Maoist) DFLers who say they think Craig may have an inside shot.\u00a0\u00a0 Which would open up CD2, which has been vulnerable ever since Jason Lewis left the seat &#8211; provided the CD2 GOP can coalesce around a viable candidate, rather <\/p>\n<p>As to Walz running for a third term?\u00a0\u00a0 That&#8217;s gotta be a big lift &#8211; but with seemingly every other contender for statewide office in the ring for Senate, it&#8217;s hard to see who in the DFL would oppose him, as the field looks now &#8211; or which of them would do better in a Governor race.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The wildest card of all, of course, would be vintage DFL:\u00a0 Senator Smith resigns early, Walz appoints either himself or whichever candidate has the current favor of the DFL (himself or Craig, I&#8217;d suspect), potentially leaving that choice and Lt. Gov. Flanagan as incumbents next year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At any rate &#8211; the opportunity is there for the MNGOP, if they can tame the circuilar firing squad for one lousy cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And the size of that &#8220;if&#8221; seems to defy physics.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Piglet isn&#8217;t running for Senate: That leaves the field with: Lt. Governor Flanagan, the one-time extremist who has drifted toward the center-left, at least as compared to Ilhan Omar and Leigh Finke. Al Franken is also riumored to be thinking about wanting to go back to DC.\u00a0\u00a0 Angie Crag, who just keeps barely portraying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,155,320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-congressional","category-mndfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89314","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=89314"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89330,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89314\/revisions\/89330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}