{"id":41198,"date":"2014-01-20T10:20:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T16:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41198"},"modified":"2014-01-20T10:27:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T16:27:10","slug":"debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41198","title":{"rendered":"Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, Brad Carlson and I had the great pleasure of hosting the first ever North Ramsey County Republicans Gubernatorial debate. \u00a0The event was put on by the three BPOUs in northern Ramsey county – House districts 42A, 42B and 66A.<\/p>\n

We had five of the GOP governor candidates on stage with us; Marty Seifert, Jeff Johnson, Rob Farnsworth, Dave Thompson and Scott Honour.<\/p>\n

We had about 100 people in the house at Concordia Academy – which, for a first-time GOP event deep in Blue Ramsey County on a day with greasy roads was excellent turnout. \u00a0A lot of people also tuned in via the live stream and, of course, on AM1280 (the debate was during my show’s regular time slot).<\/p>\n

Bill Salisbury of the Pioneer Press was there, and wrote about the event<\/a>\u00a0in a piece titled “Debate reveals similar messages from GOP’s five candidates for governor” – which was a perfectly valid first impression of the event. \u00a0Candidates are being cautious now, playing largely to the party base (for caucus purposes) while trying to woo uncommitted and non-activist Republicans (for the primaries, which look pretty inevitable at this point).<\/p>\n

Salisbury:<\/p>\n

But the audience of about 100 partisans and students at Concordia Academy wanted to know: Who is the most electable?<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s the biggest difference between this year’s Republican contest and the party’s 2010 nomination battle.<\/span><\/p>\n

“No one asked that question four years ago,” former House Minority Leader Marty Seifert said after the 90-minute debate. In 2010, Seifert lost the GOP gubernatorial endorsement to conservative firebrand Tom Emmer, who then was defeated by Democrat Mark Dayton despite a wave that swept Republicans into control of both houses of the Legislature for the first time in four decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, Seifert said, grassroots Republicans are hungry for a win and less concerned about ideological purity.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a different race than it was four years ago; bidding to replace Mark Dayton is different than trying to follow-up Tim Pawlenty.<\/p>\n

The audience questions were sharp and incisive, and I think they accurately reflected the concerns of real Minnesotans pretty clearly; the economy, the disintegration of health insurance under Obamacare and MNSure, and – most poignantly – a lot of high school kids wondering what kind of economy they were going to be graduating into.<\/p>\n

From my perspective as a co-moderator? \u00a0The candidates were <\/em>pretty similar; all various shades of “conservative enough”. \u00a0Farnsworth was pragmatic, and a bit of a homespun technocrat, with fairly detailed ideas for solutions to problems raised. \u00a0Seifert was sharp – like someone who’s spent four years working through the questions, having a brisk, calibrated answer to everything.<\/p>\n

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Last Saturday, Brad Carlson and I had the great pleasure of hosting the first ever North Ramsey County Republicans Gubernatorial debate. \u00a0The event was put on by the three BPOUs in northern Ramsey county – House districts 42A, 42B and 66A. We had five of the GOP governor candidates on stage with us; Marty Seifert, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,144,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14","category-governor","category-mngop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41223,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41198\/revisions\/41223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}