David Trinh

I have to say that the most underrated political story in Minnesota this week is Paul Thissen’s massive fundraising haul in the governor’s race.  Honestly, a little-known State Rep. who is able to bank as much as the Speaker of the MN State House should be taken very seriously.  Money is, of course, an imperfect metric to measure political success but, as it’s one of the only indicators that DFL delegates have to go off of, it’s an incredibly important one.  Thissen’s impressive warchest and his tireless campaign swings through greater Minnesota are going to make him a top-tier competitor at the state convention April.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this very excellent CityPages profile of Rep. Paul Thissen, one of the many DFLers currently vying for the Democratic nomination.  The whole thing is really good journalism and you should definitely go read the piece— if nothing else it will give you an idea of what a grueling ordeal running for statewide office is.  The only commentary I would add is that Thissen comes off as a very cerebral candidate in his profile.  As a DFL loyalist I certainly admire this quality but I must say that in the past Democrats have gotten into a bit of trouble with the electorate for running overly intelligent candidates who lacked the personal polish to sell themselves to voters.  If Thissen is actually a candidate who can bridge these two qualities, and I have to say I’m certainly impressed so far, he’s probably going to be the first DFL governor of Minnesota in twenty years.

A few weeks ago, at the Douglas Country fair, local DFLers conducted a straw poll to gauge support for the various contenders for the DFL nomination.  The results have finally been tallied (in all fairness, it takes a bit of time to work through 151 IRV ballots), and the results are as follows:

Mark Dayton: 77
RT Rybak: 37
Paul Thissen: 18
Chris Coleman: 3
Steve Kelley: 2
MAK: 1
John Marty: 1

Seventy-seven votes were needed to win a majority; some candidates (Bakk, Gaertner, etc.) were dropped as the IRV process redistributed their support to more competitive candidates.

This poll confirms much of what I thought about the sentiments of Democrats in my corner of Greater Minnesota.  The main takeaway is that Dayton is ahead of the pack, largely because of his superior name recognition this early in the game– numerous people told me that Dayton’s name was the only one they recognized on the ballot.

RT’s strong showing may defy the conventional wisdom, but, as I’ve written before, the mayor of Minneapolis has a strong following among party activists (especially the younger cohort) owing to his early endorsement of Barack Obama, his leadership during the bridge collapse and his general good looks and good humor.  Rybak has the potential to be very competitive in Greater Minnesota, a quality that is certainly unusual among Twin Cities Democrats.

The figures for Dayton and Rybak aside, I think the most notable showing in this poll is Thissen’s.  Honestly, this guy should not be showing this level of support this early in a place like Douglas Country; after all, Thissen is one of dozens of Twin Cities politicians who ordinarily blend together in a mush of names that people from my hometown struggle to remember.  The fact that Thissen is showing this level of support really demonstrates how hard he’s working in Greater Minnesota and I stand by my opinion that Thissen is making inroads in the activist base in towns like Alexandria.

Thissen may ‘only’ have secured eighteen votes but that’s 18(!) times the number of votes that a supposed powerhouse like MAK brought in.  Further, I know that many former-state delegates (e.g. the people most likely to go to the next convention) are starting to lean towards Paul.  If Thissen can cement this support early on, these dedicated party members could help shift the votes of more casual caucusgoers. That, my friends, may be how a little-known State Rep wins the DFL nomination.

Over the past few weeks I had heard rumors that Rep. Paul Thissen had been making frequent appearances in rural Minnesota and had been impressing outstate DFLers with his keen grasp of policy, his articulate performances on the stump and his dedicated work ethic.  After meeting Rep. Thissen twice in the past ten days, color me impressed as well.

In his appearance before Douglas County DFLers during a meet and greet ten days ago, Thissen deftly fielded questions from DFL activists on a wide range of issues including energy policy, economic fairness and environmental regulation.  While Thissen never used dense wonky language, he provided details in almost all his answers (a refreshing change from the habit of some candidates [read: Entenza] to use rehashed bromides); in particular, I was impressed by Thissen’s answer to a question on economic recovery in which he made references to specific state programs and policy proposals that could spur economic development in rural Minnesota.

Thissen also gave a mature answer on a question concerning the need to boost state revenue in order to prevent crippling cuts to state services.  Although Thissen suggested he would be more inclined as governor to raise the sales tax instead of income taxes—an increase in the state’s sales tax would be much more regressive than an increase in incomes taxes—I still appreciate that he was specific about which mechanism he would use to raise additional revenue.  Unfortunately, like Sen. Bakk, Thissen was a little fuzzy on how he would go about selling this proposal to Minnesota’s voters: this is a question that every DFL candidate for governor needs to do a better job of addressing.

The only policy position on which Thissen and I diverged was his support for moving more decisions and responsibility to the ‘local level.’  In theory I can see how one can make a strong case for more local decision making; after all, local decision makers are supposed to have more knowledge about the needs and concerns of their community.  In practice, however, I think myself (and many other outstate DFLers) fear that local government, which is too often controlled by local conservatives more interested in protecting parochial interests than the public good, tends to make less than optimal policy choices.  I know you can make the case that this sort of political patronage occurs at all levels of government but owing to incredible lack of oversight at the local level (small hometown newspapers don’t exactly revel in muckraking), I think this sort of minor corruption is actually more likely to happen at the lower levels of government than otherwise.  All this said, Thissen seemed to take our pushback on this issue in stride and I hope he incorporates our feedback as his thinking on the devolution of power to local government continues to evolve.

Policy aside, when it comes to politics the Thissen campaign is doing everything right in rural Minnesota.  More often than not, DFL delegates in the 7^th CD get overlooked and ignored by statewide campaigns that prefer to concentrate on the delegate-rich metro instead of outstate Minnesota.  Judging by what I’ve heard from other DFL activists, the Thissen campaign sees things differently and is working rural Minnesota hard.  What the Thissen campaign (and others!) should know is that this strategy is working—almost every member of my county unit has good things to say about Paul—and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if come caucus-time Thissen is one of the few Minneapolis Democrats able to win a large contingent of support in the 7^th.