Mike Hatch is Ahead of the Curve in the Yard Sign Wars
I just took an extended road trip to western Minnesota this weekend and was very surprised at the number of "Mike Hatch for Governor" signs already dotting the edges of farm fields and small-town front yards. I can't recall seeing high volumes of yard signs for any candidate as early as July before, but political campaigns are getting longer and the stakes for winning have become higher.
Typically, yard sign wars are engineered by the county chairs of the respective political parties, often creating a groundswell of a given candidate's yard signs in a single county, even if every county surrounding it has little or no yard sign presence for the candidate. That was not the case with these Mike Hatch signs as they were distributed fairly evenly in remote rural counties such as Traverse, Big Stone, Swift, Grant and Stevens. I spoke to another Minnesota political junkie who also saw scores of Hatch signs this weekend between the Twin Cities and Winona in southeastern Minnesota. My best guess is that the Hatch campaign has been proactive in distributing these yard signs early as a means of generating some psychological momentum. Laugh if you will, but this low-cost advertising strikes me as an intelligent way of getting voters' attention.
Particularly in the case of the aforementioned western Minnesota counties, the Hatch campaign seems to know what it's doing. This is a rural area with a disproportionately senior population and a continued affinity for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party that was born there. Even the hapless 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns of DFLers Skip Humphrey and Roger Moe pulled out victories in several of these counties. Mike Hatch seems like exactly like the kind of straight-talkin', straight arrow DFLer who could mop the floor up with the smooth-talking suburban yuppie Pawlenty, and Hatch will need every vote he can find outstate to make up for Pawlenty's advantage in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs.
It was very heartening to see all the Hatch signs erected in such strange places this far before the election. It strikes me as a sign that the DFL may actually be planning to run a competent gubernatorial campaign this year. The last time that happened, "The A-Team" was a hit on network television.
Typically, yard sign wars are engineered by the county chairs of the respective political parties, often creating a groundswell of a given candidate's yard signs in a single county, even if every county surrounding it has little or no yard sign presence for the candidate. That was not the case with these Mike Hatch signs as they were distributed fairly evenly in remote rural counties such as Traverse, Big Stone, Swift, Grant and Stevens. I spoke to another Minnesota political junkie who also saw scores of Hatch signs this weekend between the Twin Cities and Winona in southeastern Minnesota. My best guess is that the Hatch campaign has been proactive in distributing these yard signs early as a means of generating some psychological momentum. Laugh if you will, but this low-cost advertising strikes me as an intelligent way of getting voters' attention.
Particularly in the case of the aforementioned western Minnesota counties, the Hatch campaign seems to know what it's doing. This is a rural area with a disproportionately senior population and a continued affinity for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party that was born there. Even the hapless 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns of DFLers Skip Humphrey and Roger Moe pulled out victories in several of these counties. Mike Hatch seems like exactly like the kind of straight-talkin', straight arrow DFLer who could mop the floor up with the smooth-talking suburban yuppie Pawlenty, and Hatch will need every vote he can find outstate to make up for Pawlenty's advantage in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs.
It was very heartening to see all the Hatch signs erected in such strange places this far before the election. It strikes me as a sign that the DFL may actually be planning to run a competent gubernatorial campaign this year. The last time that happened, "The A-Team" was a hit on network television.
posted by Mark at 8:22 PM
8 Comments:
I wish I could say the same about Angelides as Hatch...
Interestingly, though the gov race here in Texas is a crazy 4-way, I have seen almost no yard signs except one for Strayhorn. I have also seen a lot of Kinky bumper stickers where I live. There are lots of apartment complexes in the part of Denton (close to UNT) that I live that there are so few yard signs. Even the few houses around here don't have signs... :-/
Oh, and regarding the heat wave, Angelides squandered yet another opportunity. "We shouldn't be asking businesses to shut down or the elderly to turn off their air conditioners," he told reporters.
Not good when trying to preach sustainable living, which is all the rage back home, and with the state energy-strapped again...
Drat, drat, drat, drat, drat...
Why couldn't we have fielded a better candidate against the governator? :bummed:
Sorry to hear about Angelides' lackluster campaign, but I can't say I'm surprised. It's too bad that this golden opportunity to do away with Schwarzenegger is being squandered, but as we both now seem to concede, it's odds-on that he'll get a second term.
The Texas situation may be even more migraine-inducing though. The noxious Rick Perry could be defeated against a unified opposition. With three challengers all splitting the anti-Perry vote evenly, Perry's a shoo-in. Do you think there will be any pressure on one (or possibly two) of the candidates to drop out so that they can beat Perry? And if not, do you expect that one or two of the challengers could flame out before November 7?
I'm not sure Bell, Strayhorn, or Kinky will be pressured to leave or just drop out of the race. James and I have been discussing this on Yahoo! and he told me that if it were a 3-way race instead of 4, especially Perry-Strayhorn-Bell, the first 2 would split the conservative vote, handing the Governor's Mansion to Bell. But with a 2 or 4-way race, Perry wins.
James also told me that he knows somebody who works for the Chris Bell campaign and who said that Bell knows he doesn't stand a chance at winning the governorship; he is running to gain statewide name recognition for a Senate run in 2008 against the tepidly popular John Cornyn. James told me that if Cornyn couldn't crack 55% against an urban liberal black man (Ron Kirk, former Dallas mayor which Cornyn beat only 55-43) in a very Republican state in a very Republican year, then he would be in trouble in 2008, especially since there is no Bush on the ticket.
(Converseley, KBH is very popular because of her moderate posturing and willing to reach out to Democrats [even a majority of Dems approve of her]; she voted for the stem cell bill).
Before there was a Bush on a statewide ticket (1980), Texas was virtually a swing state; having gone only narrowly for Carter in 76 and narrowly for Dole in 96. We don't expect it to become Ohio/Michigan/Florida-style close in 08, but more on the scale of 55-45 GOP. But if the Dems nominate something like a Bill Richardson/Blanche Lincoln ticket then they could make Texas into a toss-up, depending on who the GOP nominates.
I just checked out California Progress Report and found Angelides' real plan to bring more power into Cali. It's a shame that I had to search somewhere other than the "so-called liberal media". It just shows how much that we here in America are missing from relying only on the MSM.
Anyway, I put the entry on Phil's energy plan, and will point out a few things here, including Phil's (finally!) alluding to Enron and Bush:
“Arnold Schwarzenegger promised us in 2004, ‘Trust me. Everything will be under control. Your lights will stay on.’ And for three years, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been singing the music of California’s deregulation scheme, thwarting efforts to create an environment that attracts clean power to California,” said Angelides. “It’s time to send a strong signal to the market that the failed deregulation experiment of Enron, George Bush, and the energy power pirates is over once and for all.”
“Governor Schwarzenegger has put California’s energy in the hands of the power barons who have been fined more than $5.3 billion for market manipulation.
Phil also points out a flip-flop:
Soon after taking office, Schwarzenegger said that he would “get more private investment” in the state’s energy market because “we have to build more power plants...which did not happen over the last few years” (Inside Energy, February 2, 2004).
Power plant construction has stalled since Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation in 2004 (AB 2006) that would have paved the way for the construction of power plants by investor-owned utilities in the same manner as before passage of the energy deregulation bill in 1996 (under that WONDERFUL Pete Wilson).
Of course this does not mean that Phil will walk in in November, but I'm not writing him off either. I just hope that Phil will be able to pull everything together in time.
sean, I saw the same poll, which showed Klobuchar leading Kennedy by five. The bad news was that the spread between Klobuchar and Hatch was just as seismic as it was in the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll a couple of weeks ago, which indicated a 19-point lead for Klobuchar and a two-point deficit for Hatch. This tells me that more independents are ticket-splitting than I had originally suspected would.
On the other hand, I highly doubt Hatch is trailing by 14 points. I suspect the Survey USA poll was a bad sample and will likely be invalidated by future polling. If it isn't, Hatch definitely has his work cut out for him.
One thing that struck me about the samples of both the Minnesota Poll and the SUSA poll was the internal indicators suggesting Pawlenty had leads of higher than two to one among the youth vote (the most Democratic demographic of voters who helped Kerry beat Bush in MN in 2004). This simply isn't credible. Minnesota youth are not supporting Pawlenty 66-21 over Hatch. I'm holding out for more polls before I start to panic.
I (and a few friends) contacted Angelides regarding the fever the state has run and the power grid nearly falling into the "rolling blackout" zone from high A/C use. I was pleased when I saw his energy proposal. And the Sierra Club told us that Phil will be our greenest governor ever.
I am bummed about our man's numbers right now, but the bright side is that Arnold, in spite of universal name recognition, still hasn't broken 50%. So I am not counting Phil out...yet...
sean, I'm not too worried about Klobuchar, but acknowledge that her double-digit leads in July polls are highly unlikely to hold up into the fall. Kennedy has several things going for him, including personal or professional ties to every region of the state, and having represented approximately a third of the state in Congress in two very different districts. In the past six years, Kennedy has represented 32 Minnesota counties while Klobuchar has represented one. But as I've said all along in regards to that "one" county where Klobuchar is the quasi-incumbent, if she gets 60% in Hennepin County, as I suspect she will, the arithmatic simply cannot work out to Kennedy's favor statewide.
One thing to keep an eye out for though is an October surprise regarding Klobuchar's reputation in the Hennepin County Attorney's office. There has been some bad blood with Klobuchar and at least some of her underlings, so much so that AFSCME held out for months before finally giving a lukewarm endorsement for her. If Kennedy's still trailing in October, expect an ad that features one or more disgruntled former employees "warning Minnesotans" not to put their "bitchy boss" into an even higher position of power.
sara, I agree that it's too soon to give up on Angelides. He doesn't seem like a very good candidate, but if Arnie wants to win another term in California, he has to be mistake-free for the next 3 1/2 months.
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