Weekend Road Trip to the Northland
On Saturday and Sunday, I took an exhausting 1600-mile ballbuster of a road trip to Minnesota's north woods. And I'm not talking about Brainerd, Alexandria or any of the other wimpy sanctuaries of suburban Minneapolis expatriates only a couple hours north of the Cities, I'm talking about the REAL northlands....places like Duluth, Lake Superior's North Shore, Ely, International Falls, and Bemidji. I go on these northern Minnesota road trips every September, and was particularly excited to be heading into the heart of DFL country 50 days before an election to assess the yard sign wars. My only disappointment is that the Republicans didn't even attempt to make it a contest.
A number of DFLers have commented in the past month how all they see driving on rural Minnesota highways are signs for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch and Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar. I assumed it was an early oversight on the Republicans' part and that they'd be on the ball with an army of their own signs along highways and city streets after Labor Day. That isn't happening. A few local Republican candidates had a yard sign presence, particularly on the long stretch of highway between International Falls and Bemidji, but nowhere amongst the signs for Congressional candidate Rod Grams and local Republican officials were signs for Tim Pawlenty or Mark Kennedy. That almost certainly means that the state GOP is not making signs for Pawlenty or Kennedy readily available. Only in the city of Bemidji did I see three Kennedy signs and one Pawlenty sign (and it was in the window of the county GOP headquarters!).
Now, yard sign presence is hardly a good indicator of how an election is going to go, but it is fairly indicative of supporter enthusiasm....and candidate enthusiasm for that matter. Particularly in the case of Kennedy, whose poll numbers have been absolutely abysmal in the past two months, his lackluster ground game almost smells like an inevitability of defeat has kept him from sufficiently competing with his opponent house to house, yard to yard the way that any number of DFL and GOP candidates have done in the past. If Pawlenty and Kennedy yard signs continue to be an endangered species, it creates a certain psychological momentum for swing voters in neighborhoods where the neighbors all have Klobuchar or Hatch signs in their yard. With seven more weeks until the election, it's not out of the question that the Republicans could suddenly come out of their shell and distribute some Pawlenty and Kennedy signs to their foot soldiers, but the clock is ticking without any semblance of a ground game at work yet.
On the DFL side, some towns and more counties had a more significant yard sign presence than others, as sign distribution relates heavily to the county party's organization and enthusiasm. However, it was not uncommon to see Hatch and Klobuchar signs on the most remote farm driveways and state roads in northwestern and northeastern Minnesota. I'm gonna be keeping a close eye on election night to see if the vote returns prove this year's DFL rural strategy (a strategy that really seems to be pushed by the Hatch campaign) yields wider margins than usual for DFL candidates. If Hatch wins the tick-tight gubernatorial race, my money is that his outsized presence in rural Minnesota will be key to overcoming Pawlenty's popularity in the suburbs.
A number of DFLers have commented in the past month how all they see driving on rural Minnesota highways are signs for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch and Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar. I assumed it was an early oversight on the Republicans' part and that they'd be on the ball with an army of their own signs along highways and city streets after Labor Day. That isn't happening. A few local Republican candidates had a yard sign presence, particularly on the long stretch of highway between International Falls and Bemidji, but nowhere amongst the signs for Congressional candidate Rod Grams and local Republican officials were signs for Tim Pawlenty or Mark Kennedy. That almost certainly means that the state GOP is not making signs for Pawlenty or Kennedy readily available. Only in the city of Bemidji did I see three Kennedy signs and one Pawlenty sign (and it was in the window of the county GOP headquarters!).
Now, yard sign presence is hardly a good indicator of how an election is going to go, but it is fairly indicative of supporter enthusiasm....and candidate enthusiasm for that matter. Particularly in the case of Kennedy, whose poll numbers have been absolutely abysmal in the past two months, his lackluster ground game almost smells like an inevitability of defeat has kept him from sufficiently competing with his opponent house to house, yard to yard the way that any number of DFL and GOP candidates have done in the past. If Pawlenty and Kennedy yard signs continue to be an endangered species, it creates a certain psychological momentum for swing voters in neighborhoods where the neighbors all have Klobuchar or Hatch signs in their yard. With seven more weeks until the election, it's not out of the question that the Republicans could suddenly come out of their shell and distribute some Pawlenty and Kennedy signs to their foot soldiers, but the clock is ticking without any semblance of a ground game at work yet.
On the DFL side, some towns and more counties had a more significant yard sign presence than others, as sign distribution relates heavily to the county party's organization and enthusiasm. However, it was not uncommon to see Hatch and Klobuchar signs on the most remote farm driveways and state roads in northwestern and northeastern Minnesota. I'm gonna be keeping a close eye on election night to see if the vote returns prove this year's DFL rural strategy (a strategy that really seems to be pushed by the Hatch campaign) yields wider margins than usual for DFL candidates. If Hatch wins the tick-tight gubernatorial race, my money is that his outsized presence in rural Minnesota will be key to overcoming Pawlenty's popularity in the suburbs.
posted by Mark at 9:48 PM
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