Is Gil Gutknecht In Real Trouble?

The anecdotal evidence has been piling up for months. Gil Gutknecht, the six-term Republican incumbent from Minnesota's 1st district began airing radio advertisements in July, as opposed to three weeks before the election when he usually hits TV and radio airwaves to stave off token Democratic opposition. His first-rate Democratic opponent, Afghanistan war veteran and Mankato teacher Tim Walz, had been feverishly working the campaign trail and raising funds since early 2005, working his way towards a flourish of televised ads that have raised his profile since Labor Day. A recent poll administered by a labor union showed Gutknecht trailing Walz by six points, even though few considered the poll very reliable. Republican candidates are polling horribly statewide in Minnesota, with the growing possibility of a crushing Democratic tidal wave in the state coming to fruition.

Yet for all this, there has remarkably little chatter among national horse race analysts about the Gutknecht-Walz race. On the surface, that's understandable. Gutknecht is an affable, inoffensive six-term incumbent who has won every contest since 1996 by double-digit margins, and expanded that margin to more than 20 points in 2002 and 2004. He has broken with the Bush administration on a couple key issues, most prominently free trade and prescription drugs, in recent years, to the likely benefit of his political standing in the not-as-Republican-as-it-used-to-be Rochester-based district. With all that in mind, I spied further anecdotal evidence this past weekend that Gutknecht is in the fight of his political life.

Saturating Southern Minnesota television airwaves with a singular lame negative ad, Gutknecht's campaign seems as if it was swirling around the proverbial drain. The proposed D,M & E railroad expansion, which is violently opposed by virtually everyone in the city of Rochester, is rising in prominence in the region's headlines with Walz firmly opposed and Gutknecht taking no clear stand on the issue. And in the yard sign wars, Walz's ground game is vastly superior to Gutknecht's even in Gutknecht's long-standing strongholds. On Saturday, I took my annual autumn road trip to La Crosse, Wisconsin, along Minnesota State Highway 16. It's the most scenic stretch of highway I've travelled in Minnesota with vibrant fall colors in the bluffs along the Root River and Mississippi River.

The small, rural communities in this region have shifted away from the GOP in the last decade or so, even though they have long been Republican strongholds. But the one thing that could always be counted upon is an outstanding ground game of Republican signs, particularly in Houston County, Minnesota's southeasternmost county. It's not uncommon to see 20 signs for every Republican candidate in the 30-mile stretch of Highway 16 before the Wisconsin border. But the best Gutknecht or any other of the Republican candidates could do this year was three signs, all plastered in generic roadside locations. Walz, on the other hand, had 12 signs erected on that same stretch of highway, all but one of which were in front of remote rural homes in the company of other Democratic candidates. If Democratic candidates are sweeping the townships of rural Houston County, they're almost assuredly destroying the opposition statewide and/or districtwide. There is no Republican for whom this is worse news that Gil Gutknecht.