Feeling minnesota
BARNES, FRED
Feeling Minnesota by Fred Barnes Minneapolis THE PARADOX OF THE 1996 ELECTION is that the country is moving in a Republican direction, and it's Republicans who are on the defensive. President...
...Despite Boschwitz's early tactical success, Well-stone remains a formidable foe...
...We'll see if you can do it in Minnesota...
...The reason we're close is because of the bad environment...
...The hook for the campaign—Wellstone is "embarrassingly liberal"—came from Boschwitz himself...
...I think most people do...
...I did the right thing," he said...
...If it were good, we'd be way ahead...
...In truth, Republicans are likely to hold the Senate even if Boschwitz loses, but a pickup in Minnesota would all but guarantee an expanded GOP majority (now 53-47...
...But the biggest problem for Boschwitz is the political environment...
...This is when we passed the National Education Act for financial aid to higher education...
...Wellstone describes himself as a senator "in the Hubert Humphrey tradition...
...President Clinton and the Democrats have shamelessly hijacked dozens of their ideas—from a balanced budget and tax cuts to teen curfews and Megan's Law—and Republicans have gotten little or no political benefit from it...
...And he's helped by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which may be the nation's most politically correct newspaper (it backed the North Carolina school officials who expelled a 6-year-old boy for sexual harrassment...
...He has built up a grassroots army of volunteers that Boschwitz can't match...
...Does Wellstone, a former political-science professor at Carleton College, believe all this stuff...
...Boschwitz is hardly a Gingrich Republican...
...My family didn't want me to," he says...
...He insists Boschwitz is an embarrassment...
...We couldn't define him" in 1990...
...Beginning in May, Republicans targeted Well-stone with an expensive barrage of TV ads tagging him as an egregious liberal on issue after issue...
...But he also fancies himself a hero of class warfare, standing up to corporate power...
...I like free markets," he told me...
...Boschwitz, 65, was urged by many Republicans to run in 1994 for the seat of retiring GOP senator David Durenberger...
...I was saying, 'Silence is betrayal,'" he recalls...
...After Republicans took over the House and Senate in 1994, Wellstone noisily balked at their efforts to curb the welfare state...
...Republican success in Minnesota in 1994—Rod Grams won the Senate race and Arne Carlson was reelected governor—and Wellstone's blazing leftism assured a full-blown effort at taking Wellstone's seat...
...14 to justify his vote against welfare reform...
...You're better off when you define your opponent," argues Boschwitz...
...Well-stone says as much...
...In nearly every appearance, Wellstone sprinkles his comments with references to evil corporate interests...
...The money he didn't spend last summer he can use now for a late media blitz...
...Should he win, "it means we'll keep control of the Senate," he says...
...Boschwitz, who was defeated by Wellstone in 1990 after serving two Senate terms, touts the significance of the Minnesota race...
...But nothing would feel better to Republicans than defeating Wellstone, 48, the Senate's most obstreperous liberal...
...And more: "It is embarrassing that you have supported balancing the budget on the backs of our parents and grandparents," he told Boschwitz...
...The paper gave Wellstone space on Oct...
...The next day, the paper announced on the front page that Wellstone had opened a 9-point lead over Boschwitz in the Minnesota Poll...
...Nevertheless, the contrast with Wellstone is sharp because Boschwitz, who owns a home-supply business, reveres the free market and loathes government economic intervention...
...And when you've got to fight for family farmers for a decent price, you're taking on Cargill and the grain companies...
...But that was only when minor candidates were listed in the question for poll respondents...
...You've got to be willing as a senator from Minnesota to be downright populist and take on those large special interests who are the big givers and heavy hitters and dominate Washington...
...Compared with Wellstone, "Ted Kennedy is a conservative," he said...
...The attack ads "had some effect," he conceded, "but not a great effect...
...7, he boasted of challenging major commercial interests...
...He seems to...
...Only one thing: Republicans are doing to Democratic senator Paul Wellstone what Democrats and organized labor have done to GOP House members across the country...
...Thousands...
...This is the decade of the civil rights movement...
...Boschwitz says his opponent is a throwback to the 1960s, a notion that irritates Wellstone...
...First came more than $1 million in TV ads aired by the National Republican Senatorial Committee...
...He was accused of being "too liberal with our money, too tough on hard-working families...
...This is when we passed Medicare, Medicaid, medical assistance...
...A GOP official characterizes him as "economically conservative, socially ambiguous...
...This was politically brave, but Well-stone was also sanctimonious about his rearguard actions...
...The one exception to the national trend is the Minnesota Senate race...
...I'm still trying to figure out Rudy's fixation with the '60s," he says...
...You're even better off when your opponent doesn't respond vigorously...
...My business needed me...
...This allowed the television spots to frame the campaign debate between Wellstone and his Republican opponent, former senator Rudy Boschwitz...
...And when you've got to fight to make sure that farmers are able to make sure that their grain is, in fact, put in the trains and goes to market, you've got to take on the railroad companies...
...If Dole loses by 25 points here, that's going to be a problem...
...Unwittingly, Wellstone has adopted the language of his opponent's ads, thus reinforcing their message...
...When just the major candidates were listed, Wellstone's lead shrank to 3 points, inside the poll's margin of error...
...I can't tell you how many people have told me Wellstone is an embarrassment," he says...
...In other words, the paper played up a new question to make Wellstone look strong...
...Republicans are expected to carry the open Democratic seat in Alabama and have roughly a 50-50 shot at capturing each of four other seats of retiring Democrats (Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, New Jersey) and ousting incumbent Democrat John Kerry in Massachusetts...
...It took me a bunch of months to get over 1990...
...Campaigning for reelection, he talks up innocuous middle-class issues such as broadening the Family and Medical Leave Act and providing a tax break for college costs...
...Though he's raised more money than any candidate in Minnesota history, Wellstone said he lacked "the ability to respond" over the summer...
...He is an energetic, effective campaigner...
...These were followed by a clever series of ads, one featuring Wellstone's induction into the "1967 Liberal Hall of Fame" in front of a sparse audience consisting of spaced-out hippies...
...In a debate before the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, he attacked tax loopholes "that go to tobacco companies and oil companies and pharmaceutical companies...
...I hope so...
...Instead, they're frantically defending themselves against Democratic assaults on the few ideas Democrats have not embraced (Medicare restructuring, cuts in federal education aid, regulatory reform...
...Rudy runs between 15 and 20 points ahead of Bob Dole," according to Lerner...
...In a radio debate on farm issues on Oct...
...Boschwitz favors the Dole tax cut, opposes the family leave mandate, supports regulatory relief, tort reform, and a balanced-budget amendment...
...When you've got to fight for ethanol, you're taking on the oil companies," he blurted...
...They dubbed Wellstone "ultraliberal" and "unbelievably liberal...
...In 1994, things would have been different...
...Wellstone sounds like a pseudo-Marxist version of Bill Clinton...
...The TV assault has had the effect of defining Well-stone, which is exactly what Democrats and the AFL-CIO did with early advertising in the reelection races of dozens of House Republicans...
...Boschwitz was unfazed...
...Wellstone's backing of family-leave legislation "has nothing to do with being embarrassingly anything except for trying to come through for families," he said in a debate with Boschwitz...
...It's bad," says Jon Lerner, Boschwitz's campaign manager...
...As a rookie senator, he made a point of dissing Vice President Dan Quayle in person...
...It is embarrassing" that Boschwitz backed weakened environmental enforcement and voted to cut education spending and "lined up" with "tobacco interests" and "corporate polluters...
...Now Well-stone, like so many anxious Republicans, spends a good deal of his time rebutting the idea that he is far outside the political mainstream...
...At the least, they allowed Boschwitz to pull even in polls, and the race has stayed a dead heat...
...And Wellstone made the mistake of doing what most of the targeted Republicans did: nothing...
...Boschwitz, he said during a debate here, protects subsidies for "large coal companies, tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies...
...I just wasn't ready...
...And while billing himself as impervious to influence by special interests, he has championed the agenda of virtually every liberal pressure group, including trial lawyers...
...What's different here...
...If I win, it means other Republicans will win and we'll keep control...
...That's exactly where the race was in the September Minnesota Poll, which didn't have a question involving minor candidates...
...You can run [Wellstone's] way in Hawaii and in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts," Boschwitz says...
...But two years later, there's a new "mood piece," as Wellstone puts it, and he believes he gains from having tried to thwart Republicans in Washington...
Vol. 2 • October 1996 • No. 7
