ICYMI: Why Republicans Could Lose a House Seat in Minnesota

Hint: it’s the top of the ticket.

ICYMI: Why Republicans Could Lose a House Seat in Minnesota
National Journal
3/23/2016

Early last month, Re­pub­lic­an Rep. John Kline cri­ti­cized a few un­usu­al tar­gets: the GOP can­did­ates hop­ing to re­place him.

Kline, who is re­tir­ing at the end of this term, told the St. Paul Pi­on­eer Press he’s “a little bit con­cerned by the fun­drais­ing” of Re­pub­lic­ans who filed re­ports at the end of Janu­ary.

It’s rare for a law­maker to take aim at would-be suc­cessors from his own party. But Kline is not the only Re­pub­lic­an to sound alarms about the GOP’s chances in his swing Min­nesota dis­trict, where the party is bra­cing for a messy fight among its four can­did­ates.

Re­pub­lic­ans face a few chal­lenges in keep­ing the 2nd Dis­trict seat.

Wealthy busi­ness­wo­man Angie Craig faces a clear path to the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­a­tion and had nearly $1 mil­lion in cash on hand by Dec. 31. Mean­while, two Re­pub­lic­ans, former state Sen. John Howe and busi­ness­wo­man Dar­lene Miller, have de­clined to abide by the party’s en­dorse­ment at the May 7 con­ven­tion, com­plic­at­ing the GOP’s ef­forts to avoid a costly primary.

Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates an­ti­cip­ate hav­ing to spend sig­ni­fic­ant re­sources on their Aug. 9 con­test—one of the latest primar­ies on the House race cal­en­dar—leav­ing a short win­dow to ramp up for the gen­er­al.

The latest is­sue to roil the race was the un­cov­er­ing of past com­ments on wo­men and slavery from an­oth­er GOP can­did­ate, former ra­dio talk show host Jason Lewis.

“Jason has said a lot of out­rageous and in­defens­ible things over the years,” said St. Paul-based Re­pub­lic­an con­sult­ant Bri­an Mc­Clung, who was a spokes­man for former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. “And that would make it much more dif­fi­cult for Re­pub­lic­ans to hold the seat.”

In his 2011 book, Lewis wrote that Ab­ra­ham Lin­coln “ex­ploited the is­sue” of slavery. On his ra­dio show in 2012, Lewis said, “There’s something about young, single wo­men where they’re be­hav­ing like Step­ford wives. They walk in lock­step. Is that really the most im­port­ant thing to a 25-year-old un­mar­ried wo­man—get­ting me to pay for her pills?” He also as­ser­ted that single wo­men are “simply ig­nor­ant of the im­port­ant is­sues in life,” re­marks that promp­ted former Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate Pam Myhra to call for him to end his cam­paign.

In an in­ter­view Wed­nes­day with Na­tion­al Journ­al, Lewis stood by his com­ments, say­ing he op­poses tax­pay­er fund­ing for abor­tion and con­tra­cept­ives. He also shot down the sug­ges­tion that his state­ments would harm his party’s pro­spects for hold­ing the seat.

“Our name ID provides us with a cru­cial ad­vant­age,” Lewis said, also point­ing to en­dorse­ments he’s re­ceived from state Sens. Karin Hous­ley and Dave Thompson. “We don’t have to spend half a mil­lion dol­lars. … I’ve got a loy­al fol­low­ing.”

Oth­er Re­pub­lic­ans say the iden­tity of the nom­in­ee won’t even mat­ter if real-es­tate mogul Don­ald Trump tops the tick­et. Sen. Marco Ru­bio, whom Kline en­dorsed, won the state’s pres­id­en­tial caucuses, while Trump fin­ished third.

“If Don­ald Trump is the nom­in­ee, we don’t stand a chance in this dis­trict,” said Re­pub­lic­an state Rep. Pat Garo­falo, whom some Re­pub­lic­ans wanted to run for the seat. “As un­pop­u­lar as Hil­lary Clin­ton is, she is Gandhi com­pared to Trump.”

Since en­ter­ing Con­gress in 2002, Kline won reelec­tion fairly com­fort­ably each cycle des­pite the dis­trict’s mod­er­ate makeup. Even in 2012, after re­dis­trict­ing mod­i­fied the dis­trict to be more com­pet­it­ive for Demo­crats, Kline de­feated Demo­crat Mike Ober­mueller by 8 points as Pres­id­ent Obama car­ried it by less than a point.

This cycle, in the open-seat race, Demo­crats are far bet­ter po­si­tioned. Craig, a former St. Jude med­ic­al ex­ec­ut­ive, has the Demo­crat­ic field to her­self after her strongest primary op­pon­ent, phys­i­cian Mary Lawrence, ended her cam­paign in Janu­ary. Both wo­men, who were chal­len­ging Kline be­fore he an­nounced his re­tire­ment, pos­ted strong fun­drais­ing num­bers, aided by sub­stan­tial self-fund­ing. Craig took in $1.2 mil­lion last year, in­clud­ing $682,600 in per­son­al con­tri­bu­tions and loans.

On the GOP side, ex­clud­ing self-fund­ing, none of the Re­pub­lic­ans raised more than Lewis’s $103,000 in the most re­cent fun­drais­ing quarter. Howe had the most in his ac­count at the end of 2015, about $643,000, but he put up $600,000 of his own money in the last two quar­ters. Miller, whom Kline en­dorsed earli­er this month, entered the race in Janu­ary and hasn’t had to file a fun­drais­ing re­port yet. Two-time Kline chal­lenger Dav­id Ger­son is also run­ning.

Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­ans aren’t pick­ing sides in the crowded race, but party ob­serv­ers are in­ter­ested to see fun­drais­ing num­bers from Miller—who, Kline told the Pi­on­eer Press, “brings a lot” to the race.

Garo­falo said he ex­pects the primary to be a battle between Miller and who­ever re­ceives the state party en­dorse­ment in May, and that the party will uni­fy around who­ever is nom­in­ated in Au­gust.

But, he ad­ded, the top of the tick­et “will be the primary factor.”