Bennett Petts & Normington for the DCCC (9/29-30):
Ashwin Madia (D): 44
Erik Paulsen (R): 39
David Dillon (IP): 8
(MoE: ±4.9%)
A SurveyUSA poll from a month earlier gave Paulsen a 44-41 lead. Since then, Paulsen has been engaging in some bizarre slams of Madia for not possessing the “suburban life experience” that comes with having kids and a mortgage. It’s all part of a vaguely racist campaign to paint Madia, an Iraq Vet and the son of Indian-American immigrants, as something other than a “real” Minnesotan.
SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.
although I don’t think Dillon will end up being that much of a factor.
We’re going to see a lot more ads like this against Obama and other non-Caucasian candidates in the next month. It really is the worst kind of racism — implication and inuendo that takes it right up to the line, but giving the Republicans just enough plausible deniability to try to deflect charges of racism. Look at the “Harold, Call Me” ad ran against Harold Ford in Tennessee in 2006 — that was the sleazest ad of the cycle, and one of the worst I’ve ever seen.
I have a gut feeling that we’re going to see ads ran against Obama in the next month at are going to make “Harold, Call Me” or Willie Horton look like an endorsement ad. Of course, it won’t be ran directly by the McCain campaign, so he can put a smirk on his face and say “My friends, I reject this kind of campaigning”, while trying to reap the benefits as well.
The Republicans are selling their soul to try to win one election. It’s not like they would have won much of the black vote this time around, but they are running yet another campaign that is going to kill them in the black community for a long, long time. You want to know how politically dangerous this is for them long-term? Look at the voting patterns of blacks well into the 20th century. Blacks stayed more loyal to the Republican Party for a longer time than issue positions might have predicted, in large part because of the often-violent behavior of the Dixiecrats in the South (and some urban ethnic machines, like Daley in Chigago in the 60s and 70s). It really took a generational change for blacks to wholesale come over to the Democrats — and for many elections to come, the Republicans have lost the black vote regardless of what they do, what issues they advocate, or what candidates (even black conservatives) they run.
well maybe they are selling Jim Ramstad’s soul. this pattern of harshly negative last minute ads has been so much the norm, i hardly notice.
I stick with my prediction that if Obama wins the 3rd (and i think he will) Madia will also.
This is one of the few races nationally where both the Deomcrat, Madia, and the independent are lashing out at the positions adopted by a Religious Right Republican wingnut. Paulsen and Ramstad do not come from the same wing of the GOP and it remains possible that Paulsen’s extremism will trip him up.
Here is an excellent recent overview of where this race is at this time: http://www.startribune.com/pol…
go to Paulsen’s website and do a search for the word Iraq. Doesn’t show up once as Paulsen who is a huge coward to really tell the voters what he’ll do. His campaign strategy is dont do anything, people will vote for me because I’ve got Ramstad on my side. He even copied Ramstad’s ugly orange campaign logo and such. What a tool.
There’s a good discussion about the racial overtones being used by the Republican over at mnpublius.com if you’re interested.
This reminds some Minnesotans of the “better Jew than you” letter. This was late in the 1990 race between incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz and Democrat Paul Wellstone. Both were Jewish, and Boschwitz’s campaign sent a letter to Minnesota Jews pointing out that Wellstone married outside the faith. A lot of Jews were offended, especially those who had married Gentiles. The race was neck and neck and Wellstone pulled it out, so there’s a theory that the letter cost Boschwitz the race. This was the first thing many of us thought of when Paulsen’s surrogates held their “better suburbanite than you” press conference. They were asked by reporters if they were making a racial reference. I suspect they hope voters will suspect the childless bachelor must be gay. For sure, they appear not to know that renters do pay property taxes and Madia probably isn’t the only renter in the district. Nor I’m guessing is he the only bachelor or childless adult, all of whom have no been told they have less value than people like Paulsen and the surrogates who held the press conference, since Paulsen didn’t have the guts to do it himself.
I predict Madia wins, and this will be where Paulsen blew it.