Minnesota Precinct Caucuses

Minnesota's political parties held precinct caucuses yesterday. Those neighborhood party meetings get more attention in Minnesota's southern neighbor, Iowa, when they begin the parties' nominating process for president.

In a mid-term election year such as this one, Minnesota's caucuses involve the election of grass-roots party officers, and discussion of issues. And, most importantly for the electoral process, they elect delegates to higher-level party conventions, that endorse candidates for local offices, the Legislature, and Congress. Those delegates also choose another level of delegates, who will vote at each party's state convention.

The biggest election in that state this year is for governor. The Republican incumbent, Tim Pawlenty, is not seeking a third term. Each party's state convention will endorse a candidate for governor. The endorsed candidates do not automatically get on the general election ballot. Primary elections will be held later in the year to officially nominate candidates. But a convention endorsement helps a candidate either win the primary, or fend off a primary challenge entirely.

Straw votes for governor were held at Republican and Democratic (the party is called Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) in Minnesota) caucuses. Those votes are a non-binding survey of opinion about the candidates but, because they are held among the group that indirectly chooses the delegates who will endorse a candidate, they have some value as a predictor of voting at a state convention.

Republicans showed a strong preference for State Representative Marty Seifert (see this post for background on the race). With 96% of the precincts counted, Seifert received 50% of the vote, to 39% for his main challenger, State Representative Tom Emmer. Because Emmer has pledged not to challenge an endorsed candidate in the primary, the straw-poll result gives a strong indication that Seifert will be his party's nominee.

The DFL vote was much less decisive (see background here). With 78% of the precincts having reported, two Minneapolitans are far ahead of the other candidates. Mayor R.T. Rybak garnered 21.8% of the straw vote, to 20.0% for State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

Those numbers don't mean a whole lot, for two reasons:

1. Those percentages indicate that no candidate is anywhere near putting together the 60% supermajority that is needed for endorsement. If, on the first ballot, the leading candidate only has a small minority of the votes, the delegates will continue balloting until a consensus emerges. When that happens, candidates who were front-runners at the beginning of the process might be supplanted by a dark-horse candidate.

2. The heaviest (figuratively speaking) of political heavyweights in the race, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, is bypassing the endorsement process, and planning to run in the primary. That guarantees that the party convention in April will not decide the nomination.

2010 Election for Governor of Minnesota: The Democrats

As is the case with most states, Minnesota elects its governor for a four year term, on the election day that is halfway between presidential elections.

There is no incumbent in the race this year, not because of term limits, which Minnesota doesn't have, but because the Republican incumbent, Tim Pawlenty, declined to seek a third term. He is going through the usual coy ritual, but it's clear, even though he won't say so, that he has cleared his calendar in order to seek his party's 2012 presidential nomination.

There are many candidates, and potential candidates. In this post, I'll look at the Democrats (whose party is called Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) in that state).

The most recent DFL governor left office 20 years ago. In the meantime, Republicans have won four gubernatorial terms, with third-party Governor Jesse Ventura serving for four of those 20 years.

The highest-profile DFL candidate is former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton. Dayton, 62, heir to a retailing fortune, first ran for the Senate in 1982, unsuccessfully challenging Republican incumbent David Durenberger. He was elected to one term as state auditor, in 1990. His next challenge to an incumbent Republican senator was more successful; Dayton defeated Senator Rod Grams in 2000. Dayton did not run for reelection in 2006.

The DFL candidate who ranks highest in state government is Margaret Anderson Kelliher, speaker of the state House of Representatives. Kelliher, 41, has represented a Minneapolis district in the House since 1999, and has been speaker since 2007.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, 54, is another DFL gubernatorial candidate. Rybak was a journalist bef0re being elected mayor in 2001. No mayor of Minneapolis, the state's largest city, has gone on to become governor. However, one of Rybak's predecessors, Hubert Humphrey, was a longtime U.S. senator, and served one term as vice president.

Eight other DFL candidates are currently listed in Wikipedia's article on the campaign. Most of them are current or past state legislators.

The Pioneer Press, a St. Paul newspaper, calls Kelliher the front runner. It can be more difficult to read the tea leaves in Minnesota than in other states. That's because the key event is not the primary election (currently scheduled for September 14, but perhaps about to be rescheduled to an earlier date, to comply with federal law about the amount of time that needs to be allowed for military ballots to be returned), but rather the party's state convention, to be held April 23-25.

That convention will endorse a candidate for governor. That endorsement is not the legal step that gets a candidate onto the general election ballot. However, the expectation is that those who lose the endorsement vote will not challenge the endorsed candidate in the primary. Such challenges do occur, but the convention's choice usually becomes the nominee. Opinion polling for an endorsement contest is difficult, because the outcome depends on which party activists show up for the local caucuses and conventions that lead up to the state convention.