2010 gubernatorial fundraising derby had some clearcut winners in 2009

If you analyze it from a cynic’s perspective - and really, what fun is it otherwise? - you could declare that the candidate who can marshal and spend the most money is destined to become the new occupant of the Minnesota governor’s office next January.

Yes, Tuesday night’s precinct caucuses were part of the great democratic process in which the people decide, in true grassroots fashion, who will vie to represent them in the Legislature and the governor’s office, yada yada yada.

But the campaign finance reports that appeared earlier Tuesday on the website of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board perhaps painted a more telling picture of who enjoys major advantages in the race to govern Minnesota for the next four years.

And based on sheer numbers, it appears that a year from now, we may be referring to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton.

“Can you buy an election? Yes, I think you can,” says David Schultz, a Hamline University professor. “I think Mark Dayton proved that in 2000″ when he became one of Minnesota’s two U.S. senators, and, Schultz believes, he may prove it again in 2010.

According to the campaign finance reports, which by state law had to be filed with the Campaign Finance Board by Feb. 1, Dayton - who served one term as U.S. senator before deciding not to seek re-election - raised $640,404 for his gubernatorial campaign in 2009, a staggering $570,000 of which came from his own pocket.

Coming in second was former state House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, who raised $381,976 during the cycle, $10,000 of which was a direct contribution. Third was current House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, who marshaled $255,272 during 2009, $20,000 of it a loan from himself and another $20,000 from his now-defunct Minnesota House campaign. (Seifert said last summer that he won’t run for the Legislature again.)

Seifert earned only slightly more than House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, who raked in $255,178 - though only $250 of it came from her own bank account.

“I think Mark Dayton can buy this election, unless Matt Entenza can outbid him on this one,” Schultz says flatly. “And I’m being mostly serious.”

Schultz pointed out that when Dayton won his U.S. Senate seat in 2000, he was running against an “incredibly weak incumbent” - Republican Sen. Rod Grams, who, Schultz says, “probably had as bad a six years in the Senate as Dayton did during his six years there.”

Dayton, the department store heir, spent $12 million of his own money on his 2000 Senate campaign - twice what he had spent on his first campaign for the U.S. Senate, when he lost to incumbent Sen. Dave Durenberger.

And while Dayton hasn’t said how much he’s willing to spend to become Minnesota’s 40th governor, it’s reported that one of his DFL opponents, Entenza, has said that he expects to spend between $8 million and $12 million in his own campaign.

Schultz says it would be unwise to count Dayton out of the gubernatorial derby, in spite of the undistinguished end of his Senate term: He was dubbed “The Blunderer” by Time magazine in 2006 for such antics as temporarily closing his Washington office in 2004 because of an unspecified potential terrorist attack and declaring that Rochester’s Mayo Clinic was “worth a hell of a lot more than the whole state of South Dakota,” a remark for which he later apologized.

“At the beginning, everyone laughed and said, ‘He’s running for senator? It’s never going to happen,’” Schultz says. “But he did it - he bought himself a U.S. Senate seat.

“Now he’s got not just the dollars, but also name recognition. He may be in a very good position to buy himself the governor’s office unless Matt Entenza can spend wisely to buy himself into position.”

Entenza’s deep pockets are actually attributable to his wife, Lois Quam, who in November relinquished control of a 7-month-old advisory firm that she founded to help her husband run for governor.

At one time, Quam, a former executive at UnitedHealth Group, owned UnitedHealth stock options worth $35 million; in 2006 she was named one of America’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune magazine.

Straw polls at Tuesday night’s precinct caucuses - in which Dayton declined to participate - seemed to indicate that Entenza’s spending power hasn’t yet kicked in: With about 77 percent of precincts reporting, he stood at a very distant seventh among the crowded field of DFL candidates, behind Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, who narrowly edged Kelliher, 21.8 to 20.03 percent. Another 14.47 percent of participants declared themselves “uncommitted;” 9.75 percent supported state Sen. John Marty of Roseville, 7.32 percent cast votes for state Rep. Paul Thissen of Minneapolis, 7.21 percent for state Rep. Tom Rukavina of Virginia - and only 6.86 percent for Entenza.

“To what extent is a good showing in the caucuses negated by candidates who can bankroll themselves significantly and bypass early signs of support?” Schultz wonders. “It’s a problem if you think a democracy shouldn’t be up for sale to the highest bidder; if, on the other hand, you think it’s perfectly OK to translate economic wealth into political wealth, you won’t be upset by it.

“I happen to be one of those people who believe that you shouldn’t be able to translate all your resources into a political advantage. It undermines the Abraham Lincoln model: that an average person can rise from humble beginnings, run for office and have a chance.”

A few more notes from the campaign finance reports:

A handful of gubernatorial candidates weren’t required to file 2009 reports by the Feb. 1 deadline because they didn’t declare their candidacies until after the first of the year: Independence Party members Rob Hahn, Tom Horner, Joe Repya and John Uldrich, DFLer Scott Raskiewicz and Republican Bob Carney Jr.

Three other candidates, DFLer Felix Montez and Republicans Leslie Davis and Philip Herwig, didn’t file their reports by the deadline, though there is no penalty for missing it.

State Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, leads the pack in contributions from political action committees: He earned $25,050 from PACs. Coming in second and third were Seifert, who raked in $15,250 in PAC contributions, and Kelliher, who collected $11,350.

Six candidates reported no PAC contributions at all: Entenza; Marty; and four candidates who can most accurately be described as non-contenders: DFLer Ole Savior; Harley Swarm, representing the Constitution Party; Richard Klatte of the Green Party; and Chris Wright, who describes his party as “other.” (The last four reported receipts for the 2009 reporting period, respectively, of $6,515, $1,565, $600 and $143.)

In the cash-on-hand contest, Bakk came in ahead of the pack - as he had predicted late last fall - with $137,330 on Dec. 31. Seifert is second with $133,072 and Thissen third with $89,938. (Worth noting is that Dayton - though he reported campaign earnings of $640,404 for the reporting period - had only $16,772 in cash on hand by the end of the year, earning him 11th place on the list.)

And one candidate, Rahn Workcuff of the Independence Party, filed the shortest report: one page, on which he declared receiving no contributions and making no expenditures during 2009.

One Response to “2010 gubernatorial fundraising derby had some clearcut winners in 2009”

1. John Anderson Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 10:13 pm

   Great strategy on Team Emmer’s part: hide the terrible cash on hand numbers until too late so no one knows when they go into vote. Certainly, if people knew that their local state representative has more cash on hand than a state-wide candidate for Governor, they’d consider that gubernatorial candidacy a joke.