Minnesota DFL Governor Race

Dear Friends,

The Minnesota primary which will decide among other things the DFL (for those of you not from Minnesota, we democrats in Minnesota are members of the Democratic Farmer Labor party) candidate for governor is August 10th.  I have been adamant that I would not monetarily support any DFLer against another DFLer.  We need to preserve our resources to be sure that the DFL candidate becomes the next Minnesota governor.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was a delegate for RT Rybak, but ultimately he lost the DFL endorsement to Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

On Saturday night I had dinner with some friends, all of whom are liberal, and we could not reach a consensus on who we should vote for in the primary.  There are three DFL candidates (in alphabetical order): Mark Dayton (here), Matt Entenza (here) and Margaret Anderson Kelliher (here).  The Republican candidate is Tom Emmer (here), and Tom Horner is the likely Independence Party candidate (here).

On Sunday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published the results of their most recent poll about the Minnesota governor's race (here).  Here is the chart of the overall results: 

Dayton	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
40%	30%	13%	17%	1%

Kelliher	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
38%	29%	13%	18%	1%

Entenza	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
36%	31%	15%	17%	1%

Based on the results of this poll, it appears that both Dayton and Kelliher are more likely to beat Emmer than Entenza is.  The poll also broke down the support for each candidate based on the respondent's party affiliation.  Here is that chart:

                                             Dayton      Kelliher      Entenza      Emmer     Horner

Party identification
Republican	7%	6%	6%	72%	9%
Democratic	81%	85%	79%	4%	3%
Independent	29%	26%	25%	20%	30%

In this chart, I found it interesting that Dayton did better among Independents than all of the candidates except for the Independence candidate and in that case there was no statistical difference.  I believe that is a big plus for Dayton in the general election.

On Sunday night, the three DFL candidates held their last debate before the primary.  As I was watching the debate, several things became clear to me.  There are no significant differences in the actually policies of the three candidates.  Mark Dayton is truly passionate about his positions.  He has spent his entire adult life in public service and wants to finish his career being governor.  He is also the only one of the three candidates with experience in the executive branch of government.  In his final statement, Mark said that while we may have differences now, on August 11th we will all be united behind the DFL candidate.  I agree with that sentiment 100%.  I will enthusiastically support whichever candidate wins the DFL primary.  As for the primary election, I have decided that I will vote for Mark Dayton.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal