It sounds like the Minnesota DFL situation vis a vis the Independence Party is much like New Mexico situation for Democratic Party and the Greens.

Greens (especially in the North) harm Democratic candidates but don’t do much to Republican candidates. I alluded to the situation in NM’s 3rd District after Richardson left Congress to be Clinton’s UN Ambassador. This left a vacant seat which was filled in a special election.

NM registrations at the time were running 3:2 favoring the Democratic Party. In the 3rd District it was rather higher than Statewide, a bit over 2:1. The Republicans ran a nothing named Bill Redmond, but the Democrats ran Eric Serna. Serna was the Insurance Commissioner at the time, and was not a very popular guy. I don’t recall who the Greens ran, but he siphoned off enough votes to allow Redmond to win by a few thousand votes. Less than six months prior, Richardson trounced Redmond in the 1996 General.

The Republicans continue to try to use the Green Party to draw votes off from Democrats in general elections. Most recently, Karl “Turdblossom” Rove was offering campaign funds to Green candidates in State races. To their credit, the Greens turned the money down.

What to do with Greens here is a big problem, like the Independents in Minnesota.

MPR has had the occasional enlightened and informative guest, and I guess we should be thankful that their mid-morning news shows are set up for that occasional happy accident.

All that I can say about the StarTrib is that their fall has been breathtaking and appalling. Coleman and Pawlenty have definitely been getting a very free and luxurious ride on their dime. If Tim should decide to bail out of the bus before it goes off the cliff, I don’t think that there will ever be an accounting for his deeds in the local big media.

…although it could be interesting to hear him on MPR sitting in with Arne Carlson and Wendell Anderson. They’ll eat him for lunch.

For the DFL, that endorsement/Primary season in 1998 was a total mess. Not only was Hubert Jr. in the maze (Remember he lost a Senate Race in 1988), but Mike Freeman was in it running with Jan Smaby, and Mark Dayton was in it, as was Walter Mondale’s son, Ted, — and the #4 candidate was mine, Stephen Miles. Aside from Miles, (who I supported) that line up was the adult children of the founders of the DFL back in the 1940’s — (Dayton’s not politicians, but progressive Department Store Owners), and my comment at the time, which Garrison once picked up and revised was that it was an “ode to nepotism.” One very strong theme in the Ventura support that year was all about rejecting nepotism — good politics is not necessarily genetic. (Outside of Minnesota names like Freeman (son of Orville, Governor and Sec of Agriculture,) or Smaby — (organizer of the Stevenson Movement in the 50’s) or Dayton may not seem familiar, but if you are a Minnesota DFL’er you know all about these folk. Some are very good people — being raised in a home where access to Political Talk is a decided advantage in becoming a good politician — but did we need a primary/endorsement contest with “ALL THE CHILDREN?” I certainly didn’t support Ventura in the General, but I totally understand why he won — he was about as “outside” as you could get that year. The choice was between the DFL’er, Hubert — and Norm, the Republican darling of the fading big bucks guys out at Deephaven, and the fresh face, the wrestler. Anyhow, Norm’s loss in this race was significant — he had given up with his 1997 switch, any DFL credentials he ever had (St. Paul Mayor, chair of Clinton’s campaign in 92 and 96, chair of Wellstone’s campaign in 96), and he was, in essence, the captive of the old Republican money at a time when the Republican Party was going all Evangelical and all. Pawlenty was the leader of the “newer” Republicans — not the favored candidates of the old money crowd. In essence, Norm was owed, and the Bush-Rove folk picked him up in 2000 to work for the Bush Campaign, and then the prize for Norm was their support — and the Deephaven money — for his 2002 race against Paul Wellstone.

Ventura did not put a whole lot of effort into building the Independence Party — a party which has its strongest support in the area north of the cities that is part of Bachmann’s 6th District. In 2002 this resulted in the Independence Party doing some odd things — they nominated a Native American with few connections to a local tribe (he lived in Edina) to run for the US Senate on an extreme Green platform. (He actually ended up in the Department of Interior, and had to resign due to Abramoff connections.) He was defeated in the primary by another Native American, a Writer, who promptly announced he would not spend money he didn’t have campaigning in the General. It turned out that some of the Primary Nominee’s money came from Norm’s coffers — and they put Tim Penny on the ticket for Governor. Penny was a 5 term Congressman from the SE part of the state, a very conservative blue dog Democrat, who had name recognition and something of a following. Penny took votes away from Roger Moe in the Governor’s race that year, 2002 — Moe being from the NW, and a long time Majority Leader in the Senate. In effect, the Independence Party can hurt the DFL nominee two ways — they can put up a candidate that on one narrow issue can promote a fairly extreme position such as the Native American did on Environmental matters — or put up a Blue Dog DFL’er such as Tim Penny — either one hurts a DFL’er and helps Republicans. A Pawlenty can win with just 42% of the vote — or a Dean Barkley can take 15% of the vote as in this year’s Senate Race. (Remember, in 1996 Paul Wellstone ran against both Barkley and Boschwitz, and Barkley got about 13% of the vote.) Last year Bachmann won by four percentage points — but the Independence Candidate, Bob Olson, who hardly campaigned at all got 10% of the vote. (Part of the 6th District will vote for anyone with a Swedish name.)

I see two structural issues at work here relevant to the DFL — illustrated by these recent electorial history events. We argue (in the DFL) that our complex system of caucus nominations allows for new blood that knows how to organize to come to the fore, without a huge financial base, and constantly refresh the politics of the party — but when you go back and review that 1998 race that was an ode to Nepotism, and that ended with Ventura as Governor, you gotta question that “given” of DFL mythology. But we have two examples of the “New Blood” model — last year’s Obama Campaign, and the 1990 Wellstone Campaign (and one could also argue in a way the 2006 Ellison Campaign). But we also have too many examples of “old blood” losses based on the assumption that success in a previous generation can substitute for the kind of organizational savey that an outsider brings to a campaign.

I assume Franken will soon have his seat, and be able to start being a Senator — but I hope he (and we) sort this thing out over the next few years. He was favored by much of the party establishment last year precisely because he was the slightly edgy new blood kind of candidate it was assumed would get several points out of the Independence Party vote block, appeal to younger voters, represent the remaining Wellstone Coalition of the center left — as well as capture core DFL voters. Well it didn’t precisely happen that way, and we need to figure out why. In fact we need to figure out the problem before we have another Governor’s race.

Trying to keep his senate seat he lost to Al though torting.

Torting Norm………………….

She’s an embarrassment to Congressional legitimacy, and that’s hard to do.

Here in New Mexico we got Governor Gary “I’d rather do the Ironman” Johnson (R-NORML)in 1994 because of a third party tiff. Bruce King had been our once-and-present Governor, when he succeeded Gov Carruthers in 1990. His Light Governor was Roberto Mondragon, who had his own gubernatorial ambitions. Bruce was a little long in the tooth, and cut a deal with Mondragon in the 1990 primaries. Basically, Bruce wanted to be Governor once more, and he is supposed to have agreed to step aside in 1994 so Mondragon could have his term.

Well,1994 rolled around, and Bruce decided he liked being Governor and wasn’t going to step aside. Mondragon didn’t like no for an answer, and so he accepted the Green Party’s nomination. King’s a conservative Democrat from the East side, Mondragon a liberal Democrat from the North. Johnson, a conservative Republican from Albuquerque didn’t really stand much of a chance against either King or Mondragon alone. But what happened illustrates a real problem with our election system.

Johnson won. He got a vote in the mid 40s (basically all the R’s in our fair state and a few independents). King scored in the low 40s (most of the moderate D’s and a substantial share of the unaffiliateds). Mondragon got essentially all the balance, around 15% (all of us liberals). His share and King’s would have left Johnson running Big J Construction in ABQ.

The rumor running around the State in the two weeks before Election Day was that King and Mondragon were going to kiss and make up and Mondragon would throw his support to King. But it didn’t happen. I find it very improbable that anyone who voted for Mondragon could have brought themselves to vote for King. If Mondragon wasn’t on the ballot, King would have won a second term.

The same thing happened in NM-3 after Big Bill Richardson joined Clinton’s Cabinet. There was a Green Party candidate on the ballot in a very reliably D district, and he drew enough support to elect a Republican with just over 40% of the vote.

From PW’s description, much the same thing is going on in Minnesota. It has very nearly happened again in this Senatorial race. As long as the R’s can reliably keep third party candidates running who draw most of their support from Democrats, we’ll keep being f***ed by our voting system.

The problem with our electoral system is that it was set before voting theorists like Condorcet had considered things, and we have a first-to-the-post system. The candidate with the most votes wins, and every voter gets one (and only one) vote. When there are two candidates, this isn’t a problem: with two candidates all voting systems are equivalent. But when there are more than 2 candidates for office, it’s very possible to elect a candidate who is the majority’s last choice.

A more enlightened system is the single transferable vote (STV, a/k/a instant runoff) system. Each voter gets a single vote that is transferred until one candidate has a majority of votes. Under an STV system, our 1994 Gubernatorial election would have had to transfer votes from Mondragon to his voters second choice. For virtually all of those voters the second choice would have been King, and King would have been elected.

If we want to have effective third parties we need an STV system. If we’re going to have computers counting our votes anyway, we might as well have a 19th Century voting system in lieu of the 18th Century thing we’ve got now.