Posted on 12/02/2013 12:58:14 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Don’t get too excited about the latest St. Cloud State University poll in Minnesota, but it does at least offer a glimmer of hope for a Minnesota Republican Party that still finds itself in financial and organizational straits. Just a year after getting blitzed in the 2012 election, Minnesotans find themselves less than enchanted with Democratic officeholders. And 2014 incumbent Sen. Al Franken fares the worst of all:
In the poll released this week, 44% of Minnesotans polled said Governor Mark Dayton is doing excellent or pretty good. That’s a 9% drop from last year, which political analyst David Schultz says may have something to do with football.
“I think he’s getting a lot of blowback on the Vikings stadium,” said Schultz, “especially in the financing mechanisms, and I think he’s starting to feel some of the repercussions and some of the negative approvals coming off of a deal many people are thinking was not best for state of Minnesota.” …
In the Senate Democrat Al Franken shows only a 39% in terms of a pretty good or excellent rating. He too is up for re-election next year. Last time Franken only eked by Norm Coleman in a recount.
Franken has kept a low profile in the past five years since his disputed election in 2008, which has served him well back home, at least until now. He only gives interviews to Minnesota media, and after a couple of incidents in his first few months of attempting to pick fights on the floor of the Senate, he has become a natural backbencher. Minnesotans aren’t terribly impressed with public-relations stunts from their politicians, with the temporary exception of Jesse Ventura, and the low profile has protected Franken from questions about his lackluster track record and rubber-stamp approach to the Obama agenda.
That, however, has backfired of late, thanks to the ObamaCare disaster. Barack Obama has also nose-dived in a state which he won handily a year ago, dropping nine points as well to 38% who give him “excellent” or “pretty good” marks on job approval. That kind of linkage — if supported by more polling — might force people to rethink the risk Democrats run in 2014′s midterms, especially for Senate seats. Most people would have considered Minnesota a fairly safe bet for Franken’s re-election, and Republican disorganization might still prove that true. But if ObamaCare drives numbers this far down in blue Minnesota, which states will still be safe for Democrats in 2014?
Small wonder, then, that Franken told Minnesota Public Radio last week that he’d back a delay in the individual mandate if the incompetence continues at HHS. Franken might be forced to raise his profile in order to do something he hasn’t done in the past five years — distance himself from the Obama agenda. He won’t be the only one doing so, either, if this disaster rolls into January.
Eric Ostermeier analyzes the buyers’ remorse arising in Minnesota:
Polling has been sparse in Minnesota’s 2014 U.S. Senate race – a contest that a year ago was seemingly a slam dunk for one-term DFL incumbent Al Franken.
Franken’s seat currently sits on the ‘watch list’ of D.C. prognosticators Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato – both identifying the race as a ‘likely’ hold for Franken, with the caveat that the race may yet become competitive.
Such caution seems validated in light of a new St. Cloud State University poll that was released on Wednesday, which shows Franken receiving a job approval rating of just 39 percent among his constituents – 18 points behind the state’s senior delegation member Amy Klobuchar at 57 percent.
Fifty-one percent of Gopher State residents rated Franken’s job performance negatively.
I’m still skeptical of a flip in Minnesota, but I’d have laughed out loud two months ago.
Vote fraud and fraudulent recounts are how they’ll try to keep him in.
That’s how they got him in to begin with.
I still believe that Franken shouldn’t have gotten to the Senate in the first place. But, to keep him from returning a second time, MN will have to clamp down on voter fraud.
You can’t beat somebody with nobody. Who is the GOP running against him?
It is shameful for a State to put a man like Franken in Office.
Hopefully he will be gone soon.
The Republican challengers need to develop a good one-liner comeback for the “delay the mandate” mantra to be used by the Democrats. For instance: “Let’s sheer the sheep AFTER my re-election!” or “Let’s put off burning Rome until AFTER my election!” There ought to be a good sound bite to remind folks that the Democrats are only proposing to delay the pain, not fix the problem.
Franken will “win” re-election when boxes of “lost” ballots are found in the trunks of Dem. party officials cars... again.
Minnesota sucks for giving us Al Franken!
Yep.
I don’t think anyone can honestly say that having 107% of the voters in one County show up for the Governors race is a “clean” election.
Don’t look at me. My vote was negated by some multiple voter in the FSA.
RE: Minnesota sucks for giving us Al Franken!
I’m finding it hard to like Nevada for giving us Harry Reid over Sharron Angle.
He’s immature enough. He’s dumb enough. And doggonit, people hate him.
And then there is California .... Diane is a special kind of communist.
Franken can’t even come up with an original idea. The “we found some ballots in a trunk” idea started with Christine Gregoire in Washington state, where she won the Governorship by less than 200 votes in 2004.
He should be in trouble! His election could serve as a case study in dirty, dishonest democrat voter fraud.
Definitely and I'm also hating on Chicago for obvious reason.
I agree!
And I live here.
**sigh**
We have someone even dumber than Franken in the Senate. After the floods of 2009, Amy Klobuchar announced on national TV the exact parameters of our dumbery in having voted her to the Senate by saying, “It is the role of government to make people happy.” Yes, a United States Senator who does not know what the role of gov’t. is. Isn’t it, like, awesome?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
