McFadden v. Franken

Don’t wait! The campaign between Al Franken and Mike McFadden begins now. The issues are already making themselves clear and the battle is on! A Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate is the prize!
by Charlie Leck

Michael McFadden, a Minnesota millionaire who lives in the St. Paul suburb of Sunfish Lake and a mergers and acquisitions business advisor, will run against incumbent U.S. Senator Al Franken.

You can find strong agreement among politicians and political polling organizations in Minnesota that our state’s voters put two considerations about a candidate first and foremost. They are: (1) Is the person a strong leader? (2) Does the candidate care about people such as I?

I think this year’s race will come down to the same two factors. I think McFadden will prove himself a strong leader, even as Franken already has, so, on that question, there will be a draw between the two candidates.

McFadden will have a hard time convincing the little guy that he really cares very deeply about him. McFadden will sing the old song about not raising taxes and removing some of the entitlements the government already gives to people with needs. And here, on the issue of preserving the strength of the middle class and attacking rampant poverty, the crux of the battle will be waged.

Candidate McFadden will have to attack Franken from the right. He’ll have to complain about Obama (who is still remarkably popular in Minnesota) and he’ll have to go after government spending – especially on entitlement programs. He should bear in mind that Obamacare is also popular in Minnesota (but he probably won’t).

And, a major strike against McFadden with a large, large percentage of Minnesotans, is his connection with retiring Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. It was the Congresswoman’s endorsement that put him over the top and took the endorsement away from a couple of long-time Republican regulars in the state. By all reports, the Tea Party is losing some of its gusto in Minnesota and that isn’t going to help any candidate endorsed by Bachmann. That endorsement will, however, send some of Bachmann’s old funding sources running to McFadden. Just remember, at this point, what happened to Bachmann the last time she tried stepping out of sixth district politics on to a bigger stage. She doesn’t function well on that bigger stage. I hope McFadden uses Bachmann extensively in the campaign – sending her everywhere in the state to speak for him – because that will be extremely damaging to his campaign.

Reports from the Republican’s state endorsing convention indicate that Tom Emmer, Republican candidate for congress in the sixth district, worked the crowd hard for McFadden. Emmer was a very divisive force in the last Republican campaign for governor here in Minnesota and he drove thousands to an alternative party in that election. He’ll be just as divisive in McFadden’s race and, like Bachmann, he’ll drive many voters away from the party’s regular candidate

So, the early betting is that Franken will win back his Senate seat in spite of huge amounts of money that McFadden will spend on this campaign if the dems can turnout a big percentage of their voters. This is the biggest worry about the election right now and it’s why Republicans have tried in every which way to make it more difficult for people to vote. I imagine a big part of Franken’s campaign will be a “get out the vote” effort. It has to be!

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