House minority leader
In a shocking turn of events, Matt Entenza was re-elected as leader of the House Democrats tonight.
posted by MN Politics Guru @ 00:25
Friday, November 05, 2004
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5 Comments:
Here's a question: How much of the DFL's success in taking back House seats was due to the efforts of the House DFL Caucus, and how much to other factors -- such as independent grassroots efforts to get challengers elected?
It's a combination of several things. First, the turnout for Kerry, helped by independent groups. Second, the candidates that were recruited. Third, the efforts of the House caucus: the DFLers raised twice as much money as the Republicans, an amazing statistic.
These are in no particular order.
Thanks for the instructive response (though non-answer). My very strong sense, however, is that there were independent groups that directly helped the House candidates, not only (national) independent groups that helped Kerry and thereby indirectly helped the House candidates. There were a number of different groups that in effect adopted House candidates and gave not just money but also, crucially, volunteer effort. One way of testing this idea is to answer the following question: how many of the DFL candidates who defeated incumbents were not among the 15 targeted by the DFL House Caucus? I don't know the answer, though I know of at least one for sure, who was not supported by the House caucus, was supported by local folks and won.
There were 22 races targeted by the House DFL Caucus, although I don't have a list so I don't know which ones won and which didn't. From what I understand, they were generally the ones that were obvious and that the DFLers won (like the seats in Anoka county, Bemidji, etc.)
I don't know if there were any local volunteer groups that adopted House candidates, but I do know that urban party organizations encouraged volunteers to go out and work in suburban races to better use time and money, since urban representatives like Phyllis Kahn or Karen Clark are going to win regardless of how much time volunteers living in the district put into their campaigns, while some of the swing suburban districts clearly benefitted from the added help. This was something that had not really been done in the past, I believe.
Thanks again for the really helpful comments. It would be interesting and worthwhile, I think, to track who helped which candidates how and with how much success, especially since I gather than in some of the races where DFLers won there seems to have been a not inconsiderable number of voters who voted for Bush and the DFL House candidate.
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