Rice County Republicans

Sad Day for Conservatives and Moderates

Ray Cox lost Tom Neuville’s SD25 state senate seat to Kevin Dahle 42% to 55%. In the Carleton College precinct (W1-P2), Dahle won 77% of 909 votes; in contrast, in all of LeSueur county (including New Prague) Dahle won a plurality of 49% of 2,981 votes. The turnout in the Carleton precinct was 51% versus just 18.5% in LeSueur County.

What are the lessons for Republicans at the start of the 2008 presidential election year? Foremost, if we do not vote, we do not win.
We had a Republican primary in which Ray Cox won just over two-thirds of over 3,000 Republican votes. The local BPO and 2nd Congressional district and the state party did yeoman work on voter ID, telephoning and mailing and door knocking (down to zero degrees) on a targeted basis. But we still lost!!

Perhaps the lesson is that special elections in Minnesota in the winter favor 5,000 college students who can vote in relative ease and comfort versus the general population, especially in rural areas.

Clearly the MoveOn.org-financed Voter ID and GOTV efforts are among the finest that money can buy. For those who do not know MoveOn.org, it is financed by billionaire George Soros, who makes his money with a world-wide hedge fund (though it is based in Bermuda to minimize paying taxes in America). It essentially runs the functions of the DFL party in Minnesota on an independent expenditure basis.

Senator-elect Kevin Dahle teaches social studies at Northfield High School and for many years has been a leader in the Education Minnesota union local in the Northfield Public School District. He and DFL Representative David Bly (HD25B) together have long dominated the union bargaining committee. In public debate with Ray Cox before his election, Dahle publicly and proudly said that he would vote for EVERY tax increase proposal that comes before him and that he would vote to override any and all legislative vetoes by Governor Pawlenty.

The Rice-Scott County BPOU intends to provide an on-going public service to calculate the cumulative amounts of tax increases and state spending increases voted for by Sen. Dahle and Rep. Bly. Kevin Dahle was quoted by Ariel Emery in the Northfield News as attributing his election to the possibility that “voters may have been dissatisfied with the status quo and were attracted to his lack of experience [sic] in the legislature.”

We Republicans believe that Minnesota is getting a veto-proof legislature that is the “best that money can buy”. And certainly many Republicans and independents are weary of the war in Iraq (but still patriotic and stalwart). Rank and file Republicans have been lulled by the prosperity and clean government that has prevailed under the leadership of Tim Pawlenty and Tom Neuville. While the DFL House and Senate caucus leadership (and Senator-elect Dahle) mouth pieties about being bi-partisan, we see nothing but partisan efforts to force an entire DFL agenda through, as evidenced by last session’s $5 billion of spending promises and tax hikes.

The public in Minnesota has been spared virtually all the damage threatened by the DFL by our stalwart Governor and our beleagured legislative minorities. Dahle and Bly have not even taken public positions on the important social issues, which the DFL is hiding behind the current tax-and-spend battling in the legislature. Dahle and Bly even refuse to discuss publicly the issue of the obvious conflicts of interest for our legislators who vote on everyone’s taxes to also effectively sit on on the other side of the teachers’ bargaining table at union contract time. K-12 payroll spending with tax dollars is from their every public pronouncement the complete preoccupation.

We salute Senator Tom Neuville after 17 years of sterling service to his district, as the most admired (bi-partisanly) Senator in the legislature. He will be a great judge. thank you, Tom, on behalf of all Republicans and all your constituents. And we salute Ray Cox, our candidate. A great businessman, a great state representative for four years and school board member for 15 years, and a great citizen. We are fortunate to have lived in the “Sviggum era” with our immediate area’s huge contribution to the Republican leadership of the entire state.