Almanac: At the Capitol

I love that political observers, including political reporters, can't help but look a year or two ahead. Another great conversation is happening on our Brain Trust of select opinion leaders and bloggers. It started with University of Minnesota political thinker Eric Ostermeier and his posting "Republicans Unlikely to Take Back House in '08" where he stated:

First, party control of the House has only changed hands in consecutive elections one time in Minnesota since 1960: in 1984 the Republicans took control of the House, only to suffer a significant loss of nearly 20 seats to the DFL (and control of the chamber) in 1986.

Second, for the DFL to lose the House in 2008 at least 18 seats would have to shift back to the Republicans. The DFL netted 19 seats in 2006 and there have never been gains that large in back-to-back elections by different parties during the past 24 election cycles. In fact, after each 'landslide' election in modern legislative electoral history there has been a period of relative stability in the party composition of the House:

• After the GOP won more than 20 seats in 1962, the DFL won only 2 back in 1964.
• After the DFL gained 27 seats in 1974, there was no change in 1976.
• After the GOP won 37 seats in 1978, the DFL won just 3 back in 1980.
• After the DFL won 18 seats in 1986, the GOP netted only 2 seats in 1988."

Now, the quotable and feisty House Minority Leader Marty Seifert has an interesting response:

While looking at the snapshot of this session so far, one would believe that the Democrats are obsessed with raising taxes on all sorts people, places and things. This will undoubtedly bode ill for them with the electorate, especially moderate and suburban voters who were hood-winked into believing that the Democrats had changed from their tax & spend history.

I'd suggest that the tide can turn on the DFL quickly in 2008. Some reasons:

1. The DFL won control of the House just last year by picking up 18 seats, but by only about 8800 votes statewide out of 2 million votes cast. If they can win the House in one election cycle, why couldn't they lose it in one cycle? They ran the table on close races and even the most partisan DFLer will admit that.


2. There are many "low-hanging fruit" freshmen who are co-authoring and voting Democrat on virtually everything. They are not the "independent-minded" people that they promised to be last year.


3. Norm Coleman is beating Al Franken by 10 to 20 points in every poll and he will run strong next year, thus helping the entire ticket. There's no doubt that Mark Kennedy's 20 point loss last year hurt the down-ticket.

The early polls in the Coleman race are a bit surprising to the press after Coleman was quickly labeled one of the vulnerable senators in the nation. The problem for Franken is that Minnesotans tend to keep the two senate seats politically balanced. It's also interesting to hear how many high-ranking Republicans have been publicly and privately bashing and blaming Mark Kennedy.