Diane Alden
Thursday, Oct. 31, 2002

For the first time in many years I will be voting in Minnesota in a district that has not voted for a Republican since Herbert Hoover. The joke among the few conservatives or Republicans who do live on the Iron Range is that the Democrats could run a jackass and it would win.

The Minnesota Democratic Party or Democrat Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) evolved out of Minnesota's tendency to be populist and unpredictable. For quite some time, however, the prairie farmers in DFL have been voting Republican. On the other hand, the northern Minnesota labor vote seems to be forever Democrat.

The Iron Range of Minnesota is a place where it is impossible to convince people that the national Democratic Party is no longer the party "for the working man."

The Range's congressman, Democrat James Oberstar, is a 16-term Democrat who votes conservative on social issues and liberal on tax policies. Unlike the majority of Democrats, he is pro-life. On taxes and favors for business or the "rich" – forget it. He voted against removing the marriage tax penalty, as well as the death and estate taxes.

Oberstar works hard to get a share of federal pork back to the Iron Range in federal grants and road money. However, he has trouble convincing industry to do the much-needed work of job creation in the area. I will go into the reasons for that later.

Minnesota Democrats and Republicans realize that the vote on the Range is like the African-American vote, and it belongs to the Democrats until the end of time.

The Republican running against Oberstar is a Grand Rapids businessman. In the words of a Mesabi Daily News editorial, the Republican candidate is "running a stealth campaign." No one has seen hide nor hair of him. I certainly have not seen a sign or a piece of literature or watched him work crowds outside cafes, at potluck suppers, fairs, bazaars or town hall meetings.

Unfortunately, Republicans on the Iron Range look at their candidates as obligatory ritual sacrifices to be thrown into the political volcano. Republicans just go through the motions, keep their heads down and are happy when the least obnoxious Democrat is voted in.

Frankly, there will be quite a few Republicans who will vote for Oberstar because they don't know where the Republican candidate stands on any of the issues.

The Iron Range Loved Wellstone

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, son of Russian immigrants, was arguably the most left/socialist senator in the U.S. Senate. Lots of campaign money was being spent on his campaign, most of it coming from outside the state. Even Hollywood had its checkbook out, as did the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, AFL-CIO, NARAL – the usual suspects.

Last summer the Green Party of Minnesota almost threw its support to Wellstone in his bid for re-election against Republican Norm Coleman. Many of the Greens saw Wellstone as a man who voted close to 100 percent for the green wish list. It never occurred to the miners and union members in northern Minnesota that Wellstone's green credentials might mean fewer jobs for them.

The fact is that northern Minnesota has never let the Democrats down.

The Range certainly never let Paul Wellstone down. When Wellstone ran for office against incumbent Republican Senator Ruddy Boschwitz in 1990, the Greyhound Bus Museum in Hibbing lent him an ancient green bus that he used as a campaign vehicle throughout the state. The Iron Range loved the poor-boy image. They also loved his "I am so humble" green bus, which was indicative of Wellstone's politics as well.

Wellstone was on the way to attend the funeral of the father of a heavy-hitter Range Democrat when his plane went down in the foggy sleet and snow near the Range town of Eveleth.

In his original run for the Senate, Wellstone presented himself as a maverick, David vs. Goliath. Born and educated in Virginia and Maryland, a professor of civics and leftist grassroots activist, Wellstone handily beat Boschwitz. The second time around, in '96, he carried the state by only 2 percentage points and most of those votes came from the Iron Range and Twin Cities.

Minnesotans just love to vote against conventional wisdom and against conventional politicians. That is why so many of them voted for Ross Perot. They also have a fondness for leftist mavericks like Wellstone. Younger Minnesotans adored Jesse Ventura, the oddball former wrestler who wore feather boas, rode a motorcycle and shamelessly promoted himself in Playboy and on TV talk shows. Most of all, he beat mainstream challengers to take the Minnesota governorship in '98.

Minnesota prefers the underdog, the oddball and the offbeat; that is, until they no longer can afford them.

Making Ghost Towns

Like many rural timber or mining areas, northern Minnesota is hemorrhaging population and jobs. That has been the case for over two decades. Never mind that the answer from the Democrats is more transfer payments. Wellstone and Oberstar were aces at that.

When several Minnesota iron mines, including LTV Mining, closed in the '90s, Wellstone and Oberstar helped extend jobless benefits to the men who lost their jobs. To the people on the Iron Range, that meant they cared. That very well may be true. However, benefits and transfer payments, grants and subsidies, are not as good as high-paying mining, timber or industry jobs – period.

In addition, business and industry are not replacing the absent mining and timber jobs, because there is very little incentive for them to do so.

Over the years, the Iron Range regional commission and politicians like Oberstar made a stab at job creation by making minor concessions to business. However, that effort resulted in only moderate success.

Northwest Airlines reservation center was lured to Chisholm. One of the reasons was that a fiber optics system was installed for the new mining museum. Northwest was able to hook into that and built a beautiful complex and had proposals for expansion. Great plans were afoot until the recession and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, ruined most of the airline industry, including Northwest.

Funds from the feds and the state of Minnesota built several museums and various attractions like the recently closed aquarium in Duluth, as well as a few hockey rinks. But these attractions don't offer very much except a short-term building boom, a chance to dole out political favors to top people, and a minimal number of seasonal, low-paying service jobs.

The attractions were meant to tempt large numbers of tourists. However, most tourists simply head to the lakes or to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and forego the sights. Tourism is a great boon for northern Minnesota, but it is not enough to keep people in good-paying, year-round jobs.

Bringing new business to northern Minnesota is problematic because there is an anti-business climate, and that attitude is entrenched. The sad fact is that unions in Minnesota – in fact, all over the upper Midwest – still want to portray business as the enemy. They equate all business with J.D. Rockefeller and company.

People in the upper Midwest remember that a hundred years ago Rockefeller made hard-nosed business decisions and "stole" the iron mines from the Merritt Brothers. Then old J.D. proceeded to make the miners buy their own shovels and used strikebreakers against them.

Fair enough, but they still blame Republicans for Rockefeller. They still blame Republicans for the suffering they endured during the Great Depression, suffering they blame on Republican Herbert Hoover.

Over 25 years ago, the South stopped blaming Republicans for Lincoln and their defeat in the War Between the States. But Rangers just won't let Hoover and Rockefeller go.

The mindset persists; long after the world has changed and moved on, business is still the enemy. They just can't understand that tax breaks for business do not mean you are sleeping with the enemy. Unlike rural Georgia, which offered tax-free industry zones to industry in the '70s and '80s, the attitude in northern Minnesota smacks of Depression-era thinking. That was the time when FDR and God were spoken of in almost the same tones.

Many rural Georgia communities adopted tax-free zones. These were usually limited to a period of five years. This led to the longest, most complete boom in modern times, and with it boundless growth. All of that began as Georgia demographics and politics began to change.

Conservative Republicans, along with their businesses, were moving in. Georgia was becoming at least half-Republican and tax smart. At about that time business from Japan, Germany, England and the East Coast began to relocate to the small towns west and south of Atlanta. Just a few years earlier, Democrats owned the South and Georgia, but that changed in one decade. There is now a balance of sorts.

Sadly, in northern Minnesota, if business does not lock itself into the union fold, or will not roll over for high taxes and a mountain of environmental regulations, they don't want it. Well, business is listening, and with some few exceptions, it stays away.

Northern Minnesota is an area of incredible beauty. It has an educated and hard-working population. Along with Lake Superior, the area has one-sixth of the world's fresh potable water. Crime is almost nonexistent, the air is clean and the people goodhearted. The Range should attract more industry – but it doesn't.

Another factor in Democratic control of the state is that Democrats have locked up the huge population of senior citizens. There is nothing Democrats don't promise them and absolutely nothing they don't try and deliver. Seniors voted for Wellstone and other Democrats by huge Majorities, the same way Democrats own seniors on Florida's southern coast.

Originally, Wellstone promised to serve only two terms, and last year he reneged. Pressured by outside interests, including Tom Daschle, Wellstone told Minnesotans that they needed him in office to fight the conservative agenda and the Bush administration.

On the Iron Range, Paul Wellstone would have beaten Republican Norm Coleman. But the rest of the state, excluding the Twin Cities, would have gone for Coleman.

Wellstone's name will be blacked out on the ballot and it looks like retired politico, former Vice President Walter Mondale, has been dragged out of mothballs to replace Wellstone. However, his moderate liberalism will not energize the radical wing of Minnesota Democrats and certainly not the Green Party, which might have cross-voted for Wellstone.

Mondale has not been active in electoral politics for nearly two decades. At 74, he is a year older than Ronald Reagan, whom he chided for running for president in 1984, because he believed Reagan was too old.

Mondale will probably be on the ballot. A word of caution, however: The Democrats' long knives are out. Lawsuits are being typed up and filed as I write this. The reasons for the lawsuits include the fact that they may not allow absentee voters who voted for Wellstone to cast a vote for Mondale. If Coleman wins, he'd better win by a good-sized majority because Democratic court challenges will keep him from taking office for months.

It may boil down to Jesse Ventura choosing who will be the senator from Minnesota until all the Democrat-instigated court challenges are completed.

Life After Jesse

In the race for the governorship of Minnesota, either Democrat Charles Moe or Independent Tim Penny will beat the best thing that has happened to Republicans or Minnesotans in decades. Republican State Representative Tim Pawlenty is a very special sort of politician.

Pawlenty spoke on the Range not long ago. Speaking in his self-deprecating way, he received a smattering of applause and laughter from the mostly Democrat audience. Pawlenty knew they would not vote for him. Yet he was sincere when he told them that someday they would. Not this year, he said, or in 2004, but someday.

Pawlenty, a youthful powerhouse in the State Legislature, is the son of a truck driver, a guy who worked his way through college and law school. Many Minnesotans wanted Pawlenty to run for the Senate against Wellstone.

It is assumed that the Bush administration's Karl Rove wanted a more moderate candidate, such as former Democrat-turned-Republican Norm Coleman, as the candidate. They believed he had a better chance in the lefty Twin Cities. Bush has been campaigning hard for Coleman.

Pawlenty is considered too socially conservative by the powers that be. Too bad. Pawlenty is exactly the kind of person the Range, and the rest of Minnesota, should be allowed to vote for. He will be heard from in the future. If not, that would be unfortunate for electoral politics in Minnesota – and nationally as well.

The Prairie Pundit Pontificates

Putting on my pundit prognostication hat, I predict Republican Norm Coleman will win the Senate race and Tim Penny the governorship of Minnesota. Nevertheless, Jesse Ventura may end up picking the person who will sit in the U.S. Senate seat once held by Paul Wellstone. That could be the case until all Democrat challenges make their way through court. We will see.

Suggestions this election:

Colorado: Vote for Wayne Allard; your property and your homes and healthy forests depend on it. His challenger for the Senate, Tom Strickland, is a Clinton clone. Don't let Boulder or the University of Colorado lefties, or the transfer payment crowd, elect another Bill Clinton. Support Wayne Allard for the Senate.

Missouri: Republican Jim Talent versus Democrat Jean Carnahan. Sympathy for the death of Carnahan's husband can only be carried so far. As the polls indicate, Talent has a great chance to beat Carnahan.

Montana: What can I say; they blew it when Mike Taylor bailed out. The only alternative is a write-in against Max Baucus.

Georgia: Saxyby Chambliss MUST beat Democrat Max Cleland. Cleland is nearly as much a leftist as Wellstone was. He does not adequately represent the best interests of conservatives – or Georgians, for that matter.

South Dakota: Don't fail me, South Dakota. If you don't want this country to go to hell in a Democratic basket, vote for John Thune against Democratic incumbent Tim Johnson. The "dead Indian" vote recently revealed by state and federal investigators should tell you how desperate the Democrats are to retain South Dakota. The outside money pouring into Democratic coffers means the corporate left is involved. Don't let them keep the state – vote for Thune.

Sweet Home, Alabama

I am also hoping that my friend Betty Peters wins her school board race in Alabama. She is running against a flunky of the NEA and the Alabama Education Association. Her opponent joined the Republican Party for one day and then switched back when she realized she could win as a Democrat. Dems are party-hopping in several state and local races.

In addition, this opportunistic educrat received a $100,000 donation from PACs set up as fronts for the NEA and AEA. Betty's largest contributor was the Eagle Forum with a $500 check. The majority of her other funds are $50 individual contributions.

Betty knows her educational stuff. She is not an educational hack but an accountant who has become one of the South's most knowledgeable experts on the failures of public education and alternative plans to counter those failures. If Alabamans want the future of their children to be in the hands of a bunch of leftists, then don't vote for Betty. But if Alabama parents and voters want better-educated citizenry – then Betty is your candidate.

All in all, politics is always local. It is important this year that many of you get over your snit and not stay home. If you want the country to head farther left, faster, stay home and pout. If you care about this country, vote for the most conservative candidate you can find. Vote for the person or party that comes closest to the ideals espoused in the Declaration and the Constitution.

We are losing this country because good people will not vote or make the necessary sacrifices to save it. Pray, work, vote.

To comment, write alden@newsmax.com or visit my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com.

Read Diane's bio.

Editor's note:
Dick Morris on President Bush, the Clintons and Ronald Reagan