| He reiterated the disadvantage any candidate would face after a bitter, 13 month intra-party battle. He is confident that Tinklenberg would have prevailed (would anyone expect anything less), but emphasized that 7 weeks is nowhere enough time to battle Bachmann.
"We'd have to spend almost all our resources on the primary," he explained. "So we'd have to pretty much start from zero in our 7 week race against Bachmann."
Dana, I, everyone and their dog know that this is a conservative district and tough for any Democrat to win. Dana emphasized that it also has a strong independent streak.
"Looking at the numbers, many people vote independent up here," he said. "Democrats cannot afford to spend all their time contacting only Democrats who vote in primaries when we need to be persuading conservative Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans to vote for the El and not Michele."
"Look, El outperformed both Obama and Franken in the sixth," he continued. Obama lost by 6-7%, Franken by nearly 20%. Tinklenberg lost by 3%.
Dana emphasized that the fundraising for Tinklenberg had been going fine since his arrival. I inferred that the reason he told me this because he didn't want people to think Tinklenber couldn't raise the money. Tinklenberg's reluctance to fundraise has often been cited and if fundraising was an issue, better to end the campaign now than grind on to a more depressing, bitter end later.
Dana wasn't sure of what his next move would be.
"There are plenty of races out there," he said. With a skill set like his I can't imagine that he'll campaign-less for long.
As for the outlook for this race, that post is tomorrow -- I'm interviewing Tarryl Clark. Suddenly, the questions I'll be asking have become very different. |
