 |  | | Maureen Hackett | Jim Meffert |
It would be easy to throw the third district race away in the 2010 cycle: conventional wisdom from Washington says the Dems are in for a bad time, and incumbents like Paulsen will be well-funded and supported by the National Republican Campaign Committee. On the other hand, the NRCC is nearly broke, and has plenty of defense to be running across the country. There may be no extreme right-wing primary challenge coming for Paulsen, but there's a very decent chance he'll be on his own.
Which is where either Meffert or Hackett will step in and try to take him down after a single term.
Both DFLers had plenty of barbs for Paulsen. Meffert noted more than once when we spoke that Paulsen has voted in lockstep with Minnesota's more publicly kooky Republican Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, and that Paulsen would have to answer for that record. Hackett noted a litany of issues on which she would provide a clear contrast with Paulsen's nascent record, from the environment to banking regulation, and especially on health care.
On the issues, there's a little nuance between the two DFLers, and a little daylight in other places. Both said they would have voted "yes" on the health care package that has passed the House of Representatives and is being merged with its Senate counterpart, but both offered improvements that they would still like to see in the next Congress: Hackett would like to ensure coverage for mental illness and addictions. If the government is subsidizing the purchase of private health plans, then the government has a right to know about profits and overhead -- especially if they're mandating that people buy insurance. Hopefully once this package is passed, changes and tweaks would be mainly budgetary issues that will only require 51 votes in the Senate. (Hackett) Meffert, like Hackett, would have liked to see the public option survive the effort, but also wants to see a greater focus on building up community clinics in underserved areas to reduce emergency room visits and increase the focus on health care rather than sick care.Erik Paulsen decided how he was going to vote on this bill before he was even elected. And it bugs me that he's taken one tiny issue at a time and blown it up into an excuse to vote against the entire bill. (Meffert)
On energy, the two candidates actually do diverge a little -- Meffert said he would support cap-and-trade legislation as a good first step toward marketization of carbon emissions, saying it would encourage and incentivize companies to innovate to bring down their emissions. Hackett, however, disagreed vicariously, saying that the cap-and-trade bill would not provide enough push quickly enough to have a real effect on our nation's carbon emissions.
Both candidates sound aware of the tough road ahead -- without significant fundraising success in Q1, the DCCC is unlikely to fully engage in the contest, and it will be even more difficult for whoever wins the DFL endorsement and nomination to gain traction against the well-funded Paulsen.
But both Meffert and Hackett bring solid things to the table. They bring different things to the table, and the race for the DFL endorsement could prove to be a very positive starting point to what should be a very interesting race.
Check out their websites -- after all, caucuses are in less than a month, and the CD3 DFL convention a short time after that. Time's a-wastin'! |
