Today Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak formally jumped into the race for governor at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. The event is the first stop on his statewide announcement tour. Hundreds of people packed in to the Varsity to kick off the campaign. Here is a short video from the campaign of his speech
I'll post full video when I can find it.
The event was very high energy and I spotted several elected officials in attendance, signaling he should be able to put up a strong showing on the Superdelegate Tracker soon. I also saw top staffers from a few other DFL gubernatorial campaigns as well as the Minnesota Republican Party's Michael Brodkorb and Mark Drake. The MNGOP seems to be taking Rybak pretty seriously, Brodkorb was working the press hard and shooting off snarky tweets during the whole event. I try not to pay attention to his ilk, but I haven't seen this level of attention from the MNGOP attack machine on any of the other candidates. Sadly, the press paid attention to them and printed Brodkorb's childish word plays.
"R.T.," he said, stands for "Raise Taxes," Brodkorb said
If that is the best they can come up with I'm looking forward to 2010.
The Star Tribune also reported another interesting tidbit.
The mayor, in Washington for a Democratic Governors Association gathering, and his campaign manager were meeting with West Wing staffers when Rybak said he was told: "There is somebody downstairs who wanted to say hi to you."
The mayor, an early and ardent Obama supporter, was led to the Oval Office. There, Obama and Rybak ate apples -- Galas, which the mayor said are not as good as Minnesota Honeycrisps --and the president asked about the governor's race.
Rybak is closely identified with Obama and got a huge boost in name ID and goodwill campaigning around the state for him in 2008. While I doubt Obama will give him a public nod at least until the primary Rybak's relationship with him should give him a big boost. And during the general election or maybe even the primary Obama could be a huge asset if he put his weight behind Rybak in a big way.
Rybak will no doubt attempt to milk that connection during the campaign and will try to run a grassroots campaign as Obama did, he made that quite clear in his speech today. Additionally he doesn't seem shy about his record and is ready to run on it. He had a good line about how he has proven you can be a strong manager and be a strong progressive, an appeal that is likely to be at the core of his efforts to persuade suburban voters.
But so far the campaign seems to be going well for him. He's got a strong base of support, high name ID, a record to run on and lots of enthusiasm from his suporters. It remains to be seen if he can turn that into victory on caucus night.
If you want to learn more or find out how to get involved you can check out his newly launched website, designed by the designers of Barack Obama's site, RTRybak.com.
Full disclosure: I was on the executive committee of the Draft RT Rybak for Governor campaign and am now an active volunteer with Rybak for Governor.
We still have 531 days until the 2010 election but the race for governor in Minnesota has already been underway for months. Seven major candidates have entered the DFL field and I continue to hear buzz about five more. Tim Pawlenty remains publicly undecided about if he will run for re-election to a third term or not.
With all that in mind KSTP commissioned a poll from SurveyUSA pitting 9 current or potential DFL candidates against Pawlenty. All announced candidates minus Steve Kelly and plus R.T. Rybak, Chris Coleman and Margaret Anderson Kelliher. It has a fairly small sample size of 552 and doesn't take into account potential IP or other third party candidates but it's still interesting to political junkies like me (and probably you if your reading this). It has very good news for R.T. Rybak and Mark Dayton.
In addition it's very bad news for Tim Pawlenty. When a incumbent is under 50 percent they are considered vulnerable in politics. Three candidates hold him under that mark.
Thanks to twitterer MSPdude we've gotten our hands on what I think is the first direct mailer of the 2010 gubernatorial race. Dayton takes a very aggressive, progressive tone in both this mailer and an e-mail he recently send out (below the fold) and recent speeches. In them he attacks "turncoat" Democratic senators, touts his opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, his vote against Condi's confirmation and higher taxes for the wealthy. He says he's running for governor beacuse that's where real progressive change can happen.
(Click on them for full size. Very large images)
In addition he's been taking the same tone on the campaign trail. Here's what he said at a recent Beltrami County DFL event:
"The wealthy have gotten away with armed robbery," says former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton. "The wealthiest 10 percent pay less of their incomes in state and local taxes than the next 60 percent."
....
That Pawlenty won't raise taxes "even one penny," Dayton said, "is a disgrace."
