Last night I caught up with Katie Rodriguez, who's running for the State House of Representatives in district 32B (Maple Grove). A public finance expert and involved community member, she's brought a ton of energy to recent DFL campaign efforts in the west Metro, and this cycle she's taken the leap into running her own.
Bottom line: K-Rod rocks. She has a tough row to hoe -- Maple Grove has historically not been fertile ground for DFLers at the state level, and her opponent is incumbent Rep. Kurt Zellers, who will probably have the House Republican Caucus working hard for him in September. But Team Rodriguez has officially completed their "first pass" through targeted voters in their doorknocking efforts, having visited 11,000 households across the district so far.
There's already been a few political games being played -- in a recent Facebook post, she noted that "the MN GOP sent a Freedom of Information [request] to my previous employers to snoop around" ... in cases like this, it's almost too bad that FOIA requests don't force the requestor to publish all information they receive, so Katie's previous employers could send back great stuff about her expertise in public budget management and ensure that those missives were published in their entirety by the GOP.
In any case, the party opposite is clearly taking her challenge seriously. Nevertheless, Katie told me the response she's been getting from voters has been great, and that's good news both for her campaign and for Maple Grove.
The link to her campaign site is above -- if you're in the area, I strongly encourage you to get connected to and involved with Katie's campaign.
Joe Bodell and I hit the parties tonight. This is traditionally the night when anyone running for anything holds a party. A whole load of groups held parties and we only made it too a few.
We started at Katie Rodriguez's party who is running against House Minority Leader Kurt Zellars. Katie's folks had made great tacos.
At the Holiday Inn, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, Paul Thissen and RT Rybak held their parties. RT's was in a weird space and kinda empty. Where were all the RT activists? The MAK and Thissen parties were far more lively and packed.
Never made it to Tom Rukavina's party. Oh well. We heard the laughs from the fundraiser beforehand, but ... I'll be honest ... neither of us had checkbooks. That's so 20th century.
The reNEW.MN party was really packed, but all my pics from it look like ****. RT was addressing the crowd while he was there, but RT is RT and he never was still long enough for me to get a decent pic of him speaking.
...along with several other candidates and officeholders, including state Sen. Terri Bonoff.
K-Rod is running a strong campaign against House Minority Leader Kurt Zellers in district 32B. At first blush, Maple Grove is seen as a tough area for DFLers, but according to Rodriguez, the B side almost went for Barack Obama in 2008, Amy Klobuchar won every precinct in 2006, and State Auditor Rebecca Otto won the house district as well. So it's not impossible to make an impact.
Rodriguez has already called through the strong-dem base, all the lean-dems, and has been knocking on the doors of a lot of independent voters so far this year -- exactly what's necessary to win a race like this one.
We could (and I stress the word could) see some entries from Team K-Rod here on MPP in the coming weeks.
If you look at color-coded maps of Maple Grove from recent elections, it doesn't exactly look like fertile ground for progressive DFLers.
That isn't stopping David Hoden and Katie Rodriguez.
Hoden and Rodriguez are taking on entrenched incumbents in the area's two State House districts (32A and 32B, respectively). Hoden faces Republican Joyce Peppin, who won 66% of the vote in 2008 in a district that sent 57% of its votes for John McCain in last year's presidential race. Rodriguez is taking on Kurt Zellers in 32B, which was an even split in the presidential race, but gave Norm Coleman a 12-point margin and reelected Zellers with 53% of the vote.
On the face of the numbers, it seems like Rodriguez has a better shot at flipping her district than Hoden does his. Rodriguez is a well-known DFL activist in the area, and has done a lot over the past four years to expand the DFL base in the northwest Metro. Hoden, however, appears to be taking a slightly different tack: I've spoken to several folks in the area, and while Rodriguez brings solid party credentials to her race, Hoden sounds like he knows and is well-known by everyone who's anyone in his community -- church, the school system, the small business community.
With both campaigns having kicked off in the past week, it seems we could be in for a very interesting ride in the march toward 91 veto-proof votes in the State House.
