Up North: The Nameless Opposition
With The Big E out on vacation, I'm sharing some of my Iron Range items from my blog at www.MinnesotaBrown.com, including this one. U.S. Rep Jim Oberstar (D-MN8) is the longest serving member of Congress from Minnesota. He's a socially conservative, economically liberal DFLer in a socially conservative, economically liberal district that is the size of a New England state and where campaign news is still most widely spread by word of mouth. He's an Iron Ranger in a district traditionally influenced by the Iron Range. And he chairs the committee that determines who gets highway funding, which is one of the biggest known vote-winning issues known to modern politics. So every two years we have an election so that both parties can briefly pretend as though the outcome isn't assured.
The Republicans have tried many different approaches to their Quixotic dilemma in MN8 in recent years. They've tried running a cowboy. (Literally, he was a cowboy). They've tried running an earnest small town attorney. They've tried running former U.S. Senators. The outcome is Oberstar winning by somewhere between 32-42 percentage points. Rod Grams (the former U.S. Senator who once carried the district in his 1994 Senate campaign) actually only did one percentage point better in 2006 than Mark Groettum, the relatively unknown small town attorney, did in 2004.
So we're waiting to find out who the Republicans run in 2008 against Oberstar. I know that it's not Grams or Groettum (or, for that matter, "Cowboy Bob" Lemen, the 2000 and 2002 nominee).
MNPublius has an amusing post about the Republican press release announcing their newest nameless candidate. Again, he or she is literally nameless. They didn't include the person's name in the press release.
UPDATE: Still waiting to hear the identity of the mythical Republican planning to challenge Jim Oberstar for the MN08 seat in Congress. I hear he's 12 feet tall! I hear he's got diamonds where his eyes should be and teeth made from dinosaur bones! Well, that's just what I hear. (Duluth News-Tribune ... read the comments to see some of their readers ideas)
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I love my representative
I love my representative, however it is hard to beat Jim Oberstar's experience and influence. On transportation, his knowledge and influence are the best in the state. I especially include our governor in that assessment. Thank goodness we had Jim Oberstar when the bridge fell, to give us federal funding support when the state is doing so little. Jim Oberstar could have brought more funding and more transportation with the economic stimulus, if the state had been willing the raise the money for its share.
Blame it on Jim instead of Tim
How was the state supposed to "raise the money for its share"? Maybe a bake sale? Maybe Oberstar could sing a live aid concert?
The fact is that Oberstar chose to build a brand new bridge in the middle of no-where instead of focusing on the I35W bridge.
The Oberstar boondoggle bridge is being constructed near Rauch to replace a perfectly structurally sound bridge in the middle of no-where. Just how much traffic is there between Rauch and Silverdale?
What a porker.
Blame it on Jim instead of Tim
//...crickets...\\
Calling Oberstar socially
Calling Oberstar socially conservative is not entirely true. While he is anti-abortion, he has a mixed record on other social issues, sometimes coming down one way and sometimes another on guns and gays and with a strong record on racial issues, education, housing, etc. His record on war and peace and international issues is definitely strongly liberal. He voted against Iraq from the beginning. In addition to his expertise on transportation, he is one of the top people in the House on Latin American issues, dating from his days before Blatnik when he lived and worked in Haiti and Central America. He is the only member of congress who speaks and understands Haitian Creole and was intensely involved in the Clinton administration effort in Haiti. He is one of the few congressmen who arrived in the House via intellectual qualifications (he was the chief of staff for John Blatnik) rather than rising through political ranks. A smart and interesting guy, even if you disagree with him on some issues.
The nuances
You're talking to a guy who truly respects the nuances in Jim Oberstar's record. I owe my reason for being interested in politics in part to him. But I still think his extremely wide margins in the 8th are due in part to his pro-life position and the support of like minded organizations. Without that he'd still win the elections because of his merits as a transportation expert etc., but his numbers would more closely follow the strong DFL index in the district as opposed to the numbers he current gets, which are even greater.
He's a real porker when it comes to transportation projects
Oberstar doesn't look at whether a project is needed, only whether it will create jobs and stimulate the economy. He is partly responsible for a funding formula that favors his district over the metro area which has much more population. Pork gets him reelected though.
Ol' Jim
Jim's a bit of a poster child for term limits, but he's better than a republican. I just have trouble enabling pork spending.
Choices
Before the Bush presidency, pork was an occasional meal choice, now it is the only meat (spending on Minnesota infrastructure) that we get. The whole way we do our government has to change, and certainly the Republicans are only anti pork when they are out of power. The most progress has been made with Democratic majorities.