ST. PAUL -- Minnesota governor candidates need to get the L out.
Get people in "the L" out to vote, that is. Those in the L are voters in the western and southern parts of the state, an area that would form an "L" on the map. Most L voters do not vote a party line, so are prime targets of campaigns.
"Particularly for Republicans running statewide, if you don't carry the L, you don't win the race," said state Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, who lost the GOP governor nomination to Tom Emmer in April.
"There is a mix of independent people out there," added former state Rep. Doug Peterson, DFL-Madison, who is Minnesota Farmers Union president. "Those people are looking at what these candidates can do or cannot do for them."
Many of them have not made up their minds about who to support in the Nov. 2 election.
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"People tend to take their time and think through who they are going to vote for in elections," Emmer campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said about L residents.
The L stretches from the Canadian border down the western part of Minnesota all the way to Iowa, then across the southern counties to the Mississippi River. It is a farm-dominated economy with an aging population that tends to vote in large numbers.
Democrats usually do well in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Northeastern Minnesota. The GOP traditionally has done better in the suburbs (although DFL candidates have scored some significant wins there recently). That leaves the L as the battle ground.
"It would almost be campaign malpractice not to be spending as much time as possible ... in the (rural) regional centers," Sheehan said.
But in the six-week-old general election campaign, major candidates Emmer, Democrat Mark Dayton and Tom Horner of the Independence Party have not slipped out of the Twin Cities often. A dozen debates and the need to raise money has kept their travel schedules slim.
"I don't know that anybody is running a real thorough rural campaign right now," Seifert said. That leads to his conclusion: "I think it is anybody's race right now, it really is."
State Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar, a Dayton supporter, said Emmer must work the L hard to upset Dayton, a former U.S. senator who has good name recognition statewide thanks to his long political life and his family founding Dayton's department store.
"Emmer cannot just depend on the suburbs and Rochester and wherever the Republican strongholds are," Juhnke said. "He has to work here in swing country, and it is swing country."
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The Dayton campaign points to past elections, where southern and western voters have backed him.
"He is the only candidate who has traveled to every county in this campaign, and he knows that there is more to Minnesota than the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area," said Katharine Tinucci, Dayton's deputy campaign manager.
Sheehan said Emmer will spend time in the L. Much of that time will be along U.S. 14 across southern Minnesota and Interstate 94 from the Twin Cities to Moorhead, Sheehan said.
Horner sent running mate Jim Mulder to cover rural Minnesota, although Horner plans campaign swings, too.
"I have been traveling it as much as I can," Mulder said. "In the next couple of weeks, I think I am exclusively in the L."
Mulder is former executive director of the Association of Minnesota Counties, so he has extensive contacts with county leaders statewide.
None of the three governor candidates hails from rural Minnesota. Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon of Duluth, Dayton's lieutenant governor candidate, is the only one who lives outside the Twin Cities.
Kevin Paap, Minnesota Farm Bureau president, said he hopes the L is important to candidates because "it is very important to Minnesota."
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Politicians should remember the state is seventh-largest agricultural producing state, Paap said.
