Thursday I’ll be interviewing DFL gubernatorial candidate Susan Gaertner after the meeting of the Itasca County DFL Social Club in Grand Rapids. Gaertner will be meeting with local DFLers starting at noon at the Itasca Co. DFL headquarters on Highway 169. You don’t have to be a member to attend.
I’ll be releasing the post early next week as part of my ongoing series of gubernatorial interviews. A Steve Kelley interview will be coming next, along with (eventually) everyone else.
As a conservative, Gaertner is the DFL candidate that scares me the most early on. Since she’s a prosecutor, she can go around bragging about how tough on crime she is and therefore she’s not an all out lefty. I don’t know how she is on other issues. I was also a lot more impressed with how she handled interviews on TV than I ever was with Amy Klobuchar when both were county attorneys. While Klobuchar may have run in a good year for Dems against a bad Republican candidate, she won by a lot more than I ever would have expected her to.
Even though it’s far too early and we don’t know who the candidates will be in either party, here is the list in order that scare me the most.
1. Gaerttner: read above
2. Entenza: while he’s an extreme liberal, he has a ton of money that he’ll probably be willing to spend it all. Has also proven to be a very good organizer.
3. Dayton: By far the most name recognition among the candidates and has a lot of money, but has many faults.
4. Tom Bakk, Steve Kelly, John Marty, Ole Savior, etc: Not even worth mentioning, as none have a shot at the nomination anyway.
Todd — I interviewed Susan yesterday and it may take the weekend to finish it, but I was impressed and agree with your basic logic on this. I think her biggest problems might end up being internal DFL politics.
I think Amy found a seam for DFLers to follow if they’re smart. I’m a DFLer, though, and I know that sometimes we aren’t so smart, at least when it comes to winning winnable elections. 🙂