You can tell who's the front runner in the race for Minnesota governor. When State Senator Roger Moe visited the area this past week, making stops in Ely, Tower, and Virginia, he wanted to talk about Tim Penny, the former DFL congressmen turned Independence Party gubernatorial candidate.
Moe, who is the DFL's endorsed candidate for the job, knows that Penny (at least if you believe the mid-September polls) is the man to beat. But Moe also knows that early polls in this statewide contest can be misleading- Moe's friend and 1998 running mate Hubert "Skip" Humphrey held double digit leads in all major statewide polls at this same point in the last election. He ended up finishing in third place, behind Jesse Ventura and Norm Coleman.
That's one reason Moe isn't panicking yet. It's also the reason, however, that he has taken off the gloves.
"He's still all things to all people," said Moe, referring to Penny, who has largely been out of the political spotlight since retiring from Congress in 1993. "People need to understand that he's a person who advocated turning Social Security over to Wall Street."
Penny has supported President Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security- in fact, he helped write the plan as a member of Bush's hand-picked Social Security commission. That plan would allow younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security savings in individual retirement accounts, rather than in Social Security.
With the stock market in a three-year long tail spin and corporate corruption on the front pages of every newspaper, Moe is clearly hoping Penny's flirtations with Social Security privatization will take a bit of shine off his current political lustre.
And if that isn't enough, Moe has plenty more ammunition, built up from Penny's recent employment at the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. As a policy analyst at Cato, Penny helped write policy papers in the late 1990s that advocated eliminating major federal programs, including Head Start, and that called for limiting Medicare to coverage of catastrophic medical expenses only.
Moe said such views are out of the mainstream, and he thinks Penny's popularity will fade with most Minnesotans once his Cato writings become more widely-known.
But Moe isn't just targeting Penny. He waves a copy of a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune story about the declining political clout of northern Minnesota. He notes the comments of Dick Day, the Republican's minority leader in the State Senate, who said he's pleased to see the north's influence in full retreat, and said northern Minnesota "would be the last place I would look at to locate any development dollars."
It's comments like those that Moe thinks should cause area residents to sit up and take notice. And he suggests that the view of his Republican opponent, House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty, isn't much different from Day's.
Once people look at the record [of Tim Penny] and start looking at what GOP leaders are saying about northern Minnesota, we're going to do very well," he said. "I'm more in tune with what the real issues are here. I'm from northern Minnesota."
The real issue, according to Moe, is finding a way to spread the economic success, that has largely been confined to the sprawling Twin Cities metro region, to other parts of the state. Moe sees several keys to doing that, including:
Moe cites the case of a small sawmill, near Bagley, that processed logs from elm trees killed by Dutch Elm disease several years ago. The mill processed the logs for shipment to London, where they were turned into high quality furniture, which was shipped and sold around the world.
"Why can't we be doing all of that here?" he asks.
On property taxes, Moe took issue with the changes approved by the 2001 Legislature, which he said has fallen far short of the promises made by supporters, including Tim Penny, who was an advisor to Governor Ventura at the time.
They promised double digit tax cuts. I said that wouldn't happen, and I was right," he said. In fact, many lower valued homes and small business properties, especially in northern Minnesota, actually saw tax increases as a result of the 2001 tax changes, noted Moe. At the same time, Moe said, high-valued estates and large commercial and industrial properties saw substantial savings.
"They've shifted the burden from wealthy homes to the low and middle income and from the big commercial industrial properties to the small ones. That's been their [Ventura and the GOP] tax policy," he said.
If elected, Moe said he'd support changes in the tax reform measure, to provide tax savings to lower-valued properties as well.
Offering additional tax savings, better funding for schools, a renewed economic development effort in rural Minnesota, and help with prescription medications for seniors (which Moe also supports) are all likely to be popular items in northern Minnesota. And while Moe is specific on the kinds of things he'd like to accomplish, he is less so when it comes to the question of how to pay for them.
The latest projections of the state's Revenue Department predict that a roughly $2 billion budget gap will await whichever candidate ends up moving to the Governor's Mansion.
But Moe said those projections are based on Ventura's spending agenda, something he doesn't share.
"I don't necessarily buy the budget projections," he said. And he isn't going to discuss the details of how he might address the budget gap until the next state revenue projection is released.
While Moe is careful in his wording, he isn't ruling out new taxes to bridge the gap, and says every tax should be "on the table."
The last thing I want to do is raise taxes. But if schools won't be adequately funded, I'll make the case," he said. At the same time, Moe said he would look at cutting some Ventura initiatives, and may eliminate others entirely.
"I'll be reducing the [governor's] security staff. That's for sure."
Moe is also supportive of a boost in the state's gas tax, which the Legislature has refused to increase since 1988.
"Minnesota was the only state in the nation to turn down federal transportation dollars this year. We sent back $147 million when we failed to fund the Northstar Corridor project," which would have established a commuter rail line from St. Cloud to the Twin Cities.
We all want good transportation. We need to realize that people have to pay for it," he said.
Moe also promises to take a tougher line on corporate corruption than the Ventura administration has to date. He said he'd use state powers, where appropriate, to rein in what he calls a "culture of unbridled greed," that has led to the downfall of the stock market and workers' pensions and retirement plans.
We see Qwest's CEO pay himself $247 million while the company is on the verge of bankruptcy, is making huge layoffs and leaving pensions at risk. This kind of activity has to stop." Moe said state governments collectively can have enormous power over the markets, by requiring stricter disclosure from companies. He said measures taken in Congress, which have stiffened penalties for violators, aren't enough.
"You have to change the corporate culture," he said.
While Moe's campaign has struggled early, and underwent a major shakeup after the dismissal of his chief strategist, Pat Forceia, Moe notes that his campaign coffers are the healthiest in race, with $120,000 cash on hand as of the Aug. 19 pre-primary report. While the GOP's Tim Pawlenty has raised more money ($900,000 versus Moe's $715,000), the Republican has also spent more, leaving him with substantially less cash in his campaign war chest.
Penny has raised about $236,000, including the roughly $100,000 in leftover cash from the Ventura campaign, which has been donated his effort.