If Iron Range opponents of State Auditor Rebecca Otto were hoping to deliver a show of strength in their effort to deny the two-term DFLer the party’s nomination this year, they must have been sorely disappointed in the primary results earlier this month.

Otto easily dispatched a well-funded challenge from former House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, and she got plenty of help from Iron Range voters, despite her much-publicized questioning of copper-nickel mining.

Entenza had peppered Iron Range mailboxes for weeks ahead of the primary, with anti-Otto attack pieces that went largely unanswered by the lightly-funded Otto campaign. And Entenza had plenty of assistance from local newspapers, particularly the Mesabi Daily News, which has blistered Otto on more than one occasion for her views on copper-nickel and which, predictably, endorsed Entenza.

Despite everything aligned against her, Otto cruised to an easy win in St. Louis County and on the Iron Range, carrying a 52-percent majority even in Virginia, the mining center of the Range.

While Entenza won in a few spots, most notably the cities of Ely, Babbitt, Hoyt Lakes, and Aurora, where copper-nickel mining advocates are best organized, and where Dump Otto signs could occasionally be spotted, they were the exception in the region, not the rule.

Outside of those few hotbeds of anti-Otto fervor, Otto tallied significant margins, and garnered 67 percent of the vote in St. Louis County as a whole. Perhaps most interestingly, Otto tallied 82 percent of the vote in Lake County, where most of the copper-nickel deposits are actually located. Otto’s questioning of copper-nickel mining proposals may have generated opposition in some quarters, but Lake County DFL primary voters apparently have no objection. Indeed, Lake County’s support for Otto marginally outpaced the 81-percent margin she tallied in her primary contest statewide.

And while 60 percent of voters in the city of Ely backed Entenza, Otto won decisively in the townships surrounding Ely, including Morse, where she tallied 56 percent and in Fall Lake Township, where she tallied an impressive 78 percent of the vote.

These vote totals suggest a phenomenon I’ve noticed for a long time in our area— that publicly-expressed views on issues seen as environmental fault lines tend to skew more heavily towards the anti-environmental perspective than when people talk privately or express themselves in the privacy of the voting booth.

I wouldn’t call it coercion, exactly, but there is a noticeable social pressure in places like Ely, or Virginia, to take a stand for what those in positions of power and influence view as beneficial for the community. In Virginia, that most often exerts itself in expressions of support for American-made steel, a perspective with which I firmly agree, and not just as it relates to steel, but all manufacturing.

In Ely, that pressure typically centers around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and related public policy, and has manifested itself more recently in issues like copper-nickel mining and the Hwy. 169 reconstruction in the Eagles Nest area.

Back in 1978, when local opposition to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Act was very real, voters in Ely and surrounding areas helped dump the DFL’s endorsed U.S. Senate candidate, Don Fraser, for his support of a strong wilderness bill, nominating Minneapolis businessman Bob Short instead. A divided DFL ended up sending Short to election defeat in the fall general election.

In those days, of course, the Iron Range had real clout in a DFL primary, clout that was neutered this time around not only by the reduced population of the Iron Range (compared to its 1978 heyday) but also by the lack of a strong consensus locally around the issue of copper-nickel mining. Voters in the city of Ely might have backed Entenza 298-189, but that margin of support was reduced to nearly a wash by the time voters from surrounding Morse and Fall Lake townships chimed in with their support of Otto. Just down the road, 71 percent of Eagles Nest Township voters backed Otto as well.

Mining supporters may have hoped a focus on Otto’s doubts around copper-nickel mining would provide them with a show of political strength. If anything, it exposed their weakness, at least in terms of their ability to sway a DFL primary. Despite a well-funded effort by Entenza and plenty of coverage of Otto’s views in Iron Range newspapers, including the Timberjay, Otto cruised to convincing margins, even in northern St. Louis County.

Of course, Otto still faces the general election. And pockets of opposition to Otto over the mining issue could affect the outcome of that race should it prove extremely close, as we saw in 2010. But even in that strongly-Republican year, Otto beat former State Auditor Pat Anderson by 30,000 votes. The Iron Range isn’t about to muster that kind of margin for Otto’s Republican opponent, Randy Gilbert, at least not over copper-nickel mining. Barring some other issue that ignites voter passion, Otto looks to be in a good position to hold on to her title for another four years.