12 August 2008
Minnesotans’ Shaky Party Loyalty Big Factor in Fall Elections
Voters in south central Minnesota share views of candidates
St. Peter, Minnesota -- Until the 1980s, St. Peter resident Bernie McGuire was a Democrat. Then he began to think Democrats were abandoning the political middle and becoming too liberal.
So the now-retired printer switched political parties. In November, he will vote only for Republicans.
McGuire said he will vote for Arizona Senator John McCain, even though earlier in the year he favored Mitt Romney for president. McGuire hopes McCain will select Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, as his vice presidential running mate.
McGuire told America.gov he prefers Brian Davis, the Republican Party-endorsed candidate, to represent Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in Congress. He said he is impressed that Davis, a Rochester physician, has a medical background and not one as a politician. That, he said, should make Davis more analytical and effective in Congress.
Setting up the electric keyboard he soon would play with other country music band members at the Nicollet County Fair, McGuire said he does not like Davis’ main opponent in the race, Democratic incumbent Tim Walz. Walz “only tells people what they want to hear in order to get their vote,” he said. McGuire predicted Davis would get a good number of votes from the area.
Judy Radke lives in the town of Nicollet, near St. Peter. The elementary schoolteacher grew up on her family’s hog farm in the county. At the fair, she admired the choice pigs her brother had entered into competition.
Radke said she likes Democrat Barack Obama for president, adding that she is willing to vote for Democratic and Republican political candidates. While she is not particularly impressed with Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman, she thinks Coleman’s main Democratic challenger, Al Franken, has no experience to qualify him to be an effective senator. Franken is the Democrats’ endorsed candidate. In September, he will face a primary challenge from attorney Priscilla Lord Faris, a last-minute Democratic entry into the race.
Radke said that coming from a farming family, she has always felt free trade is important to the survival of American agriculture. But, she said, the United States doesn’t seem to be benefiting as much as it should from trade due to an uneven global trade environment.
At a fair picnic table, another man from St. Peter, population 9,800, said he did not want his name used but was willing to share his opinions. He said McCain was not his first choice, but “he is my candidate now.” The man also thinks Romney would be a good vice president because, he said, the former presidential contender “understands business.”
The former small business owner said he is more conservative than Coleman, who was once a Democrat. He said he is more bothered that the Democrats’ endorsed senatorial candidate, Al Franken, has been involved in controversy about past failure to pay taxes.
The man said he is a Republican because the party believes in less government. “I don’t want the government to tell me what to do or to make a living for me.”
The man said he opposes giving welfare benefits to people who appear to be healthy enough to work. He added that government is needed only to provide essential services such as national security.
A second man explained why he did not want to be identified.
“Politics and faith are both personal and I like to keep my views private,” he said. The Nicollet County corn, soybean and hog farmer said he was concerned that stating his political opinions could lead to an abusive invasion of privacy by someone using Internet searches.
Many voters in this part of southern Minnesota have conservative political views they are not comfortable disclosing to people they don’t know, said Paul Gorman, who teaches agricultural business management at a technical college in North Mankato, a few miles south of St. Peter.
“This way of thinking is tied to the strong work ethic and sense of independence” common in the area, Gorman said.
He said people in the area around North Mankato, Mankato and St. Peter basically are balanced in their political views, but there are pockets with heavy representations of either Republicans or Democrats.
Gorman predicted that Walz, a former Mankato high school history teacher and sports coach, “will cruise to re-election.”
“Election day will be a day of surprises,” said the man at the picnic table.
