GOP gov hopefuls Seifert and Emmer take neck-and-neck race to convention delegates

If you’re going by the attack spin of the GOP gubernatorial endorsement fight, delegates to this weekend’s state Republican convention in Minneapolis will choose between a) an introverted state representative who made a last-minute campaign error last week by drawing attention to his opponent’s 30-year-old DWI record; and b) a sometimes reckless legislator who casts himself as a political outsider, yet picked the “ultimate insider” to be his running mate.

The campaign for the Republican endorsement – which has pitted former  House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, first elected to the House in 1996, against third-term Rep. Tom Emmer – has been nothing if not hard-fought.

“Tom and Marty were, from day one, the front-runners,” according to a party insider who has remained neutral. “Marty had the momentum, running for three years from his position as minority leader, which gave him relationships across the state and with major donors.

“Tom’s advantage has been that he’s able to appeal more to the delegates. The Tea Party movement is reflected in the activist base of the GOP, and Emmer resonates well with that group. So as a consequence, Emmer had the momentum after the fall convention.”

The tug-and-pull between the campaigns saw both sides claiming a delegate lead in the wake of party unit conventions this spring. But according to the insider, the pre-convention outlook appears to be “absolutely a toss-up” as to which man emerges with the endorsement.

David Schultz, a political science and law professor at Hamline University who has observed Minnesota electoral politics for decades, says the two men are ideologically very similar, and a Republican legislative staffer points out that of the approximately 700 votes that Emmer and Seifert have cast each year that they’ve served together in the Legislature, they’ve voted differently perhaps 30 times. “They’re both good, solid conservatives,” the staffer says. “Their differences are minimal. There are probably only 10 votes or so that really distinguish them.”

Yet if there is little separating the two camps ideologically, the staffer adds, the culture of the campaigns is strikingly different. Seifert’s people tend to be longtime party activists – familiar with the levers of government, closely tied to the party’s major donors and well-entrenched in the party apparatus. Emmer’s supporters are more likely to be Young Turk types, attuned to the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement. “In one sense,” says the staffer, “the convention is likely to come down to the old contest of age and guile versus youth and passion.”

Schultz says the two front-runners’ differences lie chiefly in their personalities.

“Tom just comes across as real affable and just as a real likable person,” Schultz says. “I almost see him as a natural campaigner; he’s real extroverted, real gregarious, whereas Marty, I think, is a little more introverted, more withdrawn, and people will often confuse that with being cold.

“I can see a lot of people perceiving Emmer as having the kind of winning personality you want on the campaign stump. I’m not sure Marty has the same type of personality that’s going to bring people in. Marty’s more of a tactician; he’s been really good over the years at tactically maneuvering things through the House, and that’s not Emmer’s skill. Emmer’s a big-picture kind of person.”

Publicly, Seifert has been the more aggressively negative of the two. But the GOP staffer says Emmer has attacked Seifert over the last few months through “blogging surrogates.”

“Again and again, the theme of those attacks was that Seifert is a political insider and Emmer is not,” the source says. “And yet here Mr. Rebellion has picked one of the ultimate insiders [as his lieutenant governor candidate].”  (Emmer announced on Tuesday that his lieutenant governor running mate will be Annette Meeks, a Met Council appointee whose resume includes stints as the CEO of the think tank Center of the American Experiment and as deputy chief of staff to former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. For more, see Paul Demko’s sidebar.)

So who will be anointed on Friday by Minnesota Republicans? And will it take them as long to endorse a gubernatorial candidate as it did the state DFL last weekend in Duluth, when House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher finally won the nomination after six ballots?

It’s easier to find predictions about the second question than the first.

“I would say no more than three ballots,” Schultz predicts. “On the first ballot, [delegates] are locked into their commitments. One the second one, you’ll see the momentum shifting; the pressure will be on the third ballot to resolve it.

“The only thing that could change all this in dragging it out longer is the fact that the two candidates don’t like one another, so you might not see one wanting to concede or supporters willing to move, which is what happened in Duluth.”

Though he won’t say which horse he’s backing, Luke Hellier, the blogger who now runs the Minnesota Democrats Exposed website, believes the endorsement will take twice as long; he predicts six or seven ballots. “Both Marty and Tom have a significant number of supporters, and I think there is a decent amount of undecided delegates that are going to sway this endorsement,” he says. “I think after two or three ballots, we’ll see which direction we’re going. I guess it might even be optimistic to say we’re only going to go seven ballots.”

Party Chair Tony Sutton says, perhaps somewhat hopefully, that the endorsement won’t be a marathon battle like the one eight years ago, which saw current Gov. Tim Pawlenty win the nod over Orono businessman Brian Sullivan after 17 hours and 12 ballots.

“It’s not going to go that many ballots,” Sutton insists. “We’re going to start about noon on Friday, and I’d be shocked if we weren’t done by 6.”

Another Republican observer, though, is more pessimistic, dredging up memories of the 1996 GOP convention, when the endorsement battle between Rudy Boschwitz and Bert McKasy also went to a dozen ballots and until 2 a.m. – and ended with no endorsement.

“I think it’s going to be a logjam,” the observer says. “I think if early positions are solidified or ossified, it’s going to take a sledgehammer to break that open if it’s a close fight.”

And Seifert himself will say only that he expects the endorsement to go more than one ballot.

“I left my crystal ball back in Marshall, but I know it’s going to be competitive, and it depends on a lot of factors,” he says.

The question of who is going to win endorsement – and why – is much harder to answer.

And the answer might have been different a few weeks ago, before Seifert’s campaign released the first of two letters from people outside the campaign, expressing outrage over Emmer’s two DWI citations (one of which occurred in 1981, the other in 1991), connecting them with legislation he authored last year that would have given post-conviction breaks to those convicted of drunken driving.

The information about Emmer’s DWI convictions was not new. Emmer himself has spoken publicly about them, and the consensus seems to be that most people were aware of them before the Seifert campaign brought them up again.

Emmer’s campaign dismissed the letters as an attempt at a “personal smear” and a “cynical personal attack.”

But Seifert himself says he believes that many delegates didn’t know anything about the DWI convictions before his campaign released the first letter, from a Chisago County Republican delegate.

“Contrary to what people have said – that every delegate knew about this – very, very few did,” Seifert says. “It’s not a disqualifier or anything. I think people would acknowledge that it’s more about the law change [that Emmer attempted].”

A party observer thinks the Seifert campaign’s airing of Emmer’s dirty laundry last week had the effect of more firmly entrenching supporters on both sides. “I think [Seifert’s campaign] thought they had to do something to make a change because they believed they were behind in the delegate count,” the observer says. “I’m not sure if that was the right tactic. I’ve heard that there were people who were on the fence who went to Tom because they want a positive campaign, and this was an event that pushed them toward Tom over Marty.

“I think it will come back and bite [Seifert’s campaign], to be honest.”

As for criticism of the tactic as dirty politics, another Republican insider has a supremely cynical view of why Seifert would try to make the DWIs a campaign issue a week before the state convention.

“There’s only one reason why people go negative in politics: It works,” the insider says. “And will it backfire on Seifert’s campaign? Only if they stop.

“Once you go negative, you’ve got to keep slugging and prove you’re willing to fight for this as hard as it takes, because you need to do that to beat the Democrats.”