Kelly, Kriesel take big risk in amendment battle

It was bound to happen. Last week, for the first time, Republican Rep. Tim Kelly found himself confronted by a constituent angry about his vote against the GOP-backed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Minnesota.

The woman pulled Kelly aside at a town hall meeting to ask him how he, as a Republican, could cast a no vote on a Republican initiative. “You are certainly going to have people who feel really strongly about it,” Kelly offered later. “But I told her, you know, ‘I’m married. We have four children. And I don’t [want] to have anyone come in and tell me if that’s right or wrong.’”

But Kelly’s support has gone beyond the red vote he cast on the issue last session. Along with GOP Rep. John Kriesel, Kelly was one of two Republican legislators to give heartfelt speeches against the bill when it reached the floor just two days before the conclusion of the regular session in May. Now that the amendment is on its way to the ballot, the two have taken an even more active role. They both sit on the steering committee of Minnesotans United for All Families, the umbrella group that is spearheading the statewide campaign against the amendment.

“I believe we as Republicans espouse less government, less government, less government,” Kelly said. “We really use that almost to the point where it becomes a cliché. Then, when we start talking about the marriage amendment, we seem to be hypocritical. When it comes to personal choices and personal decisions, we want more government.”

Kriesel and Kelly’s work with the anti-marriage-amendment effort — which includes several DFL-aligned groups — doesn’t sit well with many activists in the GOP base, and some Republicans say their ardent support will hurt them in winning re-endorsement and re-election in 2012.

Kelly works behind the scenes

Kriesel and Kelly’s opposition was splashed across editorial pages around the state recently. In a joint op-ed, the Republican legislators criticized the amendment as bad for businesses trying to attract talented workers to the state and bad for Republican electoral chances in 2012, since the anti-amendment backlash figures to bring out many younger voters.

Kelly says he has been careful about the role he plays with the group. He has denied requests to attend and speak at rallies. At a recent news conference to announce a slew of Republicans who are standing against the marriage amendment, Kriesel was in attendance, but Kelly was not.

“I don’t want this to be, oh here’s a Republican against all of the Republicans,” he said.

Kelly’s role has been more behind the scenes, he says. The key for him is messaging. “If it gets down to an argument over allowing gay marriage in Minnesota, that is the wrong argument — and it has failed across the country,” Kelly said. “It should be about interfering in personal choices; that is a message Minnesotans can get behind. They are tolerant, and they like their personal freedoms.”

But some Republicans in Kelly’s Red Wing district are wary of his support. “I think it’s not going to help him, I’ll put it that way,” said Charles Zupfer, deputy chairman of the Goodhue County Republican Party.
Zupfer said Kelly is a conservative, but a lot of his support in the past has come from “conservative Democrats.” Kelly also holds favor with wind-energy proponents in the district after years of introducing wind-friendly legislation. But even many of these groups are OK with the amendment going to the voters in 2012, Zupfer said. It will all depend on whether a credible endorsement challenger comes forward, he added.

In his caucus, Kelly is well-liked and respected. The two-term Republican is a financial adviser by profession and earned the vice chairman spot on the Education Finance committee in this year’s session. He was also elected by his fellow Republicans to sit on the Republican executive board, a group that takes the pulse of the caucus and serves as a conduit between members and leaders. Kelly asked House Speaker Kurt Zellers if he should step down from the board given his position on the amendment, Kelly said. Zellers said no.

“In Kelly’s case, I think the caucus would like to see him stay,” one veteran Republican observer noted, “but he is going to be more at the mercy of his district Republicans than Kriesel is.”

Kelly knows that some of his past supporters might not vote for him in 2012 because of his role in the amendment fight. But he says the public response has been overwhelmingly positive. “From my own district, I can tell you that the week after the vote I think I probably received 500 to 600 emails and I probably had only two or three that were negative,” Kelly said. “I took that as an affirmation that people have decided that they are OK with it and they are OK with my position on it.”

Kriesel vocal against amendment

Despite repeated requests for an interview, Kriesel couldn’t be reached to talk about the marriage amendment last week, but his stance in opposition to it has been high-profile since day one.
Kriesel first announced his disagreement with the House GOP caucus after a reporter asked him his position over Twitter during the session. Kriesel has since continued to trumpet his opposition to the ballot initiative over the social-networking site and has been quoted in numerous news stories about the amendment. As a popular freshman legislator and war veteran who lost both of his legs in Iraq, Kriesel’s repeated assertion that he fought in the war to maintain personal freedom for everyone has resonated with Democrats and Republicans alike.

But Kriesel’s vocal position doesn’t sit well with some in the GOP base and has made him a lightning rod for activists’ anger in his district and beyond. On a recent evening in September, Kriesel’s gay marriage support was the topic of conversation during a lengthy segment on “The Late Debate with Jack and Ben,” a conservative talk radio show.

The show’s hosts, Jack Tomczak and Benjamin Kruse, flagged a Facebook post from a “friend of the show” known as NASCAR Kelly. The post detailed a spat the woman had with Kriesel via Twitter, in which she told him it was OK to stand up for what you believe in but not to work with enemies of your own party. In particular, the listener pointed to the presence of AFL-CIO union officials and the DFL Party on the same steering committee as Kriesel. Kriesel responded that her stance was what was wrong with politics today.
“I’m all for Rep. Kriesel making his statements on the House floor and being opposed to it politically,” she said on the show. “But there’s a line, and you have to be really careful when you draw that line — especially when you’re an elected official — of who you’re going to associate with.”

She said she has donated to his campaign in the past but cannot do the same this year. Kelly noted that she lives outside of Kriesel’s district. But Republicans in his area are also irked by his work against the marriage amendment.

“I hate to say anything bad about him, but he is not as conservative as I thought he was going to be,” said Betsy Dippel, a Republican small business owner who lives in Cottage Grove. Her son, Tom Dippel, is chairman of the House District 57A BPOU. “I think he is a great guy, but I just want my taxes to be lower, and he doesn’t seem to be working on that. He is working on a lot of other things.”

But in the view of the Republican observer quoted earlier, Kriesel represents a special case among Republicans. He won in a blue-collar, DFL-leaning district last fall and has a moving personal story. “Where do you find another Republican candidate like that, not just in that district, but across the state of Minnesota?” that person said. “No other Republican, in my assessment, can win that seat.”