CD3: New poll points to tie; Paulsen says he’s to the right of Ramstad

In today’s roundup of news in the 3rd Congressional District race: A new poll says it’s a tie, there’ll be one more debate (behind closed doors at UnitedHealth Group headquarters), KSTP-TV calls a Paulsen mailer “very misleading,” The Washington Post owns up to publishing someone else’s photo in place of Erik Paulsen’s, and the Star Tribune editorial board fails to endorse.

Survey USA calls race a ‘jump ball’

In a poll of 642 likely voters that Survey USA conducted for KSTP-TV on Oct. 26–27, Republican state Rep. Erik Paulsen holds a 1-point lead, 45-44 percent, over Democrat Ashwin Madia. That means Madia is down 2 points and Paulsen up 2 since Survey USA last polled 3rd District voters Oct. 6–7 — which the pollsters say “may or may not be statistically significant,” given the margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percent.

The pollsters write, “Independence Party Candidate May Influence Who Wins Slugfest” in their headline, but they didn’t name Independence Party candidate David Dillon in their poll question this time. When Survey USA did include Dillon in its Oct. 6-7 poll it found he garnered 8 percent. In its first 3rd District poll, conducted Aug. 26-28, “other” wasn’t given as an option, yet it drew 10 percent support. This time, 9 percent said they support “some other candidate.”

Such inconsistencies in poll questions make the results hard to compare, and raise questions about each poll’s result. How was the segment of the electorate that Survey USA now deems most critical influenced by the wording of the pollster’s questions — by first naming only the major party candidates, then all three, then offering an unnamed “some other candidate”? As measured this time, support of “some other candidate” comes more from Democrats and liberals than Republicans and conservatives, but it may erode in the campaigns’ closing days, the pollsters say.

Another potential source of error in the results is Survey USA’s apparent reliance on a sample that includes only people already registered voter to vote. Same-day registrants, or even those who signed up just before the deadline, weren’t included. I’ve asked Survey USA to respond to this and the question about poll questions, and I’ll update when I hear back.

One movement in the poll numbers that seems statistically significant is Madia’s unfavorable rating among Paulsen supporters — it has dropped from 92 percent in Survey USA’s first poll in late August, to 90 percent three weeks ago, to 83 percent this week. But electorally significant? Not so much, if it means only that a few more people think fondly of Madia as they cast votes for Paulsen.

Last debate was only the last public debate

In the last week, the three candidates held what were billed as their last debates — on stage at Edina High School on Oct. 22, and on the air at Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) yesterday. More on those below, but MPR is reporting that the candidates have added one more debate tomorrow at the Minnetonka headquarters of UnitedHealth Group. It’s open to employees only but MPR’s Curtis Gilbert has promised to post audio online. How many closed congressional candidate debates at corporate HQs have their been? I’ve heard the 6th District candidates recently tangled at Ecolab, Inc. in St. Paul, for one. Madia spokesperson Dan Pollock tells me this is the first such event in the 3rd District. They expect about 100 United Health staffers to attend, and the Madia campaign agreed to it because they agree to all debates, he said.

‘Midday’ radio debate aired a bit early for the ‘end of the day’

Especially savvy politicos who play drinking games during debate broadcasts might have been sloshed by noon yesterday. That’s when the 3rd District candidate debate came to a close on MPR’s “Midday,” with Madia and Dillon uttering the phrase “at the end of the day” probably a dozen times between them. Dillon put ”a pox on both their houses” for negative and inaccurate ads Democrats and Republicans are lobbing, and took the bait when, in reference to interest-group contributions to the major party candidates, host Gary Eichten asked, “Have they been bought?” Dillon: “Absolutely.” You can hear the whole hour-long debate archived at MPR.

KSTP-TV deems Paulsen mailer ‘very misleading’

Mailers are hot in the campaigns’ final days, and KSTP-TV’s Tom Hauser found a Paulsen printed piece “very misleading“:

Take these ads which accuse [Madia] of wanting to raise everybody’s taxes …. That $2,600 dollar average tax increase … [is] an average that includes many people who make over $250,000 per year. Or even millions per year. It does not point out that many people who make far less than that would see no tax increase at all.

What we have here is a failure to endorse

Was the Star Tribune editorial board out of its depth as it endeavored to endorse a candidate in the 3rd District? None of the candidates “inspired the critical mass of confidence required for our endorsement,” the Oct. 27 editorial read. Hmmm, “critical mass.” Did crowds of bicyclists interfere with the editorial board’s ability to perform one of its most basic functions, or is “critical mass” a code word for the all-important views of one very important person, the paper’s absentee publisher?

Jim Boyd, former deputy editor of the Strib’s editorial page, tells MnIndy by e-mail that during his 25 years there, it is “very unusual for the Strib to not make an endorsement in a race.” He explains:

When I was there, we almost always made an endorsement, even if somewhat split, because we knew voters had to make a choice. When I was there, it really was not an editorial board in a democratic sense. It was an editorial staff. In those days, everyone had a vote, but the editorial page editor had a vote equal to all of those plus one, and of course, the publisher could overrule everything, but rarely did, partly because no one was ever required to write an editorial with which they did not agree, so who would write an editorial that only the publisher backed? This publisher has very big feet, and I would guess that he has been very involved in these decisions.

At least Monday’s editorial was clear about what quality Mr. Critical Mass was seeking. Dillon’s grasp of the issues is “deep” but he’s naive. Madia’s “knowledge of key issues is wide, but not deep enough.” Paulsen’s answers “lacked depth.”

Paulsen’s pronouncement to Human Events: ‘I’m more conservative than Ramstad’

The editor of the right-wing publication Human Events quotes Paulsen making a definitive statement about his position on the political spectrum relative to retiring incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad:

“I’m more conservative than Jim,” says state House GOP Leader Paulsen without hesitation, citing his pro-life position as one example of his differences with the retiring congressman (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 69%) he is trying to succeed.

Editor John Gizzi continues:

After six years as governor, Pawlenty is fond of telling interviewers that he is decidedly more conservative than such centrist Republican predecessors as Al Quie, Arne Carlson, Harold LeVander, and Harold Stassen. As Pawlenty’s designated hitter in the state house, Paulsen is cut from the same cloth.

Paulsen then tosses in a possible non sequitur, depending on your view of math majors and middle-management:

“And I’m also rooted in the real world,” says Paulsen with a laugh, noting that he has a degree in mathematics and has long had a management job with Target.

When last we visited the (Web) pages of Gizzi’s revered media outlet, he erroneously placed U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s home district in Florida. That, however, was in the pre-”Hardball” era. Gizzi won’t make the same mistake again — and may not have occasion to, depending on the outcome next Tuesday.

WaPo used wrong photo for Paulsen

When it comes to making mistakes about contenders in Minnesota’s congressional races, The Washington Post seems to have picked up where Human Events left off. As mentioned here last week, the Post profiled the 3rd District race inside its main section. But what those inside the Beltway saw — that we Web readers in the hinterlands didn’t — is a photo that was supposed to show Paulsen but, in fact, depicted U.S. Rep. Jay Love (R-Ala.). (See the error illustrated at the top of this post.) The WaPo ombudsman’s column entry on the correction was almost long enough to constitute another contribution to the growing library of major national media attention focused on the 3rd District:

A story about a close election in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, in which state Rep. Erik Paulsen (R) is a candidate, included a photo meant to be of Paulsen. It actually showed Alabama state Rep. Jay Love (R). The Post used a Getty Images photo with an incorrect caption. The only way to have caught the error would have been to check the picture against a photo of Paulsen in a legislative directory; such a mistake is so rare that no one thought to do so. That was bad enough, but the photo of the Democratic candidate, Ashwin Madia, was about 10 times bigger than the picture of the Republican. Since the story focused on Madia as an unknown in a heavily Republican district, it made sense that he have a somewhat bigger picture. But it looked lopsided. The correction included a photo of Paulsen — so small it’s called a thumbnail. Such disparity feeds criticism that The Post is biased toward Democrats.

Considering the random way the Post says the error was made, Alabama’s J-Lo does bear a striking resemblance — on paper — to Minnsota’s E-Pau. He’s a right-wing Republican state legislator spending millions in a close race to fill the seat of a retiring Republican member of Congress. But the
striking resemblance doesn’t extend to physical appearance: J-Lo looks more like the T-Paw than E-Pau.