Dan Powers, Jim Meffert

At party conventions this weekend, DFLers Jim Meffert and Dan Powers advanced to the general election to take on Reps. Erik Paulsen and John Kline, respectively. Meffert’s DFL opponent, Maureen Hackett, said she is backing the endorsed candidate and Powers’ opponent, Shelley Madore, will also abide by the endorsement.

Meffert, head of the Minnesota Optometric Association and past Parent Teacher Association president, won the DFL endorsement in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District and will take on Paulsen in November, barring any primary challengers. He told the convention after winning the endorsement, “I will fight for the 180,000 Minnesota children living in poverty. I will fight for the 480,000 Minnesotans without health insurance. And I will never stop fighting for our children. I will never stop fighting for our families. And I will never stop fighting for you.”

Maureen Hackett, his DFL opponent for the endorsement, sent a message to her campaign supporters saying, “While today didn’t turn out as I would’ve liked for our campaign, it was a great day for our party as we united behind Jim Meffert as the DFL candidate who’s going to beat Erik Paulsen this fall.”

The UpTake captured a number of scenes from the convention, including reactions from Meffert:

Dan Powers, a Burnsville construction contractor, was endorsed by 2nd Congressional District DFL activists over former legislator Shelley Madore. Madore conceded on the second ballot and, barring a late entry into the race for the primary, Powers will be taking on Kline in the fall.

“John Kline is vulnerable — he’s an obstacle to middle class prosperity and he refuses to listen to our community’s concerns. He’s voted against reforming our health care system and ensuring our parents and grandparents aren’t bankrupted by the high costs of Medicare Part D,” Powers said in a statement following the endorsement. “He’s voted against student lending reform. His town hall meetings are barely publicized and he turns people away if they don’t agree with him ideologically.”

Here’s Powers’ reaction to the endorsement:

Sarvi has generated good reviews so far from DFL activists who see him as a strong challenger to Kline, who has not faced stiff competition since defeating Bill Luther after the 2002 redistricting combined some of the most conservative areas south of the Twin Cities into one district.  But Sarvi nevertheless faces tough challenges, both from Kline and from the competition for dollars among Democrats running across Minnesota this year.

In a press release accompanying his announcement, Sarvi said, “I will not just win this election; I will do from day one what I have always done: serve my country and my community, bringing neighbors together to build an America and a Minnesota that is stronger, safer, and better able to prosper in the future.”

Plenty of ink and electrons have been spilled about the money being raised by DFLers like Al Franken, Tim Walz, Terri Bonoff and Ashwin Madia in their assorted federal races.  But Sarvi’s fund raising lags behind — in its year-end FEC report, Sarvi’s campaign indicated that he raised about $53,000 in 2007, well short of the totals being raised in other races and of the amount generally considered necessary to make a congressional race competitive.

I asked Sarvi’s communications director, Bridget Cusick, about the future of Sarvi’s fund-raising effort and how it related to their campaign plan.  She said the campaign would be engaging in plenty of grass-roots fund raising, including some coming up this week.

Money isn’t everything in political campaigns.  Sarvi has a national and local Democratic trend at his back, as well as a base of motivated volunteers who almost universally have a hard spot in their collective heart for John Kline.  But Kline is not known for playing nice on the campaign trail, and standing up to negative campaign tactics is a lot easier when you can afford the paid media and field operations necessary to do so.

On foreign policy, he says, “I have always been proud to serve, but in Iraq I was taken aback by the disillusionment many people there feel towards the U.S. Our actions at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib demonstrated a capacity to compromise our values in order to achieve short-term goals. We’ve lost moral authority. We must reclaim liberty and equal justice as hallmarks of how America demonstrates its values everywhere we are in the world.”  Democrats across the country have expressed excitement at his run, seeing him as a perfect foil for fellow veteran Kline’s strong rhetoric and campaign style.

We are pleased and grateful that Mr. Sarvi is joining us tonight, and we look forward to a great conversation.  Once he’s opened the comment thread, fire away!

The liveblog is over, but you can read the entire conversation by clicking here.

That’s exactly what Iraq veteran Steve Sarvi was doing when I caught up with him Monday night at the American Legion in Farmington.

Sarvi started his listening tour across the 2nd Congressional District this past weekend. The events, designed to introduce the candidate to potential supporters on a personal level, will keep Sarvi busy through the end of the week; he left the Farmington event right on time to head to another in Zumbrota.

Sarvi spent much of Monday’s event discussing his experiences in the military on the ground in Iraq, a theme sure to recur in a race against incumbent Republican John Kline, a retired Marine Lt. Colonel. Sarvi represents a continuation of the trend, beginning in 2006, of military veterans running for Congress as Democrats. In blogosphere circles, they became known as “Fighting Dems,” counting Minnesota first-termer Tim Walz among their members. Sarvi is not alone as a veteran running for the first time in Minnesota, with attorney Ashwin Madia’s recent entry into the 3rd District race.

Sarvi’s low-key manner seemed to strike a positive note with several of Monday’s attendees, who afterward called his approach “exactly what we need” as opposed to what they dislike in the incumbent. The small crowd smiled at Sarvi’s stories and chuckled at his jokes, and an astute listener could tell which pieces, lines and anecdotes will be showing up in a stump speech somewhere down the road.

With no other Democratic opponents on the horizon, Sarvi very well could be the 2nd District DFL’s standard-bearer in 2008.  However, despite his experience in city administration, he’s new to the congressional campaign game, and will need all the practice he can get telling his stories and espousing his values to the voters who will decide his political fate.