“Honestly there is a job that needs to be done that’s not getting done now,” Powers tells the Minnesota Independent. “I’m in a position where construction is pretty slow, I like politics and I honestly think I can get the job done.”

The Democrat believes that Kline has not served the residents of his suburban district well by unrealistically insisting that the country’s beleaguered health-care system be rebuilt from scratch. “You have to work with what you have,” he says. “I think that’s what most people are frustrated about.”

Powers also cites energy costs — and the need for more renewable sources of energy — as a primary issue motivating him to run. “It’s actually a national security issue,” he says. “We have to solve our energy problem.”

Few political observers expect Kline to be in much danger of losing re-election. Neither the Cook Political Report nor the Rothenberg Political Report include the second district race on their lists of competitive House races. In each of the last three election cycles, Kline has defeated his opponents by at least 14 percentage points. Last year he knocked of DFL challenger Steve Sarvi by a 57-43 percent margin.

But Powers argues that Kline is more politically vulnerable than at any other time since first being elected in 2002. He notes that a majority of the state legislative seats in the district are now controlled by Democrats.

Powers flirted with a run against Kline in 2008. But he dropped out of the contest early on after realizing that he wouldn’t be able to raise enough money to be competitive. This election cycle he hopes to prove himself a credible challenger by building up a significant campaign war chest in the coming months.

“The most important thing is just flat out raising the money,” he says. “Nobody’s going to take me seriously, or any other candidate seriously, if you can’t put some solid numbers behind the campaign.”

In Minnesota, Democratic Rep. Tim Walz of the 1st Congressional District is favored to win his race against Republican Brian Davis with CQ moving the race from Leans Democratic to Democrat Favored.

In the 2nd Congressional District, Iraq veteran and Democrat Steve Sarvi improved against Republican Rep. John Kline as CQ changed the race from Republican Favored to Leans Republican.

The flap over Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “anti-America” comments on Hardball less than two weeks ago appear to have influenced CQ’s ranking for the 6th Congressional District. The ranking jumped from Republican Favored to No Clear Favorite, putting Democratic candidate El Tinklenberg at an even shot to win the district.

Minnesota 1: Tim Walz , D
One year ago: Leans Democratic
Six months ago: Leans Democratic
Today: Democrat Favored

Minnesota 2: John Kline , R
One year ago: Safe Republican
Six months ago: Safe Republican
Today: Republican Favored

Minnesota 6: Michele Bachmann , R
One year ago: Republican Favored
Six months ago: Republican Favored
Today: No Clear Favorite

Yet a story in Monday’s Washington Post reveals that the recent economic downturn, particularly in the suburbs  and exurbs, could spell trouble for Republican incumbents like Kline.

For one thing, the story notes, the housing collapse has been most acute in the suburban fringe. That much is true here in Minnesota, where the outer-ring suburbs, particularly in the districts of Michele Bachmann and Kline, have a higher rate of foreclosures than Hennepin County, which has been decimated by the housing collapse. In Minneapolis, for example, more than 1,000 homes are on the city’s vacant-properties list. Yet because of subprime and Alt-A loans, higher gas prices and a community literally living on the edge of debt, the outer-ring suburbs are surpassing the Twin Cities in foreclosures per housing units.

Nationally, the foreclosure rate hovers at about 1 percent, that is, one in every 100 mortgages results in foreclosures. In Kline’s district, which includes Carver, Scott, Le Sueur, Dakota, Rice and Goodhue counties, all but Goodhue and Carver are experiencing above-average foreclosures. In fact, for Scott and Le Sueur, foreclosure rates are expected to spike to more than 2 percent this year, according to a report by Minnesota’s Housing Link. And Dakota County will see foreclosure rates rise to more than 1.5 percent.

To put it into perspective, Le Sueur and Carver each saw foreclosures spike by more than 140 percent last year. Hennepin County, which suffered from more than 5,000 foreclosures last year, saw its foreclosures rise by 83 percent. In other words, while 2nd District voters might be wealthier, they aren’t immune to the crash and are in fact living close to the edge with expensive Alt-A mortgages (no-doc loans) they can’t afford.

The outer-ring suburbs are also hardest hit by the spike in gas prices. A majority of the voters in the 2nd District are commuters, some of whom travel 50 miles and more into the city. The increase at the pump affects their pocketbooks more than than any other voter in Minnesota. As the Washington Post notes, despite their predominantly conservative bent, voters in these afflicted regions might be so fed up with years of a declining economy and stagnant wages they vote out the incumbent.

As an added obstacle for Kline, the three-term Republican hasn’t been a defender of the strapped homeowner, despite the abundance of foreclosures in his district. In July, along with Bachmann, Kline voted against the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act, which was created to, among other things, help 400,000 homeowners in crisis and enhance mortgage disclosure requirements. He also voted against the Neighborhood Stabalization Act, which would supply funds to states like Minnesota to purchase and rehab foreclosed and abandoned homes adding to blight, crime and plummeting home values across the country.

MiddleClass.org, a nonpartisan organization tracking and rating congressional votes and their support for the middle class, has given Kline an “F” since his first term in office in 2003. He currently has a 41 percent, according to the web site, or a low “F” in his support of the middle class.

At the end of yesterday’s Michele Obama rally in St. Paul, I ran into 2nd Congressional District challenger Steve Sarvi. When I asked the Democrat how that afternoon’s debate with Rep. John Kline had gone, his response was surprisingly noncommittal. He practically shrugged his shoulders. Having just watched the debate via The Uptake, I can understand why the candidate couldn’t muster any self-serving spin. Let’s put it kindly in cliched sports terms: The challenger did not deliver a game-changing performance.

Sarvi is seeking to oust three-term Rep. John Kline in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District. The incumbent has won each of his last two re-election contests by a whopping 16-percent margin and the district rates a +3 for the Republicans in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. So at first glance it should be a cakewalk for Kline.

But there are numerous signs that he could be vulnerable. Two years ago, Amy Klobuchar won the 2nd by a comfortable 10-point margin in the U.S. Senate race. And DFL’ers now control a majority (17 to 16) of state legislative seats in the district, having picked up 11 posts in just the last two election cycles. When you consider that Kline’s last two opponents (Coleen Rowley and Teresa Daly) were widely derided for running lackluster campaigns, that Kline has built the most conservative voting record in the Minnesota delegation, and that the electoral climate has left the letters GOP colored scarlet, it would seem that Sarvi might have a chance.

There are few signs, however, that his campaign has generated much enthusiasm. As of August, he’d raised just $330,000. Elwyn Tinklenberg, a similarly situated Democratic challenger, by contrast, has brought in just over $1 million. The Sarvi campaign’s fundraising struggles have even drawn ridicule from beltway pundit Stuart Rothenberg.

So yesterday’s debate at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska — the first of four encounters between Kline and Sarvi — was an ideal opportunity for the challenger to prove himself a formidable opponent. Opportunity missed.

Kline is a cranky, by-the-book conservative who treats his constituents with barely concealed disdain. But he’s also got a gruff, plain-spoken charisma that can seem enticing to voters fed up with silver-tongued Washington pols. “Look, folks, we’re in troubled times,” he said at the beginning of the debate yesterday. “We are facing historic challenges. We’re a nation at war. We’re in the midst of an energy crisis. And we have American and world financial markets in turmoil.”

Judging by all the ridicule he heaped on Washington and its culture of cronyism, you’d never guess that Kline was the incumbent. His personal bete noire is earmark spending. The Republican never tires of pointing out that he’s refused to request any earmarks for his district, constituents be damned. Kline even took a thinly veiled potshot at James Oberstar, the veteran Iron Range Democrat who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and is famous for bringing home federal dollars. Kline claimed — preposterously — that Oberstar’s district gets more money for bike trails than the 2nd receives for roads and bridges owing to pork-barrel politics. “It’s not right that because of who you know and how long you’ve been there you get more money,” he said. “That’s a broken system.”

Kline also trotted out the familiar bogeyman of government-run health care. “Same people who brought you Katrina running your health care,” Kline sneered. “I don’t think that’s a direction we want to go.” This is cynicism of the most untoward variety, invoking the horror show of ineptitude displayed by FEMA during Hurricane Katrina in order to avoid fixing the country’s scandalous health-care system.

But these sentiments sound rational and pithy when they go unchallenged. And Sarvi largely failed to articulate a thoughtful critique of Kline’s six-year tenure or an alternative vision to carry the district forward. He lobbed criticisms at the incumbent for his voting record on veterans’ issues, children’s health care and Social Security, but often struggled to clearly delineate those failings.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Kline’s purportedly dismissive attitude toward it, came up three different times — and I still can’t figure out exactly what point Sarvi was attempting to make. “We have to make sure that if we send them overseas that they’re taken care of when they come home, especially with regards to PTSD,” Sarvi said of the country’s soldiers. “I was concerned about your comments, John, when you were in … You’re in a unique position on the personnel committee, on the Armed Services Subcommittee … We need your leadership there and I think you’ve let us down.”

It wasn’t a Palin-esque performance by any stretch. Sarvi summoned some decent lines.

On Social Security: “If my opponent had had his way, our Social Security money would be invested in the market. I don’t think that would have been a good choice for us and for our future.”

On tax policies: “We have to make sure we lift all boats, not just the yachts.”

On nuclear power: “Everybody wants nuclear, but do you want it in your backyard?”

And on education: “No Child Left Behind, folks, needs to be left behind. We’ve got to stop teaching kids to take tests. We need critical thinkers.”

But there were too few such moments to think that the debate performance will inspire many voters to change their allegiance in the 2nd District race. Sarvi will get three more opportunities to make his case.

Here’s The UpTake’s video of the debate. If you dare.

Quinnipiac also took a look at the U.S. Senate race. Norm Coleman garnered support from 49 percent of respondents, while 42 percent backed Al Franken. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley, despite registering double-digit support in a pair of recent polls, wasn’t included in the Quinnipiac poll.

In U.S. House races, Rep. Tim Walz holds a commanding 50-32 lead over Republican Brian Davis, according to the challenger’s own polling figures. Meanwhile beltway pundit Stu Rothenberg has released his latest assessment of competitive House races. He continues to view Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, where Democrat Ashwin Madia and Republican Erik Paulsen are battling to replace retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad, as a straight toss-up. Incumbent Reps. Walz and Michele Bachmann are deemed favored to retain their posts. Conspicuously missing from the rankings is Minnesota’s Second Congressional District, where Democrat Steve Sarvi is trying to unseat three-term Rep. John Kline.

Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad joined Minnesota’s five Democratic legislators in voting for the measure. Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline (pictured), both of whom have made expanded oil drilling a central part of their re-election campaigns, voted against the measure.

Republicans have argued that the Democratic-backed legislation doesn’t go far enough, insisting that drilling be allowed as close as three miles from shore. GOP leaders also want coastal states to receive a share of revenues from expanded offshore drilling and an expansion of nuclear power. Bachmann referred to the legislation as a “hoax” and a “charade” yesterday on the House floor.

It is uncertain if the Senate will take up similar legislation. The White House has threatened to veto the measure.

Steve Sarvi, who is challenging Kline in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District, released a statement this morning criticizing the incumbent’s vote. “In case there was ever any question, John Kline proved today that it’s Big Oil’s way or the highway, never mind America’s need for gas price relief or an energy plan for the future,” Sarvi said in the statement. “The bill Mr. Kline voted against will bring down gas prices and invest in a clean, renewable energy future.”

“It has become very clear in this election cycle that many congressional seats formerly considered ‘Republican’ seats are now in play,” writes pollster Donna Victoria in a memo. “Very little is safe for the GOP at present.”

Continued: Click “Read more”
The survey of 400 likely voters in the 2nd Congressional District, commissioned by the Sarvi campaign, was conducted by Goodwin Simon Victoria Research. It was taken from May 19 to 22 and has a margin of error of +/-4.9 percentage points.

The poll indicates that Kline could be hurt by his close association with the Bush administration. Roughly three-quarters of those polled held a negative view of the president, while 69 percent indicated the country is on the wrong track. “Kline’s right-wing record is an extremely target-rich environment for effective comparisons,” Victoria writes in the polling memo.

Kline’s seat is generally viewed as safe by national political pundits. Neither the Cook Political Report nor the Rothenberg Political Report lists the race as among the competitive contests they’re tracking. Kline has retained his office by 16 points in each of the last two election cycles.

But Sarvi’s campaign is attempting to make the case that recent political trends in the district give him a legitimate shot at unseating the three-term incumbent. DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar won the 2nd by a 10-point margin in 2006 and Democrats have picked up 11 state legislative seats in the last two election cycles.

Sarvi’s campaign argues that once voters become familiar with the challenger, an Iraq War vet and former mayor of Watertown, they will gravitate to his side. For instance, according to the poll, once voters are read a single positive statement about Sarvi, they back his candidacy 49 percent to 37 percent over Kline. “The clear thing here is that as soon as we tell people about Steve he beats Kline and beats him pretty easily,” says Bridget Cusick, communications director for the Sarvi campaign.

Steve Sarvi first met Rep. John Kline in 2004, at Camp Bondsteel in southern Kosovo. The staff seargent was serving with the Minnesota National Guard, patrolling the border with Macedonia for smugglers. The then-freshman congressman was on a fact-finding mission and stopped by to visit with troops and gauge morale.

What Kline heard from the soldiers were complaints about their inability to utilize educational benefits because they kept getting deployed overseas by the country’s over-extended military. Kline’s response, as Sarvi tells it, was a variation on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous military maxim: you go to war with the army you have.

“While he was sympathetic to the soldiers saying we can’t even go to school using the benefits that we have,” Sarvi recalls, “it was, ‘Well that’s just the situation we find ourselves in.’”

Four years later Sarvi is seeking to oust the three-term incumbent in the Second Congressional District. His military background, including a 2005 tour of duty in Iraq,  has Democrats hoping that he’ll prove to be this election season’s version of Tim Walz, the former high school teacher and 24-year-veteran of the National Guard who rose from political obscurity in 2006 to knock off seven-term incumbent Gil Gutknecht.

But at first glance it would appear that Sarvi is facing an improbable political task in the Second Congressional District. After all, Kline — a retired Marine Colonel and Vietnam vet — has won re-election by a whopping 16 points in each of the last two campaign cycles. In a year when Minnesota will feature a Senate race that will almost certainly be among the most expensive in the country, along with a high profile contest to fill the seat being vacated by Rep. Jim Ramstad, it could be reasonably argued that time and money would be better deployed elsewhere. 

But recent trends in the district suggest that the seat might be more vulnerable than it appears. In 2006, Amy Klobuchar won the Second by a comfortable 10-point margin in the U.S. Senate race. And following the victory of Kevin Dahle in a January special election, DFL’ers now control a majority (17 to 16) of state legislative seats in the district. They’ve picked up 11 posts in just the last two election cycles. The Cook Partisan Voting Index rates the Second +3 for the GOP. By comparison the Sixth Congressional District, where Democrats have mounted vigorous campaigns in each of the last two election cycles, is assessed as +5 for Republicans.

Sarvi argues that Kline’s bedrock conservative ideology is out of synch with the district. A National Journal analysis of voting records earlier this year determined that he was the 20th most conservative member of the House of Representatives, the highest such ranking for a member of Minnesota’s Congressional delegation. “He’s really gone to Washington to support the agenda of the Bush administration,” Sarvi says. “His voting record supports that.”

(Kline’s staff didn’t return three calls seeking comment for this article.)

It’s also widely believed that DFL’ers have failed to mount credible, well-run campaigns against Kline in the last four years. Teresa Daly was a freshman Burnsville City Council member with paltry name recognition who attacked Kline on dubious issues such as his supposed weakness on combating crystal meth. In 2006 Democrats believed they had the ideal candidate in former FBI agent and Time Person of the Year Coleen Rowley. But she flummoxed political observers by failing to raise sufficient cash to seriously threaten the incumbent. “Rowley deliberately ran a sort of unusual campaign–and not the sort of campaign that usually wins elections,” says Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College, which is in the district.

Sarvi looks like a dream candidate on paper. His 19 years of military experience should blunt Kline’s ability to dismiss the foreign policy chops of his opponent. He also boasts considerable municipal managerial experience, serving as city administrator for Victoria and Watertown,  along with three terms as mayor of the latter town.

But right now the 43-year-old father of three is barely on the national radar screen. Neither the Cook Political Report or the Rothenberg Political Report even list the race in their periodic breakdowns of competitive House contests across the country, while Congressional Quarterly deems the seat “safe Republican.” By contrast, fellow Iraq war vet Ashwin Madia immediately drew national attention after winning the DFL endorsement in the Third Congressional District, as evidenced by his inclusion on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list and the visit earlier this month by DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen. However, Van Hollen did offer during a press conference in St. Paul that the Second Congressional District is one of 50 races nationwide that the DCCC is keeping an eye on to see if it might merit investment from the national group. In 2006, the campaign committee raised $22.6 million for 56 candidates.

Continued: Click “Read More”What does Sarvi have to do to gain credibility? While polling figures and organizational strength will be factors, more than anything the challenger must prove his mettle at fundraising. Sarvi took in a paltry $115,000 (including $10,000 of his own money) in the first quarter of 2008 and had less than $40,000 cash on hand at the end of March. Meanwhile Kline was sitting on a war chest of roughly $500,000. Most politicos figure it will take at least $1 million to make the incumbent sweat.

“It’s all about money,” says Schier. “If by mid-summer we’re not seeing a significant increase in his fundraising totals, it’s hard to see how that will be a competitive race in the fall.”

Earlier this month Sarvi quit his day job to work full time on the campaign. Much of his energy in the coming weeks will be devoted to raising money. “Are we ever going to have as much money as he does?” Sarvi asks. “I don’t know. We’ve got several scenarios to run a credible race on different amounts of money.”

On a recent Sunday afternoon the challenger met with roughly 20 would-be constituents at a house party in Farmington. Sarvi told the gathering about his background in municipal government and the military. He talked of helping organize a mayoral election in a small town in Kosovo. When Sarvi’s tour of duty was coming to an end, he recalled, the newly elected mayor offered him a free house if he would stick around. Although that offer didn’t sway him, the elected official came back with another offer a week later. “We’ll give you a cow too,” she told Sarvi.

When the fledgling politician opened the discussion to questions, a broad range of topics were covered. In response to question about the death penalty, Sarvi was unequivocal. “Our country puts people down like dogs and that’s wrong,” he said. “I don’t think as a nation that should be one of our values.” When asked about skyrocketing college tuition costs, he deftly related an anecdote about his niece recently graduating from the University of Minnesota saddled with $61,000 in debt.

But on other topics Sarvi seemed less assured. When queried about whether No Child Left Behind should be scrapped, he demurred. “I’ve heard both sides,” Sarvi said. More perplexing was his answer to a question about whether intelligent design–which few outside the religious right consider a legitimate scientific theory–should be taught in schools. “I kind of believe in equal time,” he offered, arguing that the decision should be left up to local school boards.

If Sarvi is ultimately going to be successful he’ll need to win over a lot of voters like Jim Edwards, who hosted the fundraising event. Edwards describes himself as a Republican who has voted for Kline in the past, but opted for Klobuchar in the 2006 Senate contest. He cites the economy as his chief concern, with the Iraq war and education trailing close behind. “I see the war just being a huge drain to the economy,” says Edwards, a project manager at Toro, the lawnmower manufacturing company based in Bloomington. “I think we’re doing everything wrong right now.”

Edwards is fed up with the incumbent’s lockstep Republican voting record. “There’s a lack of substance there,” he says of Kline. “I think he’s just a rubber stamp.”

The incumbent has proven a formidable opponent in the Second. Two years ago Kline bested Coleen Rowley by a robust 56-40 margin, despite the best climate for Democratic candidates in three decades. In 2004 he defeated Burnsville City Council member Teresa Daly by an almost identical margin.

There’s been some early grumbling about Sarvi’s lackluster fundraising. In the first quarter of 2008 the challenger raised $115,000, leaving him with just $38,672 in the bank. Kline, by contrast, had just over a half-million dollars cash on hand. Sarvi is leaving his job as city administrator of Victoria this week to campaign full-time, which should bolster his fundraising prospects.

The seven-county district is generally seen as more friendly to Democratic candidates than the Sixth District, represented by Michele Bachmann. In 2006 Amy Klobuchar outpolled Mark Kennedy by a 53-43 margin in the Second, while beating her opponent by just four percentage points in the Sixth. Two years earlier President Bush secured a nine-point victory in the Second, but cruised to a 15-point landslide in the Sixth. What’s more, with the special election victory of Kevin Dahle in January, DFLers now control a majority of state legislative seats in the Second.