Well, the end is in sight for my “keep the republican opponent busy” run for the state house. In fact, it’s so boring that you can pretty much predict the results- My party (democrats) have double digit polling leads in the governors and U.S. senate races here in Minnesota. In the races for our 8 congressional seats, the only one in play is on the other side of the state, with the incumbent expected to hold their seat in every other race. In the state house races, my party holds a narrow majority they could easily loose in this low turn out off year election. The polling shows democrats leading by 8% in a statewide generic house ballot, identical to their margin of victory in the last election. But the polls also show a huge spread between urban and rural voters party preferences, with democrats winning in the Minneapolis-St.Paul metro area by up to 40% margins while tieing in the outer ring suburbs and losing slightly in the rural areas. That suggests an electoral bloodbath out here in rural Minnesota, but with democrats picking up enough seats in the suburbs to maintain control of the state house. Wish I could help some of my fellow democratic candidates in those neighboring rural districts out, but I’m tied down here in my district by the make-work responsibilities of a campaign and campaign finance laws… Help another candidate, and I may get accused of illegally transferring campaign funds to them. So here I sit with a bit over $8k of donations and state campaign subsidy, $2k or so spent, and I need to spend over $1k more or I’ll have to pay some of the subsidy back to the state.

Now of course, some of my donors and party leaders are now asking why I’m not littering their mailboxes and airwaves with campaign spam. Well, I could spend every cent of that $10k on ads and such, and end up losing by 18% instead of 20%… This is such a republican district that even if my opponent got charged with a felony between now and the election, he’d still win, and probably by a double digit margin. None the less, I’ve spent all too many hours in the last week trying to turn a template the party “gave” me into a passable campaign flyer. After downloading (the cell modem bill has now gone into triple digits) a trial version of a pricey Adobe program, I’ve managed to insert my name and such into the template and print out a sample on USPS approved thickness card stock. Still couldn’t insert my picture (the only good ones I have are on a motorcycle), then the program froze up… Looks like I’ll have to finish the job with an old school paste up.  Was thinking of answering the call of campaign duty and spend today on the computer trying to fix it, then I looked at the weather forecast… 64 degrees!

Campaign work can wait for the deer ridden nights or a cold snowy day… I’m going ridin’!