Not specific to Minneapolis, but an interesting take about a Senate race
that will affect Minneapolis (it was in the Style section, which
explains its breezy tone...)
Rod Grams's Downhill Campaign
_____From The Post_____
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 3, 2000; Page C01
MINNEAPOLIS –– Sen. Rod Grams is due to march in the University of
Minnesota
homecoming parade at 10 a.m. But at 9:15, his press secretary, Kurt
Zellers,
calls a reporter en route to the parade. "It started without us," he
warns.
Half an hour later, Zellers calls again to confirm the worst: "The
parade
is
over."
Talk about ready-made metaphors.
If you were constructing a nightmare scenario for an incumbent senator
seeking reelection, it would go something like this: First, reports
would
surface that the candidate, divorced during his term in office, has been
having a longtime romantic relationship with an aide. Then that same
aide
is
investigated by the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for an
alleged
dirty tricks campaign.
But why stop there? Add the senator's son getting arrested in possession
of
a stolen car and a shotgun. If you're feeling extra sadistic, give the
senator an opponent who is a multimillionaire willing to spend whatever
it
takes to paint the senator as a far-right-wing-nut in the state of
Hubert
Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone.
That, in a nutshell, is Rod Grams's lot this year. Two months ago, he
appeared to be cruising to reelection while the Democrats squabbled
among
themselves. The eventual Democratic nominee, Mark Dayton, was seen then
as
a
dilettante, a lightweight and a failed gubernatorial candidate. "Six
months
ago Minnesotans by a better than 2-to-1 margin approved of the way I was
doing my job in Washington," says the first-term Republican. "Even in
the
early polls this summer, they had me beating everybody, including Mark
Dayton."
But then came the scandals. And after the Sept. 12 primary came an
advertising barrage by Dayton, a department store heir and former state
auditor. Dayton, 53, will spend about $8.8 million, almost all of that
his
own money, much more than Grams's $3.1 million.
Republican senators from Delaware, Michigan, Montana, Missouri and
Washington are also in some jeopardy, while Democrat Chuck Robb is in
trouble in Virginia. But Grams is in the most peril. The latest poll by
the
Minneapolis Star Tribune shows him down 49 percent to 37 percent--this
in a
state where George W. Bush is leading.
What's a guy to do in such a situation? Grams asked his mother, Audrey,
to
cut a campaign ad. "Have you ever had someone spend a million dollars a
week
telling lies about someone you love?" she asks in the spot. She
dismisses
Dayton with the phrase "Uff-da!," a Norwegian equivalent of "Oy vey."
Dogged by Scandal
After the mishap at the homecoming parade, Grams's next stop is Anoka,
Minn., his home town (he grew up on a nearby farm), which is expecting
20,000 people for its Halloween parade. Before the parade starts, Grams
works the crowd, which is bundled and sitting on blankets to ward off
the
44-degree chill. This is obviously Grams territory. "Sure I'll vote for
him," says Keith McFerran, a 78-year-old driver. When runners in costume
race down the parade route dressed as Santas, vampires, cows and sumo
wrestlers, several, including a man in a clown outfit, shout their
support
to Grams.
Yet even in the bosom of his home town, Grams can't escape the scandals.
As
Grams works his way down the line of parade viewers, a man with a shaggy
beard and sunglasses, sitting in a Miller Lite lawn chair and smoking a
cigarette, greets the senator. "Hey Rod, my son was in jail with your
son,"
says the man, who is wearing a Dayton pin and identifies himself as
David
Nelson. Grams keeps a smile fixed on his face. "We don't need that," he
says, and hustles away.
His troubled 22-year-old son, Morgan, was arrested in New Mexico in
September and charged with possession of a firearm and a stolen vehicle,
contributing to the delinquency of a minor, resisting arrest and other
related charges. A few weeks earlier, a top adviser, Christine Gunhus,
had
computers and diskettes taken from her home by the authorities
investigating
e-mails sent out during the Democratic primary disparaging one of the
contenders. Gunhus has been identified in media reports as Grams's
girlfriend; the senator, who divorced in 1996, declines to discuss it.
Grams suspects that the exposure of his personal woes, which figure
prominently in Minnesota news, is the work of the author of all his
troubles: Dayton. "It comes from everywhere around him," Grams says.
"It's
an orchestrated event." Grams hopes this will backfire. "I think it's a
detrimental thing for them to do because there are so many people who
have
suffered the same kind of problems that my family has, and people feel
it's
unfair to attack you on that," he says.
"Absolutely not," says Sharon Ruhland, Dayton's spokeswoman. Though the
Dayton campaign talks about the dirty tricks involving Gunhus, they've
had
"nothing, nothing, nothing" to do with personal attacks on Grams, she
says.
The Man, the Image
Grams, though spending most of his time on the receiving end, isn't
above
personal politics. He has called Dayton a "drug lord" because of his
investments in pharmaceutical companies, and he pressured Dayton to
release
FBI files from when Dayton funded the Black Panthers and made Richard
Nixon's enemies list. He accuses Dayton of "trying to buy a U.S. Senate
seat." Mostly, though, Grams paints Dayton as a liberal in disguise.
"He's
trying to hoodwink Minnesotans," the senator says.
Of course, being a liberal in Minnesota isn't such a crime. Grams
acknowledges that the land of Mondale is "quite a socialist type of
state."
But Grams remains fiercely conservative, a favorite of the National
Rifle
Association and the Christian Coalition. "I'm considered in our
conference
to be the loudest voice for the taxpayers, and I take that with a lot of
pride," he says. He favors the complete privatization of Social
Security.
Grams's politics make him a polarizing figure here. After missing the
Minnesota homecoming parade, Grams lingers outside the Hubert Humphrey
Metrodome to work the crowd. The 52-year-old senator, who spent 23 years
as
a broadcaster and one term in the House before his 1994 election, meets
plenty of well-wishers, including a woman who says she's praying for him
and
others shouting "Good luck, Rod." But there's also the person who hisses
at
him, and one woman who politely shakes his hand and then says to a
friend
while walking away: "What should I say: 'I'm not voting for you?' "
It's not clear how much of Grams's trouble has been caused by Dayton and
by
his status as a conservative in a progressive state. To many people,
even
some supporters, the problem is Grams himself, for projecting the image
of
a
loser. Grams, though tall and reasonably handsome in his bluejeans and
green
jacket, looks the part of Charlie Brown, with bird droppings on his back
and
an untied shoelace.
To most everybody, Grams says the same thing: "I need your help." When a
scalper approaches Grams and some aides and asks, "You need tickets?"
Grams's field director replies: "We need votes." In an interview, Grams
candidly acknowledges that "we're a little bit farther behind than I
thought
we'd be." But he believes he's "moving in the right direction," and
indeed
the polls seem to be tightening.
But Grams can't shake a certain air of doom. After the parade in Anoka,
Grams meets Dayton and a third-party candidate for a radio debate in
Minneapolis. Dayton, dressed like a farmer in plaid shirt and faded
pants,
says nothing to Grams when he enters. Grams, jiggling his foot under the
table, attacks Dayton throughout the debate: for running for governor
with
an "anti-farm" running mate, for moving family money to South Dakota to
dodge taxes, for having "expensive polls and East Coast consultants,"
and
for having "no real definite plans, just 'maybes' and 'I'll work on it.'
"
Dayton, playing the front-runner, ignores most of the attacks. Dayton
apparently feels no more need to undermine Grams. Grams, after all, has
done
a good job of that himself. Uff-da.
