A talking point the Republican Party has used lately to illustrate itself as the party best for Minnesota is that the Democrats finance their campaigns, at every level, nearly exclusively with out of state contributions. In a candidate debate held in Winona last year, District 28 State Senate candidate Steve Drazkowski, R-Wabasha, essentially accused his opponent, incumbent Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, of being bought off by Barbara Streisand and the fringe “Hollywood left.”
Barbara Streisand has an interest in southeastern Minnesota? I could barely keep a straight face at the accusation of Drazkowski, who has since been elected to the House.
Neither could Murphy.
This election cycle the right-wing bomb throwers have gone after DFL US Senate candidate Al Franken for his large amount of campaign contributions from Los Angeles, New York and other places not within Minnesota.
Looking to the First District Congressional race though, large amounts of out of state contributions are going to not a DFLer, but to a Republican, Dr. Brian Davis. Davis, a Mayo Clinic physician who is one of four Republicans seeking to unseat first-term DFLer Tim Walz, declared himself the undisputed champion for the third quarter fundraising period.
Via his blog:
This past Monday, October 15th, was the third quarter fundraising filing deadline, and I am very pleased with the support we’ve received. During the third quarter - July 1 to September 30 – our campaign reported $81,228 in total receipts. Contributions from individuals totaled $55,035 - the most of any Republican candidate in the race. Better yet, we still have over $74,000 in the campaign’s coffers.
The $55,035 of individual donations looks quite impressive compared to Day’s $39,707, Demmer’s $16,855 and Meyer’s barely-on-the-radar $2,650. However, of the 80 individuals who gave donations itemized on the FEC form (over $200), just 15 were from Minnesota.
An impressive base of donors? Hardly. The 65 out of state donors, nearly exclusively a group of physicians, may help get the campaign off the ground but will be unable to be in the trenches with the candidate knocking on doors, dropping literature and most importantly, voting in the First District GOP Convention.
Maybe Davis has plans to take a page out of the playbook of gentleman’s club owner Richard Jacobson and have all of them register as voters in the First and list “Mayo Clinic” as as their residences, but in our brief dealings with Davis we find him to be more reasonable than to attempt that type of shenanigans.
Of the $55,035, just $12,352 came from First District Republicans. Of that $1,450 was contributed in-kind by John Morris who flew Davis around. Davis himself gave the campaign $26,193.25.
If Davis feels that claiming “victory” after a FEC filing quarter in which he himself donated more than two times the cold, hard cash other First District contributors did well, more power to him.
It is Halloween; what Davis should not only find not impressive, but downright scary is who by and large gave more money to Walz than to him: other Mayo physicians!
You mean the Mayo employees (with the exception of a few) not only snubbed their co-worker, but gave a ton of money to his opponent? Yup! Over 90 employees of Mayo (radiologists, anestheislogists, cardiologists, neurologists, the whole gambit) contributed to the Walz campaign in the third quarter.
Most notably: Dr. Glenn Forbes, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, gave $2,300 to Walz. More interestingly: just a year and a half ago he gave $500 to Gil Gutknecht. It’s not surprising that if Davis can’t get the support of people like Forbes he isn’t getting the support of former Gutknecht supporters outside of Mayo, such as former GOP state Rep. David Bishop. Bishop, who was House Ways and Means chairman under Speaker Steve Sviggum from 1999-2002, gave Walz $1000.
Don’t get me wrong: Walz’s re-election bid is by no means a slam dunk. However, with how vulnerable some in the GOP consider him to be, the lackluster fundraising, especially by the so-called “third quarter champion” Davis, this Halloween has to be frightening to those looking to take back the First for the GOP.
