Thursday, March 30, 2006

DFL endorses SD 43 slate

At its convention on March 18, the SD 43 DFL endorsed its candidates for state office:

  • State Senate: Sen. Terri Bonoff (incumbent). Two Republicans will run for the endorsement on April 22 to challenge Bonoff: Plymouth Mayor Judy Johnson and James Seim.

  • State House District 43A: Sandy Hewitt. Hewitt is familiar to many in Plymouth from her service on the Plymouth City Council since 2000. She will face the Republican endorsee, likely the former executive assistant to Speaker Steve Sviggum, Sarah Anderson, for this open seat being vacated by state Attorney General candidate Rep. Jeff Johnson. The Plymouth Sun Sailor quoted Hewitt, "We need to clearly identify our priorities, then work for those priorities in a bipartisan, fiscally responsible way." Sounds like she will try the "uniting the middle" theme that seemed to work for Bonoff, and with which she is familiar as a member of the nonpartisan city council.

  • State House District 43B: John Benson. The long-time incumbent Rep. Ron Abrams will defend his seat for the Republicans.


The Democrat blog Minnesota Campaign Report had this to say about Benson:
He's an interesting candidate - in a district where the incumbent has never faced serious competition in his entire tenure in the house, Benson went out in 2004, pounded the pavement, knocked on doors, put his nose and those of his team to the grindstone, and got 48% of the vote. That happened without the assistance of an accurate voter file for Minnetonka - an impressive result given his inexperience and the cards being stacked against him. I asked what the strategy was for picking up those three percentage points he needs to win in 2006 - his response: "we're going to work harder and smarter and better than we did last time." Short, sweet, and I think he has a great chance to win.

The Bush reelection euphoria at the Minnesota GOP party on election night 2004 was tempered by Benson's surprising performance in the 43B race. It definitely got everyone's attention then, and has SD 43's attention now.

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