The gloves are still on in the race among Republicans seeking to run against Gov. Mark Dayton in November, with the four primary candidates observing a shaky truce — at least for now — on harsh attacks against each other in favor of a mutual barrage against the incumbent.
With fewer than seven weeks until the Aug. 12 primary, none of the four has emerged as a clear favorite. Even so, their jabs at each other lack the sting seen in some intramural fights in years past.
Scott Honour, an investment banker with no political experience on his résumé, likes to note that his opponents are all veteran politicians. Marty Seifert, a former House minority leader and gubernatorial candidate in 2010, is the only rural candidate. He likes to rib Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson as a "suburban lawyer." Former House Speaker Kurt Zellers frequently enumerates the previous elective defeats suffered by Seifert and Johnson.
That's a far cry from recent Republican primary contests in states like Mississippi and Virginia, where the fighting went ugly and deep, exposing rifts between the GOP's establishment and Tea Party wings. Those rivalries exist in Minnesota Republican circles too, and it's got operatives wondering whether the contest to be the GOP's standard-bearer against Dayton may yet turn negative.
"It seems very tame, so far," said Ben Golnik, a Republican consultant who ran Seifert's failed 2010 campaign and who is neutral this year. "No sign the candidates are going to engage each other."
Four years ago, Golnik was in the thick of a sometimes-nasty endorsement brawl between Seifert and Tom Emmer, then a state representative. In that race, Seifert's campaign publicly raised the issue of Emmer's DWI arrests in 1981 and 1991.
GOP races around the country this year have been similarly contentious. In Mississippi last week, Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran narrowly won a brutal primary over Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel — a race that saw several McDaniel supporters arrested on charges of allegedly filming Cochran's wife in her nursing home bed.
Here, the intraparty race has stayed mostly respectful, steering clear of personal attacks. Some longtime activists say the reason may be rooted in that Seifert-Emmer fight. Emmer survived to get his party's endorsement and nomination, but advanced to the general election badly dinged. He lost narrowly to Dayton in what otherwise was a year of electoral triumphs for Republicans. Emmer is now the leading candidate to replace U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in the Sixth Congressional District.
