Health care: A blitz from both sides in Minnesota

In TV ads, e-mail blasts and nightly door-knocking campaigns, from the grass roots to legislative circles, the ground war over a health care overhaul is raging in Minnesota.

And the battle seems destined to grow hotter in the coming weeks as the bill just passed by the House and a different bill set for debate in the Senate merge into some kind of compromise -- or not.

Neither side in the debate will provide specific numbers for the money they're spending to educate and influence Minnesotans. Both sides have run TV ads in the state. Nationally, ad buys appear to have grown to many millions of dollars.

But the ground war for health care change often revolves around zeal as much as money.

The fight surfaces in commercials such as one aired during the Alabama-LSU football game Saturday afternoon. The first part of the ad, which was generic, ran across most of the country. It called the health care bill about to be voted on by the U.S. House ruinously expensive.

But the back end of the ad that Minnesotans saw had a specific message: Call Congressman Collin Peterson and tell him to oppose the bill.

"He had expressed some concerns about the bill, and we were just kind of reminding him how important it was that he vote against it," said Blair Latoff, communications manager of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, some of whose members paid for the commercial.

Peterson, a self-described Blue Dog Democrat, bucked his party and voted against the bill late Saturday. It passed anyway, but by Monday morning, Doug Loon, who runs the chamber's six-state Midwest region, had traveled 100 miles from the Twin Cities to a radio station in Willmar, Minn., to personally thank Peterson for his vote.

As Loon headed for Willmar, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) hung a 50-foot banner from the Lake Street-Marshall Avenue Bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul. The banner thanked U.S. Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison for their yes votes on the House bill.

"You can see where it has come," Take Action Minnesota canvasser Joe Johnston said Monday as he went door-to-door extolling the public option to residents of St. Paul's West 7th neighborhood. "But unless we get something passed and signed by the president, we've done nothing."

Feelings run deep and broad

Despite claims by each side that the other spends millions to distort the truth, impassioned populism continues to play a critical role. HCAN, a coalition of labor, faith-based and progressive groups backing a new government-run health insurance option, says it has 400,000 members in Minnesota. The Chamber of Commerce's Minnesota chapter says it represents 2,400 businesses that employ 500,000 people.

The Minnesota chapter of the AARP hosts health care "tele-town meetings," where tens of thousands of members dial in, listen and can be connected almost automatically to the telephones of their elected representatives. The AARP endorsed the House bill, and last week, the Minnesota chapter generated 416 calls to Rep. Tim Walz's office asking for his support, said communications director Amy McDonough.

Walz voted for the bill. On Sunday, HCAN members greeted him at the airport with thank-you signs.

And next week, the Minnesota chapter of the AARP will buy "thank you" ads in the Rochester Post-Bulletin and four other daily newspapers in Walz's congressional district.

The Minnesota AARP has a weekly blast e-mail that reaches 30,000 members and a weekly opt-in health care robocall going to 1,200 members, according to McDonough.

AARP has yet to take a stand on the Senate bill. However, on Tuesday, the AARP's national office announced plans for a national ad campaign to "promote and support" a health care overhaul that will include Minnesota.

But the battle will always rage on the streets. While boosters of the public option from HCAN member Take Action Minnesota go door-to-door every night in the Twin Cities, Deanna Boss, an opponent of the current bills, chartered buses to go to Washington last week for an opposition rally. She returned to Minnesota to organize meetings from home while caring for two toddlers.

"For sure, we'll be doing rallies at Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar's offices around the state," Boss said of the coming weeks. "And we're setting up meetings with people who were on the busses [to Washington], getting them to invite their neighbors."

Added Loon: "Yesterday, we contacted our grass-roots list of over 116,000 in Minnesota as a follow-up to Saturday's vote on health care. Since then, constituents from Minnesota have sent over 250 letters to the House. ... I suspect that list will grow over the coming days."

Dan McGrath, executive director of Take Action Minnesota, which is the lead organization for HCAN in the state, said that as the debate "moves to the Senate side, it is conceivable that we will do more paid advertising."

The U.S. Chamber would not discuss its future strategy for ad buys or phone banks or polls in Minnesota. Neither would America's Health Insurance Plans, which earlier funded national ads calling for "bipartisan" health care change and ads run in select states, including Minnesota, that called for preservation of the privately provided Medicare Advantage insurance program.

The American Medical Association, which favors the current bills, did not return calls.

Meanwhile, all sides continue to look to "real people" in order to prevail.

"Getting into the community is important," said Boss, who complained of being called "Astroturf" in Twitter tweets by the same people who call HCAN "grass roots." "I'm not saying don't help single moms get health insurance. There's just a better way than letting the government run things."

For Take Action Minnesota canvasser Valarie Wilson, the private system had its chance and failed.

"I was talking to a woman in White Bear Lake," Wilson said. "She had a baby with cystic fibrosis who needed special formula. Her health insurance company wouldn't pay for it because they considered it food. But the baby would die without it."

Jim Spencer • 612-673-4029