Mike McFadden pledged Wednesday that if elected to the U.S. Senate, he will remain independent and transparent, and will not run again if he fails to fulfill any aspects of his "Contract With Minnesota."
Among the contractual obligations he'd take on: a promise to post his vote and the reasoning behind it on his website, to hold quarterly town hall meetings and to annually visit all of Minnesota's 87 counties.
McFadden, GOP challenger to U.S. Sen. Al Franken, said the contract provides a sharp contrast to his opponent, whom he accuses of not spending enough time in Minnesota and of being inaccessible to his constituents.
"I don't care what anybody else does," McFadden said. "This is my commitment to the people of Minnesota. I have seen my opponent for six years be invisible as a senator, now he's invisible as a candidate. … He's perpetrating a manipulation of the Minnesota public by spending millions and millions of dollars in advertising to try to portray him as something that he's not. He's not a statesman who has walked across party lines to get things done. In light of that, I thought it was really important that Minnesotans knew what I would do."
Franken campaign spokeswoman Alexandra Fetisoff noted that "at no time during today's political stunt did Mike McFadden promise Minnesotans that he would stop putting profits over people or end his support for tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas."
McFadden brushed off comparisons of his pledge with the Republican' Party's 1994 "Contract With America," saying generations of voters are too young to remember what that was, and that he hasn't consulted with other candidates in offering similar pledges.
McFadden also pledged to sponsor or co-sponsor a balanced-budget amendment, a bill to withhold congressional pay in the absence of a budget agreement, legislation to support Keystone XL and other pipeline projects, and efforts to streamline the regulatory process, particularly among proposed projects like the PolyMet copper-nickel mine.
The pledge is an expansion of McFadden's vow not to seek re-election if he votes with his party 97 percent of the time in the Senate — a key criticism he lays upon Franken. Although the proposed pieces of legislation listed in his contract are part of the GOP agenda, McFadden said it's highly unlikely that he'll agree with his party entirely.
"I believe, just common sense, that no one agrees with another person 97 percent of the time if they have an independent mind. That's my experience," he said. "I don't even agree with my wife 97 percent of the time. So to put some meat behind it, I said if I do agree with someone 97 percent of the time, I will not run for re-election."
McFadden's increased accessibility — he holds at least one news conference a week — has yet to push him past Franken in the polls. A Rasmussen poll last week had McFadden trailing by 8 percentage points, while a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll this week showed him 18 percentage points behind Franken.
Still, he maintains that with less than a month to go, momentum is building behind his campaign, particularly after the candidates debated in Duluth last week
"That was someone that had no fire in his belly, and would not stand up for what he believed in," McFadden said of Franken. "We have phenomenal momentum, and we will win Nov. 4 because I have the right message."
McFadden's news conference came on the day the Franken campaign released a new statewide ad accusing McFadden's company, Lazard Middle Market, of benefiting from tax loopholes, a charge McFadden repeatedly has said is untrue.
Abby Simons • 651-925-5043
