Hatch, Klobuchar dominate at DFL caucuses

Attorney General Mike Hatch was leading three other candidates in the DFL gubernatorial field and Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar was way out front in the two-way race for the DFL U.S. Senate race, with about half of the straw votes counted in precinct caucuses Tuesday night.

The partial returns from nearly 23,000 DFL caucus attendees showed Hatch with 38 percent, state Sen. Becky Lourey with 23 percent, state Sen. Steve Kelley with 22 percent and businessman Kelly Doran with 6 percent.

In the Senate race, Klobuchar led Ford Bell, a veterinarian and nonprofit executive, 77 to 16 percent.

Although complete returns are likely to cause those percentages to bounce around, Hatch and Klobuchar described the results as momentum-builders in their pursuit of party endorsement, which requires the support of 60 percent of the delegates at a state convention in June.

"This shows we have wide support in our party," Hatch said.

Many of the people in the caucuses Hatch visited in Burnsville, Apple Valley and Eagan were brand-new attendees, he said, which also bodes well for DFLers next fall.

Klobuchar said her numbers show "people are listening when we say we will put people before the drug companies and the oil companies." A spokesman for Bell, an unknown newcomer to state politics, said Bell was pleased too. "We are exactly where we thought we would be; we're still at the beginning," said David Lilly.

Elsewhere there were reports of reduced turnout from the huge attendance in the 2004 caucuses, but DFL Party officials were hoping for a surge of attendees interested in participating in candidate preference straw polls for the governor's race and the open U.S. Senate seat.

Jessica Null, a spokesman for Kelley, said his numbers were rising as the night wore on. "We're between cautiously optimistic and excited," Null said, "and if the trend continues, we'll be excited."

Lourey's spokesman, John Blackshaw, offered this analysis: "Clearly we're very pleased. The race is wide open. Mike Hatch is no longer the presumptive endorsee, and it's going to be a tough fight."

Overall, turnout on the DFL side appeared to be about half what it was in 2004, when attendance soared above 55,000 because of the presidential election. But party officials said it appeared likely Tuesday had the highest turnout since 1982 in a non-presidential year.

Republicans were expecting modest turnout, too, mainly because there are no high-profile statewide contests for endorsement. Gov. Tim Pawlenty is unopposed, and U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy is the presumptive nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Expectations game

Candidates and their handlers for the last few days have been staking out pre-caucus analyses, lowering expectations for their standard-bearers.

For instance, Null said the Kelley campaign was only "cautiously optimistic" because Hatch, after all, is a statewide office-holder and Lourey has run for governor before. "We started off way behind, with name recognition around 1.5 percent," she said.

Hatch, in an interview last week, said his opponents' campaigns had much larger staffs, have spent considerably more and were "very much geared to the caucuses," while he's been focusing his campaign on the broader base of primary and general election voters.

Hatch said that party "endorsement is much less important than it once was" and that "to spend a lot of time on 2,000 delegates is not a high priority."

However, several unions that have endorsed Hatch were working hard to get his supporters to the caucuses.

In a fund-raising letter recently, Hatch claimed that in his campaign's survey of some 7,000 previous attendees, he had the support of 45 percent, compared with 15 percent for Lourey, 10 percent for Kelley and 2 percent for Doran.

War an issue in Senate race

In the U.S. Senate contest, Klobuchar was widely considered to be a heavy favorite over Bell. But his somewhat stronger emphasis on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq was believed to have given him momentum in recent weeks. Several anti-war groups have been aggressively organizing for the caucuses.

Ben Goldfarb, Klobuchar's recently named campaign manager, said Bell's campaign had been waging an "all-out" attempt to make a showing at the caucuses, with multiple mailings aimed at caucus-goers.

"He's laid out a chunk of cash on this," Goldfarb said. "Ford's playing like he wants to win tonight."

Klobuchar went into the straw poll with the endorsement of the major unions and most legislators and with hefty cash on hand to wage a primary battle, if need be.

In recent days, she has attempted to say that she and Bell share similar positions on the war and health care, noting that they both oppose the war and support broad health care reforms. Bell has countered that he supports a definite end-of-year pull-out date from Iraq and a government-payer, Medicare-style health plan.

Patricia Lopez and Jackie Crosby contributed to this report. Dane Smith • 651-292-0164