2:00Early morning on the first day of the Minnesota State Fair, Sheryl Chute and her sister slipped away from their work at the fair to join the line of Minnesotans hoping for a moment with U.S. Sen. Al Franken.
With the sound of the Democrat's booming laugh mixing with the noise of the fair throngs, the two reflected on what they get out of meeting politicians at the state's biggest get-together — and what politicians get out of meeting them.
"It humanizes them and you forget, sometimes, that these guys are not like the bad guys," said Chute, 67.
"Good point, good point. It humanizes them. Yup," said Lydia Wigren, 70. Wearing matching blue State Fair shirts, Wigren and her sister are DFLers from Minneapolis, working parking and tickets sales.
By this time next year, Minnesota's airwaves will be polluted with dehumanizing messages, tearing down the men and women vying to be the state's next U.S. senator and governor. But with a year to go before the flood of nastiness, politicians are at the fair in force, employing low-key meet-and-greets and maybe a touch of humor to woo the Minnesota masses.
"We haven't gotten into that season where candidates are beating up on each other yet, so people generally don't come to you with a preconceived notion of how evil you are," said Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor. "The vast majority of people just say hello."
At his State Fair booth — in the same spot as the booth he had when he ran for attorney general in 2006 — Johnson is asking Minnesotans their top priority if they were governor and posting the answers on his booth. He's also offering one of the more understated political buttons at the fair: "Re-elect Dayton? Um … no."
In this off-election year, wise politicians know to dial down the bile and keep their messages more digestible and less pointed than fried food on a stick.
