In a recent fundraising letter, Republican Rep. Kurt Zellers proudly proclaimed, "the Zellers team has never lost an election."
It's a great claim.
But Zellers, who is running for governor, was the Minnesota House Speaker in 2012 and as such he was in charge of making sure that the House stayed in Republican hands. And in 2012, voters swapped the GOP majority for DFL control.
So, Rep. Zellers, wouldn't that count against a winning record?
Yup, he admitted with a laugh, it would.
"What we were referring to is my personal campaigns," said Zellers, of Maple Grove. "That was the idea, that it was just my campaigns, not all the campaigns that I've either worked on or been in charge of."
He also piled on. If you note that the Zellers team, as defined by campaigns in which Zellers himself played a role, he said, you would also have to count among the losses: the 2000 U.S. Senate race, which Mark Dayton won against Zellers' then employer Rod Grams, the 2008 Minnesota House for a Republican majority, for which Zellers was on the steering team, and even the 2008 U.S. Senate recount, in which Zellers was pulling for Norm Coleman.
"I'm going to have to fire my writer, which, most of the time, is me," Zellers joked.
