Someone — I think it was former Saint Paul, Minnesota mayor George Latimer — said earlier today that if there was ever a time to be sleepless in Saint Paul, it’s tonight.
The Minnesota races are very important this year, particularly the Senatorial race which has national implications. Therefore, I’ll be providing updates as long as I’m able.
The way this is going to work is that I’m going to be writing/editing live in an editor window within the website, so you’ll need to click the More… link and refresh that page regularly to get the updates. The editing will be necessarily raw, but I’ll make every attempt to keep it honest (or at least transparent) by making material changes using the del tag.
If things get really exciting, I may venture out for some location reports later in the evening. It’s going to be a long night because the senatorial ballots have to be hand-counted.
At least one precinct in Saint Paul estimated it had an 85 percent voter turnout. Yup, that’s eighty-five percent. That’s more than twice as many voters as usual for a mid-term election. Generally, a high voter turnout means that the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party does well. But something tells me that the two Minnesota minor major parties — the Independence Party and the Green Party — will be the big beneficiaries this election cycle.
Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tim Penny is playing “Gloria” on an acoustic guitar. And he’s singing. I think things will be getting really weird in a few hours.
10:00 PM: Paul Magers after interviewing Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch regarding possible lawsuits if the senatorial election is extremely close: “We all know lawyers can be creative when motivated.” (Minnesota had to use a supplemental ballot for the senatorial election because of the death of Senator Paul Wellstone.)
10:30 PM: National Public Radio and the New York Times are both reporting that Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt has resigned. There’s a larger story here about improprieties within the SEC that I’ll be following up on in the next few days.
Minnesota polls closed at 8:00 PM but some precincts are just now wrapping up because of the large voter turnout and they didn’t hire enough election judges. People were waiting in line for up to two hours to vote. I can’t remember anything like this ever happening in the past.
Make the pie higher is a poem composed of the misstatements of President Bush. It’s attributed to Washington Post staffer Richard Thompson.
10:45 PM: Representative Jim Ramstad (R-District 3) has given his victory speech. He leads 70 percent – 30 percent but only 28 percent of precincts have reported.
11:15 PM: Republican senatorial candidate Norm Coleman takes the stage to rally his troops. With 30 percent of the precincts reporting, Coleman leads Mondale by 3 percent (that’s fewer than 4,000 votes). Green Party candidate Ray Tricomo trails badly with less than 0.5 percent of votes cast (fewer than 800 total votes).
In the conservative southern part of the state (District 2), Republican John Kline is leading Democrat Bill Luther, the incumbant, by a margin of 56 percent – 44 percent with 39 percent of precints reporting.
The computer in the Secretary of State’s office that is being used to provide election data on the Internet is crashing repeatedly. The local CBS affiliate is reporting that it has received more than 2 million hits in the last few hours.
11:45 PM: Republican Representative Mark Kennedy, who ran in probably the dirtiest political campaign race in Minnesota history, is claiming victory in District 6. Only 37 percent of the precincts have reported, and Kennedy leads DFL candidate Janet Robert 56 percent — 36%. Robert, an exceptionally conservative Democrat has yet to concede.
DFL senatorial candidate Walter Mondale is addressing the DFL faithful. “Only 8 percent of the votes in the Senate race have been counted.” That must be in some parallel universe because the local media and the Secretary of State are all reporting that more than 30 percent of all precincts in the state have reported.
Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tim Penny has conceded.
12:05 AM: CNN has projected Republican Tim Pawlenty as the winner of the Minnesota gubernatorial race. With only 40 percent of precincts reporting, Pawlenty leads DFL candidate Roger Moe 45 percent – 37%. It’s far too soon to call this one, especially given the relatively low-key campaign Pawlenty ran.
12:15 AM: Pawlenty is waiting to make his victory speech until DFL candidate Roger Moe concedes. Moe has been involved in Minnesota state politics since 1970, and I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
Continued in “The tide is turning, part two“.
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