Primary races' internal rivalries

Two of the Legislature's most senior members, Sen. Gary Laidig and Rep. Phyllis Kahn, are facing stern challenges from within their own parties this year in primary elections that political observers say are too close to call.

Both Laidig, R-Stillwater, and Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, have served for 28 years, and both are known as passionate debaters and environmental advocates. Between them, they have won 27 elections without a loss, and they hardly broke a sweat in most of them.

But Michele Bachmann and Brian Biele have them sweating now with well-organized, well-financed campaigns that enjoy the backing of key interest groups. The two incumbents say they've been forced to work the political trenches harder than they have in years.

The Laidig-Bachmann and Kahn-Biele races highlight a typically light Minnesota legislative primary calendar on Sept. 12.

The primary contests involve barely 10 percent of the 201 seats that will be up for grabs in the Nov. 7 general election.

In another notable primary race, former pro wrestler Stan "The Krusher" Kowalski is using a slew of lime-green lawns signs reminiscent of another grappler-turned-politician to take on the DFL-endorsed candidate for an open House seat in the Anoka County suburbs.

And Sharon Anderson, the perennial candidate who once won a Republican primary for state attorney general because she shared a name with a TV personality, is taking on another GOP endorsee in a St. Paul Senate district. This time, however, her foe has an equally pleasing Scandinavian name: Chris Berg.

Still, anything can happen in low-turnout, low-visibility primaries, especially as voters cast their eyes to unfamiliar names at the bottom of the ballot, said Bill Morris, political science professor at Augsburg College and president of the survey research firm Decision Resources.

"You can have all sorts of flukes going on," he said. "A lot of it depends on retail politics and identifying the small percentage of the electorate who will vote in a legislative primary race." On average, that's no more than 20 percent, he said.

Laidig vs. Bachmann: Senate District 56

This is a bitter internecine battle between the state Republican Party and the Senate Republican caucus, with each side heavily financing its candidate and negative overtones abounding.

The result could put Stillwater's swing district in play for the DFL in November, Morris said. And it could have deep implications for moderate Republican officeholders.

"If they (Republican conservatives) get me, who's next?" Laidig said. Added GOP Senate caucus leader Dick Day: "I have six or seven people (in the Senate GOP caucus) who are more liberal than Gary."

Bachmann, 44, was propelled into the campaign on April 1, when, she said, she was unexpectedly endorsed over Laidig at their district Republican convention.

An outspoken Profile of Learning critic and former unsuccessful Stillwater school board candidate, she said she went to the convention with no plans to run against him.

"But then people started talking about how our senator hasn't supported the party platform, so I put my name in thinking nothing would come of it," she said.

Bachmann won on the first ballot. She immediately started knocking on doors, raising funds and organizing volunteers, building up a big lead at the grass roots.

"She's doubling him in lawn signs," Day said. "She'll probably outspend him three or four to one, and she has 60 or 70 volunteers at all the parades while Gary has probably 10."

Laidig, 52, who hadn't faced a primary since his first campaign as a 24-year-old Vietnam veteran of the Marine Corps, spent the spring angrily mulling a switch to the DFL.

Laidig stuck with the GOP, but he's been playing catch-up ever since.

Bachmann has called his voting record too liberal and charged that he has been unresponsive to constituents.

Laidig responded by saying he has had "meticulous" contact with local officials. He has tossed some brickbats of his own, including highlighting the work Bachmann, a onetime U.S. Treasury tax attorney, did "suing taxpayers."

"Sen. Laidig's campaign has been lying about me for three weeks," she said. "This is the reason decent people decide not to run for office."

Recently, the GOP Senate caucus paid for four days of quasi-polling in which district respondents were told of a campaign letter Bachmann sent gun control opponents branding the Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., the "Misinformed Mom March."

Bachmann has raised $43,000, while Laidig reported raising $23,000.

Despite Bachmann's advantages, Prof. Morris, a state GOP chairman in the early 1980s, said the race "really is Gary Laidig's to lose. If Gary doesn't take it, I think the Democrats will. That's a swing seat."

Kahn vs. Biele: House District 59B

One of Brian Biele's stock lines in his upstart campaign against Phyllis Kahn is that she's been in the Legislature "my whole life." It's almost true. He's 28, born four months before Kahn's first victory at the polls. She's 63.

This campaign in a district that includes the University of Minnesota campus and environs as well as half of downtown Minneapolis features little rancor or ideological difference.

Community organizer Biele's main pitch is that in recent years Kahn "hasn't worked on the priority issues of our district" -- mainly affordable housing and universal health care.

Kahn replied: "They're my priorities, too. But it's very hard to make progress on them." Instead, much of her energy has gone toward scientific issues -- she has a doctorate in molecular biology -- women's rights, the environment and sports, including a proposal for public ownership of the Minnesota Twins baseball team.

Biele said he knows the district's concerns because he surveyed them as part of a sophisticated, full-time campaign that began with a $10,000 fund-raiser in August 1999. Since then, he said, he's knocked on area doors twice over and assembled a cadre of 25 volunteer field directors.

He's run regular neighborhood newspaper ads and plastered the district with lawn signs, prompting Kahn -- her husband, Don, actually -- to place lawn signs also for the first time since 1984. "It keeps him on the street," she joked.

Phyllis Kahnis door-knocking extensively, too. "I've been in every precinct," she said.

Biele's background as an organizer, fund-raiser and lobbyist has helped him garner an impressive array of endorsements from police, unions and COACT, the health advocacy group he once worked for. He's also touting his youth and his mother's Hispanic heritage.

Kahn is stressing her experience, her seniority -- which puts her in line to head a committee should the DFL retake the majority -- and her sponsorship of Minnesota's pioneering Clean Air Act a quarter-century ago.

Kahn also has backing from teachers', women's and environmental groups, which have helped her raise more than $11,000, the same as Biele reported for this year.

Kowalski vs. Bernardy: House District 48B

Kowalski, 74, got to his primary election race against DFL endorsee Connie Bernardy via a strange political game of musical chairs. He originally declared himself a candidate of Gov. Jesse Ventura's Independence Party for a seat being vacated by Rep. Alice Johnson, DFL-Spring Lake Park, and won its endorsement at a spring convention.

Then Kowalski found that much of his labor support came only if he ran as a DFLer, so he filed in that column. By then, Bernardy had won the DFL endorsement in a three-person field including Nancy Jorgenson, who subsequently filed as the lone Independence candidate.

Got that straight? Kowalski, who likes to call himself an "Independent Democrat," said he didn't seek DFL backing "because I already was endorsed."

Amid the confusion, DFL oddsmakers give him a good chance of victory next week, and not just because of his ring career, which ended in 1976. Since then, he spent 18 years on the Spring Lake Park school board and delivered more than 2,000 speeches for the United Way.

In his only previous run for the Legislature, however, a 1986 DFL primary, he lost to Johnson in a landslide.

This year, he says, he's knocking on doors daily and personally pounding most of the 700 Kowalski lawn signs dotting Fridley, Spring Lake Park, Coon Rapids and Blaine. Bernardy, with a big turnout of volunteers, responded by putting up 800 of her signs in one evening.

A former Miss Fridley, Bernardy, 37, is making her first run for public office. But she has political experience as a DFL volunteer and professional organizer on health and education issues. She spearheaded a lobbying group that won a sharp increase in state aid to education last year. She has the support of teachers' groups, other unions, environmentalists and outgoing Rep. Johnson.

In the money race, Bernardy is ahead by a 2-1 margin.