Reprinted from

  September 26, 2004

House race opens door to basic questions of fiscal policy
Lori Sturdevant

It's hard to say which coup by DFL state Rep. Rebecca Otto is more remarkable -- winning her Republican-leaning seat in a special election last year, or luring as her most prominent booster the shy, retiring former Gov. Arne Carlson.

Or maybe it's landing atop Republican Speaker Steve Sviggum's list of representatives he'd most like not to see back in the House chamber next January.

For those reasons and a few more, the contest between Otto and her second-time-around GOP challenger Matt Dean in the lovely St. Croix River valley is attracting lots of attention. In this rare year when Minnesota's general election features only the contests for president, Congress, the state House and assorted local offices, the District 52B matchup is taking on almost statewide significance.

We in the punditry racket like the way this race allows for the posing of a number of fun questions. To wit:

Is Otto -- a bright, articulate 41-year-old working mom -- a prototype for winning DFL candidates of the future? Is her 24/7 hyperdrive campaign sufficient to break the GOP voting habit in the suburbs? As a small business owner, former junior high science teacher and former school board member, is she a better fit for the education-minded district than architect Dean?

Will voters forgive her the special-election campaign mistake of inaccurately saying Dean sent his children to private school? That error led to a costly court fight that ended with a judge voiding a portion of state campaign law. Or will her constituents buy Sviggum's claim that Otto's 2003 campaign represented "a triumph of negativity"?

And one more: Can voters be persuaded that Otto's old-fashioned fiscal conservatism, the kind that favors using recurring revenues to pay for recurring expenses, beats Dean's "no-new-taxes" variety?

Arne Carlson was. The fiscal issue is what hooked the guy once called "the green eyeshade governor" on Otto, and made him willing, along with former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale, to be her campaign's co-chair. That's not a purely honorary role. Carlson, who now says he's left the Republican fold, has been speaking at Otto campaign events and getting involved behind the scenes -- doing things Republican legislators used to wish he'd do for them in the 1990s.

"The central issue this year is the budget, but it's missing" from too many state House races, Carlson said last week. He faulted Gov. Tim Pawlenty and other Republicans for using $1.7 billion in nonrecurring revenues to balance the books in the current biennium, almost guaranteeing that there will be yet another budget gap for the Legislature to close next year.

That's the kind of maneuver the fiscally fussy Carlson and his finance commissioner, John Gunyou, wouldn't allow when they inherited a budget crisis in 1991. Carlson squeezed spending hard that year, but -- unlike Pawlenty -- he also signed into law a sales tax increase to prevent the kind of budget cuts that save pennies now but cost big dollars in the future.

Otto endeared herself to Carlson by bringing Gunyou and former Perpich-era finance commissioner Jay Kiedrowski to her district last January for a budget forum. It was the first of a number of joint appearances the two former commissioners made to warn that more money trouble is ahead for the state, and to urge a permanent remedy.

That's what Otto does, though she doesn't trumpet a call for a state tax increase. Instead, she criticizes the tax cuts of 1999-2001 as imprudently large, recommends more money for education and transportation, and speaks of the need for long-term planning and the discipline to avoid accounting gimmicks and the one-time draining of state assets.

Dean counters that Otto merely wants to "grow government and raise taxes." Like the governor, whose fiscal approach he praises, Dean has taken a no-tax-increase pledge. He's also willing to amend the state Constitution to put a permanent cap on government spending growth -- a notion Gunyou once called "the single worst piece of legislation I've seen in 30 years in public life." That didn't keep Dean from winning the backing of the state and local Chambers of Commerce.

Just one more question, please (I can't help myself): Do this state's good conservatives demand tax restraint even at the price of sound fiscal management? I'll be looking to District 52B for a clue to the answer.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.