Jack Uldrich: Blame Hatch for his own defeat

There's no reason to think Peter Hutchinson's presence in the governor's race was a factor.

Famed Wall Street investor Warren Buffett once said that the problem with conventional wisdom is that too often it is long on convention and short on wisdom. I was reminded of this recently because in the aftermath of the election it has become conventional wisdom among the politicos, pundits and DFLers especially that Peter Hutchinson "cost" Mike Hatch the gubernatorial election.

This is wrong.

In a democracy, a person is free to vote for whomever he or she believes is the best person. To suggest people should willfully vote for a candidate whom they believe is inferior is the antithesis of democracy. The solution for DFLers is not to blame Hutchinson; it is to endorse better candidates.

There is a solution to this problem, and it is called instant runoff voting. Unfortunately, the DFL Party has never embraced it. This is in spite of the fact that many of the same people now blaming Hutchinson for Hatch's defeat still blame Tim Penny for Roger Moe's loss in 2002.

The DFL had four years to forge a solution. It did not. To be fair, it is entirely possible that such legislation would have been blocked by the Republicans or vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty. But that does not excuse the DFL for refusing to either embrace the idea in its party platform or introduce a bill in the Legislature.

This continued indifference to a solution suggests the DFL remains impervious to the notion that many Minnesotans want more political options -- not a continuation of the status quo.

There are three reasons why the conventional wisdom about Hatch's defeat is wrong. First, according to the Star Tribune's own exit polling, 43 percent of self-proclaimed independents voted for Tim Pawlenty, and 43 percent voted for Hatch. This suggests that independents -- who were the people Hutchinson most appealed to -- were equally inclined to vote Republican as DFL. Therefore, a strong argument could be made that Hatch's defeat would have been no worse without Hutchinson in the race.

Many of Hutchinson's most visible and prominent supporters were Republicans, including former Lt. Gov. Joanell Dyrstad; former House Speaker Rod Searle, and scores of other prominent business leaders.

Second, and again using the Star Tribune's own polling, Peter Hutchinson's support in the polls from the time of the State Fair through Election Day remained consistent at about 7 percent. This implies that any last-minute erosion of Hatch's support did not go to Hutchinson, but straight to Pawlenty.

This leads to the third and most important point: It was not Hutchinson who "cost" Hatch the election, but Hatch.

Without Judi Dutcher's E85 gaffe and his own overblown response, it could very well have been Pawlenty complaining that Hutchinson cost him the election.

Of course, he, too, would have been misguided because a person's vote belongs to no one but the person for whom the vote was cast. But I guess that's the beauty of conventional wisdom. It doesn't have to submit itself to the facts.

Jack Uldrich is the former chair of the Independence Party of Minnesota.