Campaign creep

Greg Sellnow, Rochester Post-Bulletin
4/7/2007 6:55:13 AM

In case you haven't heard -- or, more likely, haven't bothered to have paid attention -- state Sen. Dick Day of Owatonna is running for Congress. So is state Rep. Randy Demmer of Hayfield. And so is Mark Meyer, a consultant and school board member from rural Lake Crystal, Minn.

They're all running to unseat 1st District Rep. Tim Walz of Mankato.

Wait a minute. Didn't we just have an election a few months ago? I'm pretty sure we did because I'm still seeing political lawn signs in ditches and blown up against fences that were left behind when the snow melted.

Walz hadn't been in office 90 days before he had three declared opponents. If we continue at this rate, he'll have a dozen people campaigning to defeat him by the end of the year.

I might be able to make some sense of this if the next congressional general election were six months from now. But we won't cast our final votes for a representative again until November 2008.

This is getting way too creepy for me.

[...]

Campaign creep also has spread to the U.S. Senate race, where Minnesota's Norm Coleman is being challenged by funny man-turned money man Al Franken, who lagged just behind his incumbent opponent in cash on hand during the first three months of the year. As of the end of March, Coleman had raised $1.5 million in campaign funds, and Franken had collected $1.3 million.

I think there's still time for us to kill campaign creep, at least at the local level. We can start by not pledging money to these folks until we're at least in the same year as the election. We can also ignore them until we're good and ready to put up with lawn signs, nasty ads and airport pep rallies again.

I just can't for the life of me understand how we can expect a governor, or a representative or a senator to do the work of the people when on the day they begin a new term they have to start campaigning for the next one.

(Emphases mine. The entire article can be read at postbulletin.com.)