Gil Gutknecht finally faces up to the DM&E issue

Two observations on the Gutknecht campaign:

1. Gone from his campaign home page is the prominent claim that his filing by petition in lieu of paying a filing fee "proves" he is a fiscal conservative. It's still there among his press releases but does not play a prominent role.

2. This week's E-Line puts the DM&E issue front and center. The only previous mention of the DM&E issue on his weekly E-Line was on March 3 of this year, and there it was buried among a number of other issues. This is all very strange as the DM&E issue is perhaps the most prominent concern in his home town of Rochester, which is by far and away the largest city in his district.

The city of Rochester has been a solid base for him, with the Mayo Clinic and the Chamber of Commerce two of his biggest boosters, both politically and financially. But both are very much opposed to the DM&E hauling coal through the city on tracks just blocks away from the Mayo campus.

Yet Rep. Gutknecht has done virtually nothing to assuage their concerns, trying to straddle the political fence between the voters who elected him and his Republican colleagues who want to push the expansion through.

Mr. Gutknecht's opponent, Tim Walz, a high school teacher and 24-year veteran of the Minnesota National Guard, has said he supports the railroad in its plan to improve transportation options for Minnesota farmers, but that he sides with the Mayo Clinic and the City of Rochester in their concerns about the in-town Rochester route.

Like the war in Iraq, Rep. Gutknecht is coming late to the DM&E issue. His style has been to try to balance what his contituency wants and what his Washington Republican base wants. As Mr. Gutknecht is finding out, the problem is that it's very difficult to serve two masters.

There have been a handful of great Minnesota politicians in the last several decades; all have been either moderate Republicans (Elmer Anderson, Dave Durenberger) or Democrats (Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone). Many times they took controversial positions, but they did so in spite of the best political advice. They took those positions because they believed they were right.

Minnesotans are a strange amalgam. They may be avidly Republican, avidly Democrat, avidly something else or avidly "I don't care." But however they feel or whatever they advocate, they admire a leader who takes a position and stays with it. In other words, they do not accept political equivocating well.

Mr. Gutknecht, despite all his good points — supporting alternative fuels, voting against CAFTA, supporting a more open market for prescription drugs — has equivocated on the war in Iraq, on his commitment to serve only 12 years, and on the DM&E issue.

Certainly, some of the great Minnesota politicians before him — whether Republican or Democrat — would never have been guilty of this level of fence-sitting.

Whether Tim Walz, Mr. Gutknecht's opponent, would fall into the great Minnesota political mold is anyone's guess. But it's absolutely certain that Mr. Gutknecht, try as he might, does not. It's clear that he's had his chance and that it's time for the 1st Congressional District voters to replace him.