Fine Sees Opportunity

Here is the full Red Star article about Alan Fine, Republican candidate for Congress representing CD-5. Since the Star article will be archived, I'm posting entire article here. A future post will comment on the article.

In DFL-dominated Fifth District, GOP candidate sees opportunity Republican Alan Fine says he has an even chance of winning Rep. Martin Sabo's seat in Congress. Eric Black, Star Tribune While state Rep. Keith Ellison, the DFL endorsee for the open U.S. House seat from Minneapolis, faces a likely primary fight, the Republican Party has united behind business consultant Alan Fine, 44, who will try to break the DFL stranglehold on the Fifth Congressional District seat. Fine, who also teaches at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, won endorsement without opposition at the GOP convention May 6. The conventional wisdom that Republicans have no chance in the overwhelmingly DFL Fifth District is wrong, Fine says, adding that the race starts out dead even. But neutral political analysts are highly skeptical about the candidate's claim. Fine emphasizes that he has lived in Minneapolis his whole life, an apparent indirect reference to Ellison, who grew up in Detroit. As a divorced single father raising an 11-year-old son who attends a public school in Minneapolis, Fine says, he understands the problems of real people in the district. Fine also says his business background will help him find solutions to complex issues, such as Social Security and the imbalanced federal budget, although he does not have a position on how to shore up Social Security's long-term solvency or how to move the budget toward balance. He likewise said he wants to reduce crime and help urban schools with the challenges of educating kids from bad family situations, but he doesn't have legislative proposals to move in those directions. On Iraq, Fine favored the invasion and believes U.S. troops must remain until security has been established. On abortion, Fine supports a woman's right to choose. He opposes using federal funds to pay for any abortions. He favors all of the Bush tax cuts and would vote to make them permanent. Longtime philosophy Fine said he became a Republican as a teenager, when his brother Bob Fine, an active DFLer now on the Minneapolis Park Board, took him to a DFL convention and he found himself disagreeing with every policy position he heard. When he described his doubts to a friend, the friend replied, "That's because you agree with the Republicans on all these issues." Fine is Jewish, grew up in the Linden Hills neighborhood of southwest Minneapolis and still lives there. He graduated from Southwest High School, and received his B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota. As a faculty member, he helped develop an undergraduate major in entrepreneurship and was director of that program for several years. He authored a book on business integrity and life balance. He is an avid swimmer and musician. In his only previous race, Fine sought Independence Party endorsement for the U.S. Senate in 2002 but was defeated on the first ballot. He said that even then, he considered himself a Republican, but realized that no one was going to beat Norm Coleman for the Republican nomination that year. It would be an understatement to say that Fine faces an uphill battle in this district that the DFL has won 22 straight times. The last Republican nominee to break 40 percent was Dick Enroth in 1970, but he lost to DFLer Don Fraser, 57 percent to 42 percent. The last five Republican nominees received less than 30 percent of the votes. In the 2004 presidential race, Democratic nominee John Kerry beat President Bush in the Fifth 71 percent to 28 percent. A safe seat? In many cases, even a relatively safe seat is considered vulnerable when there is no incumbent. But in 1978, the last time the Fifth District seat was open, Martin Sabo won with 62 percent of the vote. Political scientist John Shockley of Augsburg College called the Fifth by far the most one-party-dominated district in Minnesota. Although the seat is open and although Ellison is not well known districtwide, it's also a year when President Bush and the Iraq war are unpopular nationally, and even more so in Minneapolis. Said Shockley: "It's safe to say that this isn't a particularly promising year for a Republican breakthrough in the Fifth District." Staff writer Sharon Schmickle contributed to this report.

Source: Star Tribune - 5/16/06