The 2006 Minnesota gubernatorial election took place on November 7, 2006. Incumbent Tim Pawlenty was endorsed by the state Republican convention on June 2, 2006, while the state Democratic–Farmer–Labor convention endorsed Mike Hatch on June 10, 2006. The party primaries took place on September 12, 2006, with Hatch defeating DFL challengers Becky Lourey and Ole Savior and incumbent Pawlenty defeating Sue Jeffers. In the November 7 general election Pawlenty received a plurality of the votes, defeating Hatch by a margin of one percent. It was the most recent time a Republican was elected governor of Minnesota.
Timothy James Pawlenty is an American businessman and politician. He was a Republican politician who served as the 39th Governor of Minnesota (2003–2011). He previously served in the Minnesota House of Representatives (1993–2003), where he was majority leader for two terms. In 2011, he entered the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and later was a potential vice presidential nominee before serving as co-chair of Mitt Romney's campaign.
Michael Alan Hatch is an American politician and lawyer. He was the attorney general of Minnesota from 1999 to 2007, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce from 1983 to 1989, and chair of the Minnesota DFL Party from 1980 to 1983.
Becky Lourey is an American politician, a former Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) state senator and state representative, and a former Minnesota gubernatorial candidate. Her son, Matt, served in the U.S. Army and was killed on May 27, 2005, as a result of injuries received in combat over Buhriz, Iraq, where he was serving in his second tour of duty.
It is widely believed that Hatch's lead in the polls quickly evaporated just days before the election after his running mate's response to a question about ethanol posed by a KSAX-TV reporter.
Ethanol is a chemical compound, a simple alcohol with the chemical formula C 2H 6O. Its formula can be also written as CH 3−CH 2−OH or C 2H 5−OH, and is often abbreviated as EtOH. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a slight characteristic odor. It is a psychoactive substance and is the principal type of alcohol found in alcoholic drinks.
Ole Savior, artist and perennial candidate. At the DFL state convention, Savior was eliminated on the first ballot for the party endorsement, after winning just one vote out of 1,500, but he continued to seek the nomination in the primary. Savior's running mate was Dan Fischer.
The Minnesota Department of Commerce is the governmental agency in the U.S. State of Minnesota responsible for regulating a number of critical businesses that impact the public health and welfare. These include state-licensed or regulated industries such as insurance, real estate, property appraisals, debt collection agencies, financial institutions, commodity weights and measures, and telecommunications. The Department has a history of being closely involved in significant social and political issues concerning the public interest.
The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) is a center-left political party in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party. Formed by a merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the left-wing Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party in 1944, the DFL is one of only two state Democratic party affiliates of a different name.
The Minnesota State Auditor is a constitutional officer in the executive branch of the U.S. State of Minnesota. The State Auditor is charged with overseeing more than $20 billion spent annually by local governments in Minnesota. The State Auditor does this by performing audits of local government financial statements and by reviewing documents, data, reports and complaints reported to the Office. The financial information collected is analyzed and serves as the basis of statutory reports issued by the Office of the State Auditor. The State Auditor is elected and serves a four-year term.
Steve Kelley, State Senator from senate district 44 since 1997, former State Representative from legislative district 44A (1993-97), and attorney. Kelley withdrew his candidacy on June 10, 2006, after failing to defeat Hatch in the endorsement fight, throwing his support behind Hatch's campaign.
Kelly J. Doran is a Minnesota businessman. He ran for Governor as a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but ended his bid in March 2006, stating that the campaign was too difficult for his family.
Steve Kelley is a former Minnesota state Senator. In 2006, he received the Democratic-Farmer-Labor endorsement for Attorney General. Kelley served in the Minnesota Senate from 1997 to 2007; he previously served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1993 to 1997. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and the Deputy Director of the Center for Integrative Leadership. Kelley ran for Governor of Minnesota in 2006 and 2010 and Attorney General in 2006.
The Minnesota Senate is the upper house of the Legislature of the U.S. state of Minnesota. At 67 members, half as many as the Minnesota House of Representatives, it is the largest upper house of any U.S. state legislature. Floor sessions are held in the west wing of the State Capitol in Saint Paul. Committee hearings, as well as offices for senators and staff, are located north of the State Capitol in the Minnesota Senate Building.
A consultant is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular area such as security, management, education, accountancy, law, human resources, marketing, finance, engineering, science or any of many other specialized fields.
Peter Hutchinson is an American politician, businessman and philanthropy executive from the U.S. state of Minnesota. He ran as the Independence Party of Minnesota candidate for Governor of Minnesota in 2006.
The Minnesota Department of Revenue (DOR) is a department of the State of Minnesota in the United States. The department manages and enforces the reporting, payment, and receipt of state taxes. As of 2017, the Minnesota Department of Revenue administered more than 30 taxes totaling almost $21 billion per year. With more than one thousand employees, the agency is headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the state's capital city.
Sue Jeffers, Minneapolis bar owner and noted opponent of smoking bans and non-public use of eminent domain. A self-described Libertarian Republican, Jeffers was also endorsed by the Libertarian Party (which later withdrew its endorsement, as Minnesota law does not allow fusion candidates) and the Minnesota and National chapters of the Republican Liberty Caucus. Though included in neither the statewide caucus straw poll nor the party endorsement process, Jeffers challenged Governor Pawlenty for the Republican nomination in the September primary. Her running mate was Ruth Hendrycks.
Sue Jeffers was a candidate for Ramsey County Commissioner, a small business owner, and former candidate for Governor of Minnesota. Jeffers challenged incumbent Tim Pawlenty for the Republican Party nomination in the 2006 Minnesota gubernatorial election, after declining endorsement from the Libertarian Party of Minnesota. The Republican Party of Minnesota declined to consider her endorsement at the 2006 State Convention, citing her previous affiliations with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota.
Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2017, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 45th-largest in the United States, with an estimated population of 422,331. The Twin Cities metropolitan area consists of Minneapolis, its neighbor Saint Paul, and suburbs which altogether contain about 3.6 million people, and is the third-largest economic center in the Midwest.
Smoking bans, or smoke-free laws, are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, that prohibit tobacco smoking in workplaces and other public spaces. Legislation may also define smoking as more generally being the carrying or possessing of any lit tobacco product.
Walt E. Brown (Independent; used the ballot designation "Quit Raising Taxes"). Brown's running mate was Wesley C. Nelson.
Leslie Davis (American). Davis's running mate was Gregory K. Soderberg.
Ken Pentel (Green). Pentel's running mate was Danene Provencher.
Former candidates
Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey (VWP) – Self-proclaimed vampire. Sharkey's campaign was jeopardized on January 30, 2006, when he was arrested in Princeton, Minnesota on felony charges stemming from allegations of stalking and flight, in Indiana.[2] Sharkey's campaign website was taken down. It was discovered that the stalking charge had been dismissed on September 29, 2003,[3] when Sharkey pleaded guilty to two counts of invasion of privacy and was ordered to submit to mental health treatment.[4] At his trial on July 18, 2006, he was found not guilty of the felony escape charge. Nevertheless, Sharkey's arrest and jailing effectively terminated his campaign.
General election
On November 7, 2006, Tim Pawlenty narrowly won the general election, 46.7% to 45.7%, in a four-way race between himself, DFL candidate Mike Hatch, Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson, and Green Party candidate Ken Pentel. After Pawlenty opted out of spending limits, Hatch followed suit. Outspending Hatch by $1 million, Pawlenty's campaign set a new spending record for a Minnesota gubernatorial campaign. The race was also affected by negative advertising by 527 groups, as well as issue-oriented groups opposing liberal causes in the state.
A major issue in the campaign that was considered to have hurt the DFL nominees was lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Judi Dutcher's response to a question about E-85. When asked about the impact of the gasoline alternative on the economies of rural Minnesota by then KSAX-TV anchor Corey Poppe, Dutcher was unable to comment, asking Poppe to define E-85.[5] In the subsequent questioning about her response, gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch reportedly called a Forum Communications reporter "a Republican whore" and promptly hung up the phone.[6][7] Hatch claimed he had said "hack", not "whore", but the incident, occurring only three days before the last poll listed in this article, is believed to have swung the race. It put Hatch on the defensive in the campaign's last week.
Additionally, Pawlenty made illegal immigration an issue, running ads accusing Hatch of trying to give illegal immigrants college tuition. Hatch responded with an ad saying that illegal immigration laws had not been enforced under Pawlenty's tenure. Pawlenty also ran ads accusing Hatch of being responsible for raising health care costs, a claim Hatch disputed. Pawlenty campaigned on a record of leading the state through hard times, balancing record budget deficits without raising major state tax rates or diminishing the state's "nation-leading" status on most socioeconomic indicators.
Pawlenty won by piling up large margins in suburban counties as well as in central and southern Minnesota regions anchored by St. Cloud and Rochester. In his victory speech, noting that he would have to deal with a DFL House and Senate, Pawlenty said it was "a time tonight to be humble and time to be grateful." He promised that "the next four years are going to be different than the last four years" and that he would build "a common agenda" with DFLers who swept legislative and constitutional offices.
Hatch ran ahead in Minneapolis, St. Paul and their inner-ring suburbs, and won by large margins around Duluth and the Iron Range. In his concession speech, Hatch advocated that legislators get back to "sitting down and getting to know each other in private" in order to establish common ground for bipartisan legislation, and called for an end to partisan rancor. Had the Hatch/Dutcher ticket been successful, he stated that this would have been one of his administration's first goals.[8]
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