Tag Archive for 'Paul Kohls'

The Republican gubernatorial field is a major source of amusement for me these days. First you have former State Representative Bill Haas, who represented Champlin for a decade and was the city’s mayor before that. I know Haas’ record pretty well, I worked on the campaign that beat him in 2004. We had a phenomenal candidate in Denise Dittrich, but even so, you have to be a pretty terrible incumbent to run ten points behind George W. Bush in Champlin in 2004. Despite this, Haas thinks he’s a credible candidate for Governor. Perhaps he’ll be running on his experience as a lobbyist for the last five years.

Then there is State Representative Paul Kohls. Now that Mark Olson is out of the legislature, Kohls probably holds the mark for the most time spent speaking on the House Floor. To his admirers (does he really have any), he’s loquacious. To the rest of us, he’s just really obnoxious.

Finally, today comes word that State Representative Tom Emmer, the King of the Crazies, is going to run for Governor. Emmer had been considering a run for House Minority Leader, but I’m told he didn’t have anywhere close to the votes he needed to win. Apparently Emmer decided that it’d be easier to win a statewide election than to pull together 24 supporters in the House Republican Caucus. Good luck to you Tom.

Sadly, there is just too much crazy in this Republican field. There is a real danger that Haas, Kohls, Emmer, et al will divide up the winger vote and allow a more moderate, sane candidate to win.

By the way, the House Republican Caucus will be selecting a new leader tomorrow night. The Strib identifies Paul Demmer and Kurt Zellers as candidates. From what I hear, Zellers is the frontrunner. Zellers will be a formidable leader, certainly a more disciplined messanger than Marty Seifert.