The Fix: Minnesota
(POSTPONED) Rick Nolan’s 30 year Recess | #FixHangout at 1:30
Update: This event has been postponed. Stay tuned to The Fix for a new date and time.
How has Congress changed in the past 30 years? Former congressman Rick Nolan (D-Minn.), who retired from Congress in 1981, will have a unique take on that if his campaign to defeat Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) is successful in November.
Primary day: Five things you need to know in Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin
Voters head to the polls in four states today, with Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin holding congressional primaries.
Connecticut House Speaker and Democratic congressional candidate Chris Donovan is favored to win his primary today despite the arrests of two top aides. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)As usual, The Fix has zeroed in on five things to watch as the results roll in tonight:
1. The most expensive congressional primary in the country
That would be Connecticut’s 5th district, where seven candidates have raised at least $600,000 and five have raised more than $1 million. A total of nearly $10 million has already been raised just to decide each party’s nominee.
The most interesting subplot is on the Democratic side, where state House Speaker Chris Donovan remains the favorite despite the fact that his campaign manager and top fundraiser have both been arrested and charged with corruption. Organized labor and progressive groups remain firmly behind Donovan, who has not been implicated in the wrongdoing and has won the state party’s endorsement as well.
New Minnesota district map could benefit Democrats
A court-appointed redistricting panel in Minnesota on Tuesday released a congressional map that could help Democrats pick off a seat or two in the coming elections.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) addresses the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington earlier this month. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
The big headline coming out of the map was how Reps. Michele Bachmann (R) and Betty McCollum (D) had their homes drawn into the same Democratic-leaning 4th district. But Bachmann said Tuesday that she will remain in her current 6th district, which actually gets slightly safer for her.
(Bachmann has done a good job raising a fuss about the situation, which should help her raise money to retire the debt from her presidential campaign, but she actually has very little to worry about in the primary or the general election.)
The real news here is what the map does in the state’s more competitive districts.
Winners and losers from Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri
A supposedly less-important Election Day on Tuesday got pretty interesting by the time it was all said and done.
We’ve combed through all the results so we can lay it all out for you — as usual — in the form of winners and losers.
WINNERS
* Rick Santorum: This is a guy who was left for dead just a few days ago. Not only did he not get a bump from his performance in Iowa in early January; he actually fared pretty poorly even after the Iowa GOP declared him a winner two weeks later.
After Tuesday, he’s got a lot to hang his hat on, winning all three contests, and beating the polls by a large margin. It’s up to him now to prove his appeal isn’t just a Midwest thing or a one-time deal, and that he can raise enough money to be the true anti-Mitt Romney candidate.
He also has yet to prove that he can beat a fully engaged Romney machine. But Tuesday was a great start.
Minnesota deals Mitt Romney his biggest blow
Tuesday was an embarrassing night for Mitt Romney, and nowhere was that more true than in Minnesota.
This was a state where the former Massachusetts governor had nearly everything going for him:
* He won the state in the 2008 presidential race by 18 points.
* He had the backing of the state’s two most high-profile Republicans, former governor Tim Pawlenty and former senator Norm Coleman. This is in contrast to his last two wins in Florida and Nevada, where the most high-profile Republicans kept their powder dry.
* And unlike the Missouri primary, which he also lost on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich was on the ballot in Minnesota, potentially stealing votes from Rick Santorum.
But despite all that, with nearly half of the vote in, Romney is in a distant third place, far behind even second-place Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and taking only about one in every six votes in tonight’s Minnesota caucuses.
Santorum, meanwhile, is flirting with taking 50 percent of the vote.
Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri: What to watch for
For the first time since Iowa, we are entering a primary/caucus night without having a pretty good idea who will win.
And some people are arguing that today’s contests don’t matter?
Hogwash.
So as you prepare to watch the results tonight from the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and the Missouri primary (we’ll be live-blogging!), here are a few things to watch for…
1. How many states does Santorum win?
Everything else you see below will be based on this one piece of news.
Polling shows Rick Santorum is the favorite to win in both Minnesota and Missouri, while Mitt Romney is favored in Colorado.
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