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Friday, October 27, 2006

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Hyatt launches write-in bid

DISTRICT 12 SENATE

By MIKE O'ROURKE

Associate Editor

Less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Forest Hyatt of Fort Ripley has announced he's initiated a write-in candidacy for the District 12 Senate seat.

The names of Sen. Paul Koering, R-Fort Ripley, and Crow Wing County Commissioner Terry Sluss of Baxter, the DFL candidate, will be the only names on the ballot.

Hyatt, a Republican, said many people have told him they don't intend to vote because of the choices they face in the District 12 Senate race.

"There's just so many people who are disillusioned and said they're not going to vote because of who the candidates are," he said.

His strategy of waiting until now to announce his candidacy, he said, was to maximize what publicity he might receive as voters prepare to go to the polls.

Forest Hyatt

"Everybody would have forgot by now," he said. "It would have cost a fortune to keep it (his candidacy) in front of people all the time."

The owner of Paintball Connection, a retail store in Brainerd, Hyatt said the political process failed to provide good choices because of what he termed low turnout at the Republican District 12 Senate endorsing convention and in the Republican primary. Many Republicans, he said, assumed Koering would be rejected. In 2005, Koering, a first-term senator, announced he was gay but won the GOP endorsement and successfully fought off a primary challenge by Brainerd City Council member Kevin Goedker.

At that endorsing convention Hyatt said he originally voted for Koering but was put off by state senators who traveled to Little Falls to support Koering. He said he switched his support to Goedker and eventually offered an unsuccessful motion calling for no endorsement.

While noting that Koering votes conservative, Hyatt said his opposition was motivated by the possibility that the senator might push a gay agenda.

"I can't in good conscience vote for someone who may, in the future, vote for an agenda that I don't agree with," Hyatt said.

Hyatt is unswayed by Koering's statement that he will vote to send the Defense of Marriage Amendment to the voters.

"Every politician makes promises," he said.

Responding to Hyatt's criticism, Koering repeated his pledge to support the marriage amendment.

"I would just say, I've repeated myself over and over, I'm going to vote to put the marriage amendment on the ballot," he said. "I've voted three times already in the positive on that issue. I think all the people in Crow Wing and Morrison counties can see his true motivation."

Hyatt said Sluss was not a viable choice because he wasn't fiscally conservative.

"He's a stereotypical, tax-too-much, spend-even-more Democrat," Hyatt said.

Sluss said the Crow Wing County auditor has a report on file that shows that Crow Wing County, the 12th largest in population, is seventh from the bottom in terms of percentage of market value of a home that is taxed. He said a $100,000 home in Crow Wing County would be taxed at a significantly lower rate than most other counties.

Hyatt, 48, who said he's pro-life, said that while he might not win the race his candidacy might send a message.

"I think a message could be sent to both parties to give us someone we can support," he said. "We need to keep spending down and there are many family values that need to be protected."

Hyatt has unsuccessfully run for the Brainerd School Board, the Brainerd mayor's post in 1986 and the Minnesota Senate in 1992. As the endorsed GOP candidate in 1992, he lost to Sen. Don Samuelson, DFL-Brainerd.

Crow Wing Auditor Deborah Erickson said that write-in candidates for state and federal offices who want to have their votes counted individually and not lumped in with a group of write-in votes must notify the Minnesota secretary of state in writing five days before the election.

Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer said the law was intended to streamline vote-counting for local officials who sometimes deal with write-ins that are meant to be jokes.

"I personally don't like it," she said. "I believe every vote should be counted."

She said that even if a write-in candidate doesn't provide proper notification the electoral procedures would ensure that the person with the most votes would win. An extraordinary number of write-in votes would prompt a more thorough inspection of those votes, she said.

MIKE O'ROURKE can be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.

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