Reply #21: He still won 'em. The Independence party is a known quantity,

[Occam Bandage]

and has been since Ventura's upset. Even with them mucking about, the state still manages to have a strong Dem lean, and the Dems have still managed to win every noteworthy race since 2004...but Tim Pawlenty's.

Oh, and Pawlenty didn't win because of the Independence party. Pawlenty won because Hatch was a fucking godawful candidate, and because Pawlenty is a solid politician. If the race had been a DFL version of Pawlenty versus a Republican version of Hatch, we'd have won the Governorship by twenty points easily.