Paulsen’s Deficit Moves MN-03 From Toss up to Lean Democratic

DFL challenger Dean Phillips and Rep. Erik Paulsen greeted each other at the end of Tuesday’s Third Congressional District debate in St. Louis Park. Credit: Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

Stylistically, the mild-mannered and neighborly Erik Paulsen is a good fit for this highly college-educated suburban Minneapolis seat. In 2016, he won his fifth term with 57 percent while Hillary Clinton won it 50 percent to 41 percent. But in a stunning turn, he’s now trailing badly in polls and on the verge of being abandoned by his party, in part because his votes for the GOP healthcare and tax bills shredded his moderate credentials.

Democrats have a strong nominee in vodka and gelato businessman Dean Phillips, the grandson of advice columnist “Dear Abby” and the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Minneapolis-based Phillips Distilling Company. Despite his personal wealth, he hasn’t self-funded and has sought to channel the late populist Sen. Paul Wellstone by driving around in a refurbished 1960s-era International Harvester he calls a “government repair truck.”

Republicans have sought to attack Phillips as a slicked-back, out-of-touch millionaire who calls for universal health care but didn’t offer coverage to his coffee shop employees. And Paulsen has tried to create separation from President Trump by airing an ad featuring him paddling a canoe, touting his opposition to mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area. But so far, those ads don’t appear to be denting Phillips’s advantage.

View the complete September 19 article by David Wasserman on the Cook Political Report website here.