Bills wants more debates, Klobuchar agrees to only 2 so far

[jct74]

Bills wants more debates with Klobuchar

Posted at 12:31 PM on August 6, 2012 by Mark Zdechlik

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Bills says he wants DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar to debate 20 times between now and Election Day.

So far Klobuchar has agreed to take part in two candidate forums with Bills: one this week at Farmfest in southwestern Minnesota, the other on MPR News at the State Fair. The Klobuchar campaign says it's considering additional debates in the fall.

Bills says he wants 20, but that he would settle for five or 10. He says if Klobuchar does not agree to what he thinks is a sufficient number of debates, he'll hold forums by himself around the state.

...

read more:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/co...polinaut/archive/2012/08/bills_call_for.shtml


one of the two debates scheduled so far is this morning at Minnesota Farmfest:
http://www.ideaggroup.com/farmfest/schedule

 

[Nathan Hale]

I hope somebody gets video of that debate, it should be fun. Anybody know what Bills' prospects are here? Is Klobuchar favored to win?

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

I hope somebody gets video of that debate, it should be fun. Anybody know what Bills' prospects are here? Is Klobuchar favored to win?

She's favored, but so was Cassis in Michigan and Bentivolio crushed her. Same with Thomas Massie in KY. We've seen how a cash injection allows us to get our message out to voters and we can achieve victory. I firmly believe Bills could win, he's a great candidate, well-spoken with an intriguing background. Bills just needs money...a lot of money!

 

[Nathan Hale]

She's favored, but so was Cassis in Michigan and Bentivolio crushed her. Same with Thomas Massie in KY. We've seen how a cash injection allows us to get our message out to voters and we can achieve victory. I firmly believe Bills could win, he's a great candidate, well-spoken with an intriguing background. Bills just needs money...a lot of money!

Thanks for the link, will watch it tonight!

 

[Michael Landon]

Bills is NOT out of his primary. The primary is this coming Tuesday. If he can survive that, then it's on to November.

- ML

 

[Keith and stuff]

I hope somebody gets video of that debate, it should be fun. Anybody know what Bills' prospects are here? Is Klobuchar favored to win?

By a large margin, she is favored. However, he isn't even the nominee yet so he has plenty of time. She is popular and it is a solidly Democratic state. However, MN has a history of barely or almost electing Republicans to high offices and you never know what will happen.

 

[FSP-Rebel]

By a large margin, she is favored. However, he isn't even the nominee yet so he has plenty of time. She is popular and it is a solidly Democratic state. However, MN has a history of barely or almost electing Republicans to high offices and you never know what will happen.

'08
Republican Norm Coleman 1,211,375 41.98%
DFL Al Franken 1,211,590 41.99%
Independence Dean Barkley 437,404 15.158%
Libertarian Charles Aldrich 13,916 0.482%
Constitution James Niemackl 8,905 0.309%
Write-ins 2,365 0.082%
Margin of victory 215 0.007%

Hardly a slam dunk for the dems. This kind of thing always happens when the opposing party has a primary and nobody knows them from adam. Once Bills gets thru the primary I bet Demint's Senate Conservatives Pac throws down as well as C4G and maybe even our good friends over @ LFA.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

Does anyone have Coleman's fund raising numbers? That will give us a ballpark figure to work towards.

 

[One Last Battle!]

I'd say this will be hard to win. Most of the other close races either had really unfavourable Democratic candidates (Al Franken's race) or had a strong third party (Jesse Ventura, most of the races in the 1990s), and in this case we have neither. Plus, Klobuchar naturally doesn't want more debates since she has everything to lose and nothing to gain by getting involved. She probably plans to just sit around and let her relatively good reputation win the race on its own, and use her enormous piles of money if that fails.

Kurt could probably put up a fight if he appealed to independents more and set himself apart from the average Republican, but he's been trying to cozy up to the Establishment types in D.C which is never going to win him anything.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

I'd say this will be hard to win. Most of the other close races either had really unfavourable Democratic candidates (Al Franken's race) or had a strong third party (Jesse Ventura, most of the races in the 1990s), and in this case we have neither. Plus, Klobuchar naturally doesn't want more debates since she has everything to lose and nothing to gain by getting involved. She probably plans to just sit around and let her relatively good reputation win the race on its own, and use her enormous piles of money if that fails.

Kurt could probably put up a fight if he appealed to independents more and set himself apart from the average Republican, but he's been trying to cozy up to the Establishment types in D.C which is never going to win him anything.

She'll avoid debate until she can't and that means Bills needs to get his message out to voters by ads and mailers. Like I said, it all takes money.

 

[Jeremy]

She's favored, but so was Cassis in Michigan and Bentivolio crushed her. Same with Thomas Massie in KY. We've seen how a cash injection allows us to get our message out to voters and we can achieve victory. I firmly believe Bills could win, he's a great candidate, well-spoken with an intriguing background. Bills just needs money...a lot of money!

For the record, Massie's opponents were never favored over him. He was always leading.

 

[Bastiat's The Law]

For the record, Massie's opponents were never favored over him. We was always leading.

He was an unknown until he raised 300k to get his message out and the Super PAC poured in another 500k.