Poll reaction
The Star Tribune has come out with the first local polls of the campaign season.
The Minnesota Poll published Monday on the Senate race shows Amy Klobuchar at 50 percent and Mark Kennedy at 31 percent.
As you might expect the two campaigns had widely differing reactions to the numbers. The Strib reported the Klobuchar camp said it was pleased but not surprised. And the Kennedy campaign's reaction was to take a shot at the messenger:
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Heidi Fredrickson, Kennedy's press secretary, said on Sunday that "given the Star Tribune poll's long and consistent track record of getting it wrong, we weren't exactly expecting good news. We're confident about where we're at this point in the campaign. We're hopeful the Democrats actually believe this stuff."
For those of you keeping score Independence Party endorsed candidate Robert Fitzgerald garnered 3 percent in the poll, two points lower than IP gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson in the previous day's poll on the governor's race.
That polls showed incumbent Republican Tim Pawlenty (43 percent) in a statistical dead heat against DFL endorsed candidate Mike Hatch (41 percent).
In a head to head matchup with DFLer Becky Lourey it was Pawlenty 47, Lourey 28. But in a press statement Lourey said she's not discouraged: