Lord Faris entered during the July filing period for the primary without much, if any, advanced notice.
Franken has had a website for a long time. His staff has kept it current, with frequent homepage updating.
Lord Faris now has a webpage.
It is clearly in construction, with no "ISSUES" toggel yet, on the top menu line.
Here are top screen shots from each candidate's site, as of today, Thurs. July 17, 2008. As always, click on an image to enlarge it to read.
Site links are: Lord Faris ---- Franken.
THE BIG NEWS: Advance notice, Lord Faris will be on Almanac tomorrow.
There is no indication of format, whether it will be a meet the candidates for discussion, or what.
Earlier opponents Franken faced, Jack Nelson Pallmeyer and Mike Ciresi, have already had a public say about who they are, why they felt their candidacy best, and what they felt on the issues.
Franken had the delegate votes. He was popular enough, that way.
He is the endorsed candidate.
Lord Faris has chosen to simply bypass the entire winnowing process. That is a start facing skepticism. If the most promising candidate, why the delay?
For me the big ISSUES question is: In reasonable detail how do you propose to fix or work to fix healthcare? Single payer government run universal coverage with insurance only to meet extended risk coverage but having no place in core coverage; or less? Do your view healthcare as a right, or a privilege?
I await an answer, completely, from either Franken or Lord Faris.
At the endorsement conventin, Franken faced an air of problematic opposition, not from another candidate but from McCollum and her dissatisfactions, which perhaps never were resolved to McCollum's satisfaction.
But others moved on.
Now Lord Faris [it's hard to discuss her without sounding as if someone from the British House of Lords is under discussion]; Lord Faris is saying that her candidacy is premised mainly on a worry that Franken is slipping, losing it, and for unclear reasons might not prevail against Norm Coleman where she, somehow, could.
Present poll results have been mentioned. However, early polling traditionally is unreliable. (Indeed, at times last cycle Wetterling looked like the winner in a Sixth District Congressional race ultimately won clearly, by Bachmann.)
And then, whose poll is it, and how were the questions sequenced and worded?
That is relevant when somebody wants to sell you some set of poll numbers.
Lord Faris has biographical info on the website. This Friday's Almanac appearance will be her key opportunity to answer the question begging attention, "Why me."
The contest has not been cast as about what Franken says on the issues, it is about what is wrong about Norm Coleman and right about me, candidate Lord Faris, that will defeat Coleman while I say Franken cannot defeat Coleman. I have yet to hear a line of cogent reasoning that way.
Surely, once Lord Faris' ISSUES are added to the website we will have a better view.
And if it is ISSUES-lite, as too many websites opt for these days, she will have a hard time charging from several lengths behind the front runner late in the race, to win a DFL primary.
The Friday, 7 pm Almanac show on PBS will be the start of our being able to see who she is and what she has to say.
I will try to catch the show, and I hope she's on an early segment so I don't have to wait through boring stuff -
Run it first, PBS guys. It is important. It's what we care about for now.
Strangely, Lord Faris says Franken is right on the issues but her candidacy is largely a claim that she feels she has a better cause for voters to favor her over Coleman, than to favor Franken over Coleman. She must convincingly explain that.
Obviously, there is no polling that way, and it would be unfair to put an as yet "new face" into a polling test this early, before she has appeared publicly.
Again, that is cause to watch Almanac. And because she is the new candidate I will excerpt reporting; link to here for the full item:
"I am concerned that the Franken campaign has squandered a lead and fallen behind in the polls even as Barack Obama has opened up a wide double-digit lead," Lord Faris said. She praised Franken for his two-year commitment to the campaign and his ability to raise large sums of money for other DFL candidates as well as his own campaign but questioned his electability given the downward movement of his campaign. She cited a recent poll that stated had Jesse Ventura entered the race, he and Franken would have been neck-and-neck, as further evidence of the weakness in the Franken campaign.
"Make no mistake: I am in this race to win. My candidacy is 100 percent aimed at replacing Norm Coleman this November with a U.S. senator whose legislative and policy positions are consistent with the views and priorities of most Minnesotans, and not just a rubber stamp for the Bush-Cheney agenda that most Minnesotans oppose," said Lord Faris.
"This Senate seat is not just one vote. It is potentially the 60th vote in the Senate which can break the gridlock and help get us back on the right track. With President Obama and 60 Democratic votes we can end the war in Iraq and invest in jobs, infrastructure, education and health care. These are the urgent needs that the Bush-Cheney-Coleman team chooses to ignore," Lord Faris stated.
Lord Faris emphasized that Franken was right on most issues but said she shared the concern of many other DFL'ers that the campaign had failed to connect with Minnesotans.
That polls say yadda, yadda, is, well, Ventura was well behind Coleman and Humphrey all the polling time, and won the election. That argument does not hold water. If the position is in case something very bad happens before the primary to hurt Franken, there is another DFL option. If things go sour after the primary, as with the late Wellstone death, it is too late, so this is a safety net candidacy lasting into September? Or is there more to it? But, saying the polls bother her now, well fine, they don't bother me and apparently don't bother Franken. Had Ventura running for governor relied on polls he'd have quit before winning. Polls - give me more, please, they are of limited credibility.
And Franken DOES have real personal credibility, as well as being sound on the issues.
If Franken is "flawed" as some say, Christopher Truscott has blogged that, the vagueness of that kind of claim, the subjectivity, is its problem. It is a feeling, unless more against him exists than has so far been leveled by GOP interests. Or if Franken "squandered a lead" what lead was that. Early alterations in polling is a tenuous thing to contend as justification for avoiding the endorsement process, then entering, with vague "worry" over early polling.
His slip in the polls has an easy explanation, the nominating convention was not that far in the past and he was publicly assailed needlessly from within DFL ranks and that assault on his character more than anything may have "squandered" hypothetical leads.
If it is Betty McCollum attacked him, and now I am running, more is needed.
It is quite early, and you pay the fee you can have a primary that is how the rules work so Lord Faris is fully justified that way; yet the question I have for Lord Faris is, "Why you?"
As with Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, explain that - and to my feelings Jack did and he was my choice, but others voted, I did not, and he yielded to the endorsement process.
I identify with Al Franken. Growing up in the Twin Cities without any special privileged childhood, having a chance at education, leaving to see much of the larger world and to graduate from Harvard and prosper in an unconventional career without ever losing sight of his roots, without turning his back on where he'd come from, and then living some time in Hollywood and New York settings but staying normal, married and in love over thirty years and raising children who by all appearances turned out well -- all of that leads me to say I have no problem at all voting for Al Franken - certainly not when looking at Norm Coleman as an alternative.
So why not stick with Al? That's the thing Lord Faris has to convincingly show. Saying, I agree with Al on the issues but I am more electable then go on -- say:
Why?
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It seems almost a perceptible unspoken undercurrent exists, can Al Franken sufficiently connect with women voters? Has he burned some kind of bridge?
There was that gender dimension to the McCollum criticism, and the current Franken web homepage has a focus on women voters.
Oberstar, of the other gender, said let him go to the convention, apologize for extreme satire and disown it, then get him endorsed and move on.
So, is it an unspoken gender appeal issue, or something else that makes some say Franken is flawed? I do not see it. I do not know any women in my small circle of acquaintance who have that problem. Aside from family, I know a former Ramsey council member who liked Franken early on, she said so when I favored Ciresi and Nelson Pallmeyer more (but thought all three candidates outstanding).
Why not Franken? He had the delegates. He received the nomination. He looks fine to me.
He is no outsider. He grew up here. His roots are here. More than Coleman, for certain. He is a good man. What's not to like? Why a late challenge, other than as a safety net, in case ...