Election night in Minnesota was not a very surprising affair. While the rest of the country sat on the edge of its seat as the “GOP wave” swept in, our state ended up largely sticking with the status quo.
But one of the most interesting threadlines throughout the night was the Green Party’s Andy Dawkins. The attorney general candidate had been seen as something of a savior for the Green Party, which had basically disappeared out of relevance in Minnesota. The Strib even hyped him up, saying he could “usher in a new era for the party.”
He’d spent 15 years as a DFL House member, and the pundits all felt he had enough name recognition to make a push. But the campaign failed. Miserably.
Needing 5 percent of the AG vote to return his party to major party status (and thus, relevancy), Dawkins brought in a meager 1.5 percent — only around 30,000 votes. So when we caught up with him, he was understandably a little shocked by the whole thing.
“Oh, I’m deeply disappointed,” he tells us. “On the bright side, it looks like I have about 30,000 friends out there, because it looks like nobody but my friends voted for me.”
More at the Minneapolis City Pages.