Discover Politics

Is Thissen the dark horse and the white knight for MN's uninsured?

Another face in the Crowd?

Representative Paul Thissen carries pedigrees from Harvard and Chicago Law, but the Democrat from Minneapolis is hitting the streets and spreading his grassroots message in a battle for the DFL endorsement. Thissen is hardly the front-runner for the endorsement, but he makes a good case for his qualifications. As chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee in the State House, Thissen can boast the best record in the race when it comes to health care issues. It may just be divine providence for him that healthcare is undoubtedly the issue on the forefront of political minds.

It can be said that Paul Thissen has chosen to lead by example in his life, whether earning honors at Harvard, or heading the pro-bono department as a partner at Briggs and Morgan law firm. But in his race for the DFL endorsement, he will have to rely on selling his potential in an executive role as well as his accomplishments as an attorney and legislator. Any conversation with Thissen, or any examination of his campaign, will lead one to conclude (as Citypages did in their recent profile of him), that the “DFL dark horse” will not be outworked by his opponents.

But if Thissen is going to make his way to the top, insiders insist that he will have to outwork not only his opponents but his shortcomings as a candidate as well. In his case, the latter is defined by the former. Former Senator Mark Dayton and former AG candidate Matt Entenza have greater name recognition and fundraising capabilities. Margaret Anderson Kelliher has better name recognition and (arguably) better appeal for out-state voters and delegates. And R.T. Rybak brings better name recognition and executive experience to this crowded field. This is not to say that Thissen is not a viable candidate, but his battle is certainly uphill. He sat down with us to tell us how and why he expects to be sitting in the Governor’s chair in a little more than a year.

In a crowded field of Democratic candidates with better name recognition and/or fundraising capabilities, how as a candidate do you avoid becoming “white noise,” or another face in the crowd?

Well I think part of it is we are doing a decent job of fundraising, so that is part of it. But to me, this campaign needs to be about the future and looking forward, and we have a lot of (DFL) candidates who have been great public servants for many, many years, but don’t represent a vision of moving forward for the state. And I think that is what really distinguishes my campaign.

I think healthcare is a make or break issue for us, and that’s an issue where I think I have more depth of knowledge than anyone in the race. And, you know, races are about more than money. You know, people want new ideas, they want integrity and character and all those things, and that’s really significant.

What would be your strategy if you were to become the DFL’s endorsed candidate, and faced a GOP opponent like Marty Seifert – someone with conceivably better out-state roots or support?

Well, we are very much running a statewide campaign. A lot of it is working hard and showing up. We have been to seventy-three countys, including Lyon County, and I think that is a big part of it. When you show up and talk to people and show them that you are listening to them, it is an issue of trust, and we need to build up the trust. Even before I got into this race I spent a lot of time in greater Minnesota campaigning for our DFL candidates, but also doing a lot of policy work out there – around rural health issues and nursing home issues. And so I have spent more time than is typical for a metro legislature in greater Minnesota.

What do you see as your greatest liability as a candidate?

Well I think that we definitely have to increase name recognition, but we have been working incredibly hard, and have been seeing exponential growth among voters. Of course, name recognition can be a double edged sword; you have to make sure that people know your name for the right reasons.

Getting into healthcare, (on your campaign website) your stated agenda includes three solutions for current healthcare problems, could you briefly describe these solutions?

Insurance rejection for pre-existing conditions – Well it looks like that may be one piece that the federal government is going to resolve. The trick there is setting the incentives up right so people don’t, if we continue to have an insurance market, stay out of the insurance market until they get sick.

Need for preventative medicine – I think everyone would agree that that’s the direction we want to shift our healthcare system so it’s about care instead of the treatment. I think that the most fundamental thing we need to do to get that accomplished […] is to change the way we pay for healthcare so we’re not paying procedure by procedure by procedure, which is kind of the Medicare model. To set up a system where we’re actually paying doctors to take care of people, and then let the doctor and patient make the best decision to take care of that patient.

Discontinuation of health insurance during unemployment – If you are on unemployment, there should be some type of transitional health benefit that goes along with that. The double-whammy of people losing their job and their healthcare is a serious problem.

Along that line, in recent unemployment numbers Minnesota has made one of the largest employment gains in several decades. We now lead the national employment average by 2.4%. What is our state doing right, and is there any way we can encourage this trend?

I think you have to look at the long-term trends with employment numbers. From my perspective, we still have work to do. I think one of the things that doesn’t get captured in our employment numbers, and we need to do a better job of it, is people starting their own businesses and getting income in other ways. And I think there’s a lot of that going on right now which is not necessarily a bad thing. But we don’t have very good information about it, and encouraging people to be entrepreneurial is not the worst thing in the world.

But to get people back to work, I think there’s a couple things the state can do. One, is to use the investments we make, and this is obvious, but in the bonding bill, in the legacy amendments, transportation investments that will actually get people employed. And if employment numbers in 2011 aren’t coming back, I think it’s worth thinking about an odd-year bonding bill.

It seems to me that the biggest problem in the economy continues to be tight credit, you know, banks not lending money. And so I think that we could redirect, at least in the short term, some of our economic development dollars to back up loans, either through tax credits or actually backing up private sector loans so banks will lend to small businesses and they can start hiring people. And I also think there is a big role in working regionally with our surrounding states to sell the Midwest as a place to in-source business from the coasts. And then we need to go out and sell Minnesota better than we have been.

In a recent debate, Mark Dayton proposed raising income taxes on the wealthiest ten percent of Minnesotans. In recent interviews with Discover Politics, this idea has been met with severe skepticism by some Republicans, who say that this would be a recipe for disaster by flushing out employers. Do you agree with this criticism?

I’m not convinced that raising taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans is necessarily going to drive away employers. And I have talked to a lot of businesses who say (they) make decisions in part because of taxes, but it’s also in part because of workforce and you know, lower energy costs here, lower healthcare costs. It’s a comprehensive package that we have to keep our eye on. So I think that restoring fairness to our tax system is something we need to look at as part of our solution.

What is the goal of the Children’s Health Security Act?

The ultimate goal is to make sure that kids in Minnesota can see a doctor when they need to. So part of the goal on that is recognizing that particularly family coverage is very unaffordable for many Minnesotans. The Children’s Health Security Act really did two things:

•    It tried to remove barriers that we’ve set up in our state programs that prevent people who qualify from getting on the program (SCHIP).
•    It allows any parent in the state to buy into Minnesota Care at the full premium price for their child. So basically, we have created a public option in Minnesota, for every child.

A lot of our work on the public option side has been focused less on expanding eligibility in terms of income, and more on reducing the barriers that we put up that prevent people from getting in and actually cost us a lot money from people coming on the program and getting off and on again.

Discover Politics inside track:

Thissen has his work cut out for him if he is going to win the Democratic endorsement. His best option is to embrace the role of “dark horse,” and build his name recognition as his more well-known opponents try to take each other out. If Thissen can define himself as the “smart candidate” or “healthcare policy wonk” in the race, he should be able to carve out a considerable niche for himself.

Of course underlying this all will be his ability to fundraise. As the herd of candidate begins to thin, Thissen must raise significant sums of money if he is going to be heard in a field of candidates with deep pockets. If he can do this, raise his name recognition, and maintain a sharp edge on important policy issues, he may have some political capital to flaunt when R.T. Rybak flashes his smile or Mark Dayton flaunts his resume in the months leading up to the endorsement.