Does likely Independence Party nominee for guv Tom Horner have a chance to turn the 2010 race into a three-way?

A few (grim) facts (from the IP/Horner perspective) to begin with:

Horner, a long-time Republican, won the Independence Party endorsement for guv Saturday with a soild first-ballot endorsement. He is not yet the nominee, as two of his endorsement foes plan to run in the August primary. We don't have any real experience with seriously contested IP primaries, nor do we know whether this will become one. When I spoke to Horner last night, he said he couldn't take the primary for granted, especially given the fact the Minnesota Repubs don't have a serious primary contest. A small number of Republicans looking to eliminate him from the November ballot might be able to make what Horner called "mischief."

The only recent public poll that matched Horner against his likeliest Dem and Repub opponents, which I wrote about in greater detail over the weekend, showed him a distant third with between 9 and 10 percent of the vote.

The Independence Party has suffered a sharp, steady drop in its impact over the past three elections, from Jesse Ventura's winning percentage of 37 percent, to Tim Penny's third-place 16.2 percent in 2002, to Peter Hutchinson's distant third with 6.4 percent.

Personally, I believe that if Horner can raise enough money, gets a significant hearing from the electorate and runs a smart race, he will greatly exceed both Hutchinson's poor showing from the last round and his current standing in the SurveyUSA poll.

To get past the level that Penny achieved, he will have to overcome the "wasted vote" syndrome that plagues all third-party candidacies. That's a tall order. Republicans are remarkably good at closing ranks around their nominees. Many DFLers have developed an attitude of solid anger against IP candidates who, they believe, have cost them the recent guv elections. Given the stakes in this election, which almost couldn't be higher, I don't believe many voters will be in the mood for a protest vote. To get above 15-20 percent, Horner will have to convince Minnesotans that he has a serious chance to win.

But if Horner can get Minnesotans to buy into the frame he wants to put around the race — and that's a big "if" — I believe he can become a serious factor.

What is that frame? It goes like this: Minnesotans have three choices for governor: Tom Emmer, a right-wing ideologue who thinks he can lop 20-30 percent off the current size and cost of state government and who will continue the current executive legislative stalemate as Minnesotans see the starvation or elimination of programs they really do care about; Mark Dayton/Matt Entenza/Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a liberal who will be too quick to hit the new taxes button and will beholden to the same DFL interest group that make sensible progress hard in key areas; or Horner, a smart moderate who be able to deal with both parties in the Legislature, who will identify and embrace the best ideas from both sides, who will not be in thrall to either the no-new-taxes or the too-much-new-taxes mentalities.

For the record, Emmer has indeed ruled out any new taxes. The three DFLers have all said new taxes will be necessary to balance the budget, and Mark Dayton has made "tax the rich" his slogan, but all of the DFLers do say that spending reductions will be part of the balance. Horner says they have not been very specific about where/how they will cut spending.

In the SurveyUSA poll, Minnesotans described their ideological orientation this way:

• Conservative: 34 percent
• Moderate: 42
• Liberal: 13

You don't want to take that too literally, especially given the mushiness of those terms. But, personally, I do believe that there is a potential plurality of Minnesotans who could decide that Emmer is too far right for them, the DFL nominee is too far left, and that they wish they had a choice in the middle. Horner will obviously try to be that choice.

Because of Dayton's no-apologies rhetoric on taxes, I suspect that Horner would like to see him as the DFL nominee. If his opponents are Emmer and Anderson Kelliher, he told me last night, he will benefit from the current public disregard for the Legislature as an institution. Horner, one of the founder/owners of a successful public affairs firm (Himle-Horner), will also seek to portray himself as the businessman in the race (although the nature of Himle-Horner's work isn't exactly the epitome of the private sector).

As for the downward trajectory of the IP showings over the past three races, Horner said Hutchinson in 2006 had to run against an incumbent (which he, Horner, does not) and two candidates (Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch) who excited such deep antipathy within the opposition party that the "waste vote" logic was especially powerful.

Horner attributed Penny's third-place showing to the declining Ventura popularity during the second half of his term, and the emotional/political chaos engendered by the Wellstone plane crash. But the fact remains that the only successful IP candidate was characterized by Ventura's outrageous ("refreshingly candid") personality and pre-existing celebrity. On the personality spectrum, Horner is a lot closer to Peter Hutchinson than Jesse Ventura.

"I'm not like Jesse Ventura," Horner laughed last night. "I would never argue that I am. But we do have the potential for Democratic and Republican candidates who are 30-percent candidates. Now I've got to take advantage of the opportunity. I have to raise the resources to let Minnesotans know that there is an alternative. I've got to make clear that I'm someone who is gonna make the hard choices, I'm gonna give political cover to others who will, and if that means I'm going to be a one-term governor who was able to get Minnesota moving again, I'm OK with that."

Horner's first radio ad will go up tomorrow. A press release says the ad buy (including Internet advertising, which will include ads on MinnPost) will cost about $30,000 a week. The ad, which is already available online, starts with a woman reading a faux nursery rhyme:

"Mr. Tom Horner sat in a corner, watching the Dems and Repubs

"And thought: 'With all of this fighting, it’s the people they're slighting.

"Can’t they just take off their gloves.'"

It ends with Horner voicing this motto: "Stop arguing about who’s right, and start doing what’s right for Minnesota."

Full audio here.