Minnesota gubernatorial election, 2006

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November 7, 2006

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Nominee	Tim Pawlenty	Mike Hatch	Peter Hutchinson
Party	Republican	DFL	Independence
Running mate	Carol Molnau	Judi Dutcher	Maureen Reed
Popular vote	1,028,568	1,007,460	141,735
Percentage	46.7%	45.7%	6.4%

County Results

Governor before election

Tim Pawlenty
Republican

Elected Governor

Tim Pawlenty
Republican

The 2006 Minnesota gubernatorial election took place on November 7, 2006. Incumbent Tim Pawlenty was endorsed by the state Republican convention on June 2, 2006, while the state Democratic–Farmer–Labor convention endorsed Mike Hatch on June 10, 2006. The party primaries took place on September 12, 2006, with Hatch defeating DFL challengers Becky Lourey and Ole Savior and incumbent Pawlenty defeating Sue Jeffers. In the November 7 general election Pawlenty received a plurality of the votes, defeating Hatch by a margin of one percent. It was the most recent time a Republican was elected governor of Minnesota.

It is widely believed that Hatch's lead in the polls quickly evaporated just days before the election after his running mate's response to a question about ethanol posed by a KSAX-TV reporter.

Pawlenty refused state subsidies and was thus not subject to spending limits associated with those subsidies. His campaign set a new spending record for a gubernatorial campaign in Minnesota.

One big issue that was seen to hurt the DFL nominees was Lieutenant Governor candidate Judi Dutcher's gaffe of not being able to identify E-85. When asked about the impact of the gasoline alternative on the economies of rural Minnesota by then KSAX-TV anchor Corey Poppe, Dutcher was unable to comment, asking Poppe to define E-85.[1] In the subsequent questioning about her response, gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch reportedly called a Forum Communications reporter "a Republican whore" and promptly hung up the phone.[2][3]. Hatch claimed he had said "hack", not "whore", but the incident, occurring only three days before the last poll listed here, is believed to have swung the race. It put Hatch on the defensive in the last week of the campaign.

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