(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Martiga Lohn on August 25.)
ROCHESTER, Minn. — A railroad’s plan to haul millions of tons of Wyoming coal past the Mayo Clinic is putting U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht in a ticklish position as he runs for re-election against an aggressive DFL challenger.
The issue pits the world-renowned clinic and Rochester – Gutknecht’s hometown and the 1st Congressional District’s biggest city – against small towns, farmers and energy providers who rely on the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad line across southern Minnesota.
Gutknecht, a Republican, brought U.S. Undersecretary of Transportation Jeff Shane and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman to Rochester Friday for a public meeting that lasted more than two hours. No consensus emerged, but Gutknecht had a staffer show slides of train trenches built to assuage communities in California and Nevada who objected to heavier rail traffic.
“We all have to listen to each other and figure out a way, if there’s a way, to do this,” the six-term congressman told more than 100 people in the Ramada Inn meeting room.
Politically, the DM&E plan is so contentious in southern Minnesota that Gutknecht risks alienating voters no matter what he says, said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield. Gutknecht’s race against Democrat Tim Walz is considered the second-most competitive congressional election in the state this year.
“It’s very easy to offend people on either side of this,” Schier said. “No politician, including Gutknecht, has been anxious to grab this by the horns and wrestle it into submission.”
He added: “It’s a very inviting issue for a congressional challenger to use.”
Walz has done just that, criticizing Gutknecht for not brokering a deal sooner. Walz is especially hard on the incumbent for failing to stop South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a Republican and former DM&E lobbyist, from amending a massive transportation bill last year to enable a $2.3 billion federal loan for the project. The loan application is pending.
“First and foremost on this thing, it was a failure of leadership – backroom Tammany Hall-type politics,” Walz said. “It didn’t need to be this way.”
The Federal Railroad Administration is taking public comment on the DM&E project until Oct. 10, and then has 90 days to approve or deny the loan. Shane promised to carefully consider all comments made at the meeting as well as written statements.
Local anger was polite but unyielding Friday. Beforehand, a dozen or so protesters waved signs as a van carrying Gutknecht and Coleman turned past them into the hotel parking lot. Those who spoke against the DM&E project at the meeting got applause from the audience.
“He hasn’t done anything to represent the Mayo Clinic or the Rochester people,” Rochester protester Mary Graf said of Gutknecht. “This is going to be devastating here.”
Glenn Forbes, CEO of Mayo-Rochester, said the railroad has failed to show how it would protect the clinic’s staff and patients and Mayo’s reputation as a world-class medical center. Mayo is part of the Rochester Coalition, a DM&E opposition group that also includes the city of Rochester, the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce and Olmsted County.
“What we need here, whether it’s from the Department of Transportation, the United States Senate or the United States Congress, is some leadership to work this out,” said John Wade, the chamber’s president and Gutknecht’s former chief of staff.
Gutknecht declined to sketch out a solution to the impasse after the meeting, but he said DM&E must show it can repay the federal loan and satisfy Rochester’s concerns if the project is to move forward.
Walz took a similar position this week. He proposed an open community process to examine all pieces of the deal.
DM&E President Kevin Schieffer said the project would improve safety along the line and help keep electricity prices under control by reducing transportation costs. He aims to renovate 600 miles of track in Minnesota and South Dakota and build another 280 miles to the Powder River Basin coal fields of Wyoming.
Schieffer said the upgrades would add eight to 12 trains a day through Rochester – not 34, an earlier projection used by project opponents. That drew scorn from Steve Ryan, an attorney representing the Rochester Coalition who said the numbers keep shifting.
Meanwhile, farmers across southern Minnesota are waiting for a bigger, better rail line to get crops and renewable fuels such as ethanol to market more efficiently, said Kevin Paap, a Garden City farmer who represents 30,000 farmers as president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau.
“We just need to get something done,” Paap said. “The railroad is not getting any better by doing nothing.”