Can He Take The Fifth?

The Downtown Journal has a profile of Alan Fine:

Alan Fine doesn’t buy into the widely accepted notion that the Fifth Congressional District is DFL territory.

Although Democrats have won the seat in the last 22 elections, the Republican candidate for U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo’s seat is convinced that times have changed. The district that encompasses Minneapolis and the inner-ring suburbs has become much more diverse in the past few years, he argues, making it impossible to say that the DFL still has the area locked up.

"This district is a bastion of diversity," Fine said.

The 44-year-old business consultant postulates that the media has hyped the area as being heavily DFL when constituents might have other ideas in mind. And he is convinced that, come this November, voters will elect him into office.

But in a district where Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry received 71 percent of the votes in 2004 and DFLer Sabo held the Congressional seat for 28 years, Fine will have his work cut out for him. The Linden Hills resident said many of the issues he is campaigning on — creating more jobs, working for affordable health care, reducing crime and increasing environmental sustainability--are issues that Fifth Congressional District voters care about.