Kelly Doran, a Democrat whose self-funded campaign for governor of Minnesota
was off to a promising start earlier this year, now says he realizes he
underestimated the power of the entrenched party system.
 A successful shopping mall developer, Doran devoted about $2
million of his own money to the race and was praised in the local media for
possessing the skills of someone far more experienced. Pundits lauded his
penchant for staying "on message" and engaging as his running mate a more
seasoned politician, state Senator Sheila Kiscaden. But Doran withdrew from the
race in March, citing family pressures.
Doran says that the long days of campaigning became difficult for
his four children, aged 5 to 17. But more troublesome for Doran was the fallout
from the maverick stance he took by rejecting his party’s traditional candidate
vetting process: local caucuses. Doran now admits that staying out of the
caucuses made political powerbrokers feel "you haven’t earned your stripes . . .
. You haven’t been here long enough to merit our consideration."
He ran a fledgling fundraising operation, but found it difficult to raise
capital when supporters knew he had his own money to contribute. "For a
nontraditional candidate like me, in reality, if I were a plumber and I wanted
to run for governor, there’s no way I could do it," Doran says. "So I
fortunately had the opportunity to fund the start of this campaign and to do it
that way—[but] it’s kind of a sad story that basically there are so many
obstacles for people to participate."
Photograph by Jim Mone/AP.
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