Coming off of a big win, Rep.

Wednesday, November 08, 2000

Coming off of a big win, Rep. Gil Gutknecht said his successful bid for re-election sends two messages.

"Voters have a lot of trust in me," Gutknecht said. "And it demonstrates that negative advertising can back fire."

Gutknecht did better in Mower County than he ever has, and said he appreciates the support.

Gutknecht pulled in 155,240 votes to Mary Rieder, DFL, earned 114,641 votes. Libertarian Rich Osness won 5,314 votes.

"It is a tremendous honor to be able to serve the people of Minnesota, regardless of who controls the Congress or who the president is," Gutknecht said. However, his job may be a little easier with a Republican controlled House and Senate. He’s also confident that George W. Bush will come out on top as well.

"Hopefully there’ll be less political bickering," Gutknecht said.

The Congressman also hopes to be selected for the budget committee and the agriculture committee again.

"With the budget, we need to make a blueprint to meet the legitimate needs of Americans," Gutknecht said. "I also want to work on the agricultural committee again. We need a get a new farm bill."

Gutknecht felt Mary Rieder’s campaign was simply too negative.

"I think that we did get an extra boost in the end because of the negativity of (Rieder’s) campaign," Gutknecht said.