Two Republican state senators who were denied their party's endorsement for reelection this year bolted Tuesday to the Independence Party, one of them to run for lieutenant governor on a ticket with IP gubernatorial candidate Tim Penny.

Sen. Martha Robertson of Minnetonka was introduced as Penny's running mate after they traveled to a dockside news conference in Wayzata by pontoon boat. Earlier, Sen. Sheila Kiscaden of Rochester, like Robertson a 10-year member of the Senate GOP caucus, said she will run for reelection under the IP label.

Penny, a former Democratic U.S. representative from Waseca, said he hopes Tuesday's defections, as well as his own two weeks ago, are the start of a trend toward the upstart centrist party headed by outgoing Gov. Jesse Ventura.

"Y'all come," Penny said. "We'd like to see others make the move, because it's the right thing for Minnesota. This ticket is about moving beyond partisan politics [to] a bigger agenda, a better agenda, a new kind of politics."

Penny and Robertson will seek endorsement at the IP state convention Saturday in St. Cloud. Christine Jax, Ventura's commissioner of the Department of Children, Families and Learning, also is vying for the IP endorsement, although Penny has the backing of Ventura and most party leaders.

Robertson, 49, a former General Mills marketing executive, said she and Penny had been "disenfranchised by the extremes" in the two dominant parties. Although she had been a Republican "forever," she said, the party is now dominated by "the message of anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-Indian, anti-education standards."

She added: "I don't think I've changed. I think the party has changed, and this is a very comfortable move for me at this point."

She openly criticized the GOP as early as 1998, when she considered running on a "historic bipartisan ticket" with DFL gubernatorial candidate Ted Mondale, now Ventura's Metropolitan Council chairman. It didn't work out, she said, because she would have had to file as a DFLer.

Had she not been tapped by Penny, Robertson said, she would have run for reelection to the Senate under the IP label.

She lost the GOP Senate endorsement this year to David Gaither of Plymouth, while Kiscaden lost to former Olmsted County Republican chairman Lynn Zaffke. Both incumbents lost favor in the party because of moderate stands on abortion rights and other issues.

Abortion protest

Six abortion protesters from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) stood silently at the Penny-Robertson news conference, holding signs saying, "Two-faced Penny" and "Penny flips on abortion." During his 12 years in Congress, he was considered an abortion opponent, although his recent pronouncements on the issue have both sides now labeling him an abortion rights supporter.

He says, however, that he is not "pro-abortion" and that he favors practical steps to reduce its incidence, including teen pregnancy prevention and family planning. Robertson has always backed abortion rights.

Penny's choice of Robertson "shows how pro-abortion his administration is going to be," said MCCL lobbyist Jaclynn Moen, one of the protesters.

State GOP spokesman Bill Walsh derided the defectors Tuesday as "castaways on Gilligan's Island. They're people who can't get along with the other boys and girls in their party. Ventura is the skipper and Penny's his little buddy."

But Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, said he felt "sick" about the departures of Robertson and Kiscaden.

"This is a Republican Party onslaught against my senators," he said. "I'm losing two friends. Granted, they voted different than I did, but I got along with them fine. Now we go from two wins to question marks."

'Sensible center'

Kiscaden said she is joining Penny and Robertson in the "sensible center" and leaving a GOP that "refuses to endorse moderates." She added that she feels "closely aligned" with Penny on most issues but might continue to caucus with the Republicans if few other IP senators are elected.

The only IP legislator now is Sen. Bob Lessard of International Falls, a longtime DFLer who was last elected as an unaffiliated independent and is not running in November.

GOP state chairman Ron Eibensteiner said Kiscaden and Robertson switched to the IP because they could not win again as Republicans. He predicted that Kiscaden will lose under her new party label, partly because redistricting left her with a more rural, conservative constituency comprising 15 percent of her old district.

"It's going to be either the Republican or the Democrat [Rochester lawyer Richard Wright] who will win," Eibensteiner said.

Day, however, said that he expects Kiscaden to triumph and suggested that he would invite her back into the GOP caucus.

In 2000, two other prominent moderates, State Auditor Judi Dutcher and former Senate Minority Leader Dean Johnson of Willmar, abandoned the GOP for the DFL. But Eibensteiner said that nationwide, more party-switchers are going to the Republicans. The trend may be the other way in Minnesota, but Norm Coleman, a former DFLer who switched in 1996 and is now the GOP endorsee for the U.S. Senate, "is worth at least 10 of the others," Eibensteiner said.

-- Conrad deFiebre is at cdefiebre@startribune.com .

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