MANKATO — They aren’t as thick as the mosquitos that have arrived in force after recent rains, but the political candidates are increasingly descending on almost any crowd that gathers in south-central Minnesota.

Parades, town festivals, outdoor concerts, they’re all likely to draw candidates with outstretched hands and campaign literature. With the primary election now fewer than four weeks away, the hum of campaigning is growing even more high-pitched.

In the past couple of weeks, Republicans sent an entire swarm of candidates, a quartet of DFL candidates for governor and lieutenant governor buzzed through town, and the Independence and Green parties sent hopefuls, as well.

Today, DFL candidate for governor Matt Entenza will be alighting outside of Franklin Rogers Park, greeting fans as they arrive for the Mankato MoonDogs game. The Seniors Day game is scheduled to begin at 1:05 p.m.

Familiar footage

Margaret Anderson Kelliher, the endorsed Democratic candidate for governor, became the last of the major DFL contenders to begin airing a TV commercial, and her rural Mankato roots are prominent in the 30-second ad.

It opens with a shot of the family farm where she grew up near Minneopa Park, includes a photo of the Minneapolis lawmaker with her siblings and has black and white snapshots of her parents.

The contest between Kelliher, Entenza and Dayton is the main event of the Aug. 10 primary election. While Kelliher won the party endorsement, Entenza and Dayton have more financial resources and have been running campaign ads for weeks.

Listening and waiting

Both Republican-endorsed candidate for governor Tom Emmer and U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner have indicated a similar strategy for the summer months of the 2010 campaign: head down, ears open.

Emmer, sidetracked recently by controversy over his support of a lower minimum wage for waiters and waitresses than for other workers, is hoping to continue the DFL’s two-decade gubernatorial losing streak in Minnesota — a state that consistently votes Democratic in presidential elections and has Democrats in seven of the state’s 10 congressional spots. And Boehner is looking to topple the Democrats’ large majority in the U.S. House.

In both state and federal races, an ugly financial mess awaits the winners — massive deficits and unsustainable entitlement programs.

Pressed on specifics about how he would tackle the projected $5.8 billion deficit facing Minnesota, Emmer has repeatedly balked — saying he needs to get input from average Minnesotans first.

The Delano attorney pledged to “listen, then listen again, and only then, to talk,” when announcing a months-long “Freedom and Prosperity Tour” on May 26. Last week, Boehner — the likely Speaker of the House if Republicans take the U.S. House — declined to offer specific pieces of a Republican agenda in an interview last week with the Washington Post.

That will come later, Boehner said, after a lengthy effort to solicit ideas from the American people.

“We’re not going to prejudge what’s going to come out of this listening project,” Boehner said.

Race and races

National political pundits have been increasingly indicating that Republicans have a great chance to take the majority in the House on Nov. 2, something even the White House conceded over the weekend is a real possibility.

A report in the National Journal a week ago suggested that House Democrats in predominantly white districts have the most to fear. The story cited polling that shows just 38 percent of white voters support Democrats in a generic ballot question. Democrats won 47 percent of the white vote in 2006 — the last mid-term election.

National generic ballot questions don’t say anything about attitudes toward specific candidates in an individual congressional race. But for what it’s worth, Minnesota’s 1st District is 94.6 percent white, according to the 2000 census.

Democratic Congressman Tim Walz of Mankato, who won an impressive 62.5 percent of the vote in his first re-election in 2008, isn’t listed as vulnerable, however, by the main prognosticators. All currently put the 1st District seat in either a “leans Democrat” or “likely Democrat” category.