By Shannon Fiecke, Staff Writer

Until Friday, a campaign sign for Congressman John Kline was posted in the Chaska yard of Kevin Masrud.

Masrud, a network engineer, endorsed Kline at the Republican Congressional Convention. He and his children marched for him in the Chaska parade.

“I really like John,” Masrud said. “He was one of my heroes. I used to brag about him to my friends.”

But disgust over Kline and other top Republican candidates’ support for the $700 billion federal bailout bill led Masrud on Friday to resign his post on the Carver County GOP Board and wage a write-in campaign for Congress.

Masrud, who already has YouTube and Blogspot Web sites up and hopes the word will spread via e-mail, said he is running not only against Kline, but Democrat candidate Steve Sarvi, who would have also voted for the bailout package.

“This really is where I draw the line,” Masrud said. “It’s a giant leap toward socialism.”

Local Republicans are mixed in their opinion of whether the bailout plan was the right answer, said Carver County Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Anderson.John Kline

She said Kline spent about three hours on Monday night discussing his vote with a group of about 30 local Republicans, who were mostly opposed to the bailout.

Anderson said Kline told the group his vote was a matter of conscious and not the easy political thing to do.

“He was putting his country first,” Anderson said.

Sarvi spokeswoman Bridget Cusick said the Sarvi campaign received numerous e-mails over the weekend from voters who said they were either going to stay home now or vote for Sarvi “to teach Kline a lesson.”

“I think the entry of the gentleman shows the deep satisfaction there is with what’s going on in Washington,” she said.

A spokesman for Kline’s campaign couldn’t be immediately reached.Steve Sarvi

After voting for the bailout bill, Kline issued a statement in which he said he was disappointed by some of the measures the Senate added to the bailout bill, but its passage was vital to stabilizing the economy.

“This bipartisan legislation is designed to provide stability to increasingly strained financial markets that affect not only Wall Street and Main Street, but Minnesotans who are facing difficult decisions in these uncertain times,” he said. “The vote in the House of Representatives today was a straight yes or no vote on the entire economic package – the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.”

Kline also had voted for an earlier version of the bill first passed in the House.

In a statement of his own, Sarvi said he would support a bill with three caveats: that it help people endanger of losing their homes, give taxpayers equity in the institutions being bailed out and add proper oversight and regulation to ensure the crisis is not repeated.

“Though I’m saddened the Senate bill ended up so bloated with ‘candy’ for special interests, it does this right: It makes the connection between Wall Street and Main Street that was missing in the original House bill, allowing the Treasury to work to mitigate foreclosures and encourage mortgage services to help keep people in their homes,” Sarvi said.

Masrud said he opposed the bailout because it involved a “huge, huge amount of money that we don’t have,” endangering the value of the U.S. dollar, and there is no guarantee it will even work.

“Besides which,” he said. “These people on Wall Street were plenty happy to make all sorts of money during the housing bubble.”

Although they may disagree on the merits of the bailout, one thing local Republicans agree on, Anderson said, is Democrats caused the mess by forcing companies to give out loans to people who couldn’t afford them.

The Sarvi campaign, however, pointed fingers at Kline and others, whom they said took campaign contributions from the financial industry and helped create the mess.

“For too many years, Congress has allowed the financial industry to ‘self-regulate,” Sarvi said. “It’s an experiment that has failed.”

Masrud, however, believes its government interference in the markets that caused the financial crisis, by forcing lenders to give loans to people who were unable to pay.

“Lots of money was made available and lots of people were able to buy houses, who weren’t otherwise able to buy them,” he said. “The more people who want to buy, the higher the prices go.”

Masrud was among the group that met with Kline Monday.

“He really felt like he had no choice,” Masrud said.

Pressure was put on politicians in Washington, with the Treasury Secretary “telling them the world would end without this,” Masrud said.

“A lot of people made a bad choice,” Masrud said. “This bad choice was just beyond the pale.”

Shannon Fiecke can be reached at (952) 345-6679 or sfiecke@swpub.com.