Associated Press

Votes by Sen. Norm Coleman and Rep. Mark Kennedy, both Minnesota Republicans, in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement could cost them money and votes from the Red River Valley, the nation's top beet-sugar producing region.

"I think most sugar growers are disappointed in them," said Douglas Etten, a Foxhome, Minn., sugar beet farmer and vice chairman of the Wahpeton, N.D.-based Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative.

The state's sugar beet growers and their cooperatives fought hard against the trade agreement, which passed the House on Thursday on a 217-215 vote. The Senate had already approved it.

The farmers fear the agreement will lead to a flood of cheap imported sugar. CAFTA will bring six Latin American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic - into the open U.S. market that now includes Mexico and Canada.

Minnesota's congressional delegation mostly split along party lines, with Democrats voting against the agreement and Republicans, including Coleman and Kennedy, supporting it.

Rep. Gil Gutknecht, from Rochester, Minn., was the only state Republican to vote against it.

"America's sugar farmers are indebted to the members of Congress who stood by us on CAFTA," said Steve Williams, a Minnesota sugar beet producer and president of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association.

Coleman and Kennedy could feel the farmers' anger more than others because they will be campaigning in the region in the next few years. Kennedy is the Republican front-runner in the Senate race in 2006.

"That one vote, you could lay at the door of Congressman Kennedy," said Mike Hasbargen, chairman of the Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative. "Here's a guy who should have been with us, and he chose not to be."

Coleman and Kennedy said they voted for CAFTA because they believe it's good for Minnesota and the nation.

"If I lose any support, it would be a misunderstanding of the effectiveness that I've had for sugar," Kennedy said. "I have a track record of negotiating hard for sugar."

Coleman said, "I hope in the end, within the next year or two, that folks in western Minnesota say I did the right thing for them."

Minnesota's sugar farmers made about $1 million in political donations during the 2003-04 election year.