Which Way…Minnesota?
President Trump lands there today amidst rising poll numbers in blue sates.
Even before the magnitude of recent events, blue states such as Virginia and New Mexico were moving Donald Trump’s way, yet my home state of Minnesota has remained frustratingly out of reach for GOP presidential hopefuls since 1972.
Not that there weren’t times when the stars looked aligned.
In 2016, when I won my House seat, Trump lost the Northstar state by just 1.6%.1 Yet in 2020, wracked by riots and lockdowns, the Democrats actually increased their Minnesota margins—albeit under COVID voting rules that would make Tammany Hall blush.2
As the US Senate nominee in 2020, I warned Minnesotans the state was at a “crossroads,” not seen “since the chaos and turmoil of the 1960s.”3 And sure enough, it wasn’t long before suburban crime, state spending, downtown vacancy rates, inflation and taxes were all competing to see which one could go higher.
Nevertheless, the Democrat-Farm-Labor (DFL) party engineered a trifecta in 2022, taking full control of state government.4 The first thing they did was to make sure it stayed that way—passing HF3, an automatic voter registration bill with multilingual interpreters, no physical address requirement (a description will do) and absentee voting weeks before the election.5
They granted free health care and college tuition to undocumented immigrants, and most important, driver’s licenses.6 No need for alarm, though, they would only be used for driving and identification purposes, not to vote.7
Right…we all know how clean state voter rolls are.8
Having secured power, the DFL was then free to parade the most radical agenda in the nation, enacting the most extreme ‘PRO-choice’ law in the land—with no limitations through the third trimester, eradicating even Roe’s limits on elective abortion after viability.9 Naturally, they’re trying to enshrine it, along with a right to ‘gender-affirming’ care for minors, in the state Constitution.
Parents who opposed either were lectured by a crazed Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan wearing a knife-wielding trans-tee shirt as a symbol of making Minnesota a ‘refugee state’ for puberty blockers and surgical mutilation.10
Unfortunately, there’s little that deters self-loathing wealthy white liberals who think they’ve got it coming. So they targeted the monuments, female sports and even got rid of the Minnesota state flag, replacing its historic symbols with the ones of a new demographic they ushered in.11