Good morning and happy Wednesday.
MPR’s Brian Bakst has the wrap on the campaign finance reports released Tuesday: When the smoke clears, it’s shaping up to be a $100 million election year for offices tied to the state Capitol – not even counting the activity in local and federal races that are also competing for the public’s attention. The final full look at campaign spending in state races show just how big the burst of activity is in contests for governor, attorney general and secretary of state. The campaign for control of the Minnesota House and Senate is also proving expensive with each party defending a thin majority and attempting to wrest complete power over the legislative agenda. Candidates across Minnesota have already combined to spend $31 million through Oct. 24, according to an analysis of reports filed with the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Parties and outside entities have heaped on about $47 million more. Much of that is devoted to a governor’s race that has eclipsed the $30 million mark on its own. Gov. Tim Walz has spent just shy of $8.6 million this year in pursuit of a second term – about 43 percent of it in the last month alone. Democratic groups assisting in the effort have added more than $16 million. Much of that has been used on negative ads against Republican nominee Scott Jensen. The Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which amassed its money from unions, left-leaning groups and the Democratic Governors Association, had spent more than $8.5 million on TV ads and another $5 million on online ads by itself.
The candidates for Minnesota attorney general have been talking about eggs.Walker Orenstein at MinnPost looked into it: At issue is a settlement with Sparboe Farms, a Minnesota-based egg producer, which DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison last year accused of price gouging during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company denied the allegations, but it settled with the AG and agreed to donate 1.08 million eggs — that’s 90,000 dozen — to Minnesota nonprofits fighting hunger. Republican Jim Schultz and Ellison have differences over the lawsuit itself. But it’s best understood as an illustration of competing visions for the office of attorney general in the final days before the Nov. 8 election. “The case there was extraordinarily weak, and once they realized that they had to enter into a settlement, that was, frankly, embarrassing for the AG’s office,” Schultz said. “Not one penny was exchanged but a million eggs went to low-income Minnesotans,” Ellison said at a KSTP debate. “I’m over here fighting price gouging and getting food to low-income Minnesotans and food shelves and you are attacking me for it.”
And the final KSTP/SurveyUSA Poll of the campaign may have Ellison worried. It shows Schultz up 49-42 percent with 9 percent undecided. The same poll shows Walz leading Jensen 51-43 with just 4 percent undecided. In the secretary of state’s race DFL incumbent Steve Simon is up 47-41 percent over Republican Kim Crockett, with 12 percent undecided. And in the state auditor campaign, Republican Ryan Wilson leads DFL incumbent Julie Blaha 44-39 percent with 14 percent undecided. The “credibility interval” on all results is plus-or-minus 3.9 percentage points.
I’ll have the candidates in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District on the radio for a debate Friday at noon.The Star Tribune has a look at the campaign, where DFL Rep. Dean Phillips is running for reelection: Seeking a third term after defeating his past two opponents by double digits, Phillips will face Republican Navy veteran Tom Weiler next week. Phillips has managed to lock down control of his suburban district west of the Twin Cities in part because of his bipartisan, personal approach. Weiler has accused Phillips of "disingenuously" portraying himself as a moderate, pointing to the Democrat's record of voting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Weiler, who grew up in Eden Prairie, drove submarines through the world's oceans for years and once served as a legislative defense fellow for Virginia Congressman Rob Wittman. The 45-year-old said he would have kept touring ocean depths had he not been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's disease.
Minnesota elections officials are preparing to keep election workers safe even though there is no specific threat here.WCCO TV reports: The FBI and other federal agencies last Friday issued a bulletin to law enforcement partners nationwide raising concern that those who administer elections could become targets of domestic violent extremists who have grievances about election results. The intelligence memo said that those involved in the election process are "attractive targets" for these extremists, including at publicly accessible locations like polling places, voter registration sites, and ballot drop box locations. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said his office is aware of the alert and takes it seriously, though risk against the state's 30,000 poll workers is low. "We have no specific, credible threat next Tuesday at the polling place. I want to be clear about that," said Simon, a Democrat running for re-election this fall. "While I think our risk is low, the risk is never zero, so we want to make sure we're prepared."
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