| It was a sporty weekend for Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Friday night it was the Mankato high school football rivalry, where Walz offered a pep talk to the Scarlets squad where he was formerly a coach and did the coin toss. Saturday he was stalking pheasants on opening hunting weekend for the game bird. On Sunday, it was a bit more personal, taking in a volleyball game for his teenage son. There’s a definite theme here. The campaign of Kamala Harris is working overtime to close a gap among male voters by playing up stereotypically dude doings. The campaign of Donald Trump and JD Vance have been doing the same with drop-ins at ultimate fighting matches, college football games and car races. Our region will get some undercard attention from the presidential ticket today. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is in the west metro area for a fundraiser today, with other unadvertised stops possible. It’s the first visit by a member of the presidential ticket to Minnesota since a July rally in St. Cloud (which still has an active invoice for costs associated with the Trump-Vance rally). Tim Walz makes his way to Wisconsin for a series of events, including a rally alongside Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Our Dana Ferguson and Clay Masters are on the case, so stay tuned for more from them. Walz and Vance both went on some of the Sunday political news shows, including back-to-back interviews on Fox News Sunday.
Another batch of federal fundraising reports for Minnesota congressional and Senate candidates should come in this week. Don’t expect the appeals for more campaign cash to slow before the election and maybe even not until well after. Do you ever wonder about those contests – spend a day with candidate X or be an informal adviser to candidate Y – or the ones that suggest delinquency in donating? The New York Times had an excellent look (gift link here ) at this kind of solicitation and whether the campaigns actually deliver on the contests. Spoiler: Donald Trump hasn’t followed through with the prize promotions or won’t prove that it did; Harris has awarded contest prizes for small donors in most cases with a few still in the works.
There is a strong chance Minnesota voters return both Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Tom Emmer to Congress in November. Both are prominent figures in Washington – Klobuchar as one of the most-senior Senate Democrats and the chair of the Rules Committee. Emmer is the House Majority Whip, which is the No. 3 position in the Republican hierarchy in the U.S. House. But both could see their political stature change if their parties lose their majorities, which is possible in both chambers. MinnPost’s Ana Radelat has a good look-around-the-corner story on what the flips could mean.
We’ll have a few stories on the race for the Legislature’s majorities this week and more before the election. We’re starting off with Dan Kraker’s look at House 3B , which runs from the Proctor-Hermantown area around Duluth and up the North Shore into rural parts of St. Louis County. It was super close in 2020 when Republican Natalie Zeleznikar defeated veteran DFL Rep. Mary Murphy, one of the longest-serving lawmakers in state history. Now Zeleznikar faces a stiff challenge to retain the seat with an opponent who has a regionally famous family name. Mark Munger is a former city attorney and area judge and he’s banking on people splitting their tickets to send him to St. Paul.
My “always read” Reid Forgrave instinct paid off again with his look at the way that a closely divided Iron Range town deals with politics: By leaving it at the door. He takes us to Mountain Iron, which had one of the tightest Minnesota margins in the 2020 presidential race and was moderately close in 2016, too. “I don’t talk politics or religion with anybody,” one voter told Forgrave before talking to him about politics. But the broader takeaway is this: The residents there have decided they won’t let divisions on political preferences disrupt or dominate the rest of their lives.
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