A few months later, while almost no one was looking, someone decided to partake in something truly bizarre. Long after the establishment had settled on backing Kindness, a little-known State Representative named John Boehner decided to take a shot at the race. For a while, it was almost impossible to imagine this campaign amounting to anything. The 40-year-old Boehner had virtually no money to his name, nearly depleting his entire family’s bank account to fund his campaign. The Republican establishment saw his effort to be counterproductive, frequently deriding the campaign to his face behind the scenes. His attack campaign on Kindness for his poor ethics record and elite connections was largely dismissed as a relic strategy straight from the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Even his own last name seemed like a non-starter, with voters frequently mispronouncing it as boner. If this seemingly doomed campaign would leave behind any legacy at all, it would be as the strangest end to a young politician’s career in recent memory, on top of having a funny last name.

But in the end, despite all of the flaws that I just listed, Boehner would ultimately prevail over his establishment-backed opponent, defeating him with 49% of the vote to Kindness’ 32%. Since the district was overwhelmingly Republican, it had effectively solidified him as the 8th district’s Congressman-elect. It was a stunning ascension that few had expected, and Boehner would soon take his anti-establishment bona fides to the House of Representatives, as seen when he joined the Gang of Seven in early 1992 in response to some noteworthy congressional scandals. Not long after the 1992 elections, he would team up with Newt Gingrich—a fellow Republican Congressman and anti-establishment insurgent—to draft the Contract for America, the now-famous document that laid out their plans if they had won control of Congress. It proved to be a smashing success with voters, who would later deliver the GOP its first U.S. House majority since 1954. With Boehner validated in his efforts, the now-House Speaker Gingrich would reward him with a promotion to the Chair of the House Republican Conference, the fourth-highest-ranking position in the entire chamber. Just over five years after the Republican establishment had written him off, Boehner would completely usurp that very same establishment, and in the process, rebuild his party’s tattered image and grassroots base. Simply put, had the Ohioan not embraced anti-establishment politics in his very first race, it’s virtually impossible to imagine him entering the halls of Congress at all, much less becoming a key part of his party’s leadership.

Given that fact, it makes sense why on January 3rd, 2011, the day when he would finally take the Speaker’s gavel for himself, John Boehner felt somewhat peculiar. On paper, the beginning of the 112th Congress was a massive victory for him. Just two years after overseeing an election that saw his party go down to just 41% of seats, he now laid eyes on the largest gain in seats that Republicans had made in the House since 1938. The key points that the Tea Party movement ostensibly cared about, like deficit reduction and spending cuts, rang pretty to this fiscally conservative country club member. He didn’t even have any caucus dissent during that day’s speakership election, a luxury he would never enjoy in his subsequent speakership races. To a casual observer, the 2010 midterms could appear to be a vindication of Boehner’s vision for the country and his party.

Of course, the truth of it was far more complicated. Yes, Boehner’s party did win a massive mandate, and Boehner was the primary beneficiary as the party boss. It’s also true that, at least at the beginning, he had commanded relative respect with his party’s more hotheaded freshmen. But when you compare his role in the 2010 elections to his work in the 1994 elections, it’s clear why Boehner didn’t feel quite the same as he did then. In 1994, Boehner was right alongside that year’s insurgents, both in ideology and in rhetoric. Most of his attacks against then-President Bill Clinton were the same ones harbored by the party’s grassroots, from the supposed evils of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal to controversy over the Whitewater scandal. The party base was increasingly anti-establishment, and they viewed Boehner as a credible ally on that issue. His direct partnership with Gingrich earned him credibility with the base that had come to love the Georgian’s passion and intensity. Throughout that year’s election cycle, Boehner had emerged as one of the prime architects of the new Republican majority, built on a strong right-wing and anti-establishment message.

By contrast, his involvement in the 2010 elections is far more distant. After the 2008 elections had left the Republican Party in ruins, the party’s base once again became enthralled in anti-establishment politics. Born out of anger over what they viewed as far-left radicalism from the White House and the Democratic Party, the grassroots started demanding that its leaders take this perceived threat more seriously and block everything that the Democrats tried to push. The grassroots opposition was especially stark when it came to proposed spending bills, arguably creating the spark needed for the emergence of the Tea Party movement. Compared to the Contract for America, the goals behind the Tea Party movement were far less defined. While it was initially formed by those concerned about the rising national debt and deficit, it soon evolved into a de facto big-tent club for those who had anything negative to say about the White House. This led to rhetoric from the Tea Party becoming increasingly ugly, from claims that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” to doubts about whether or not America’s first black President was even American to begin with. In essence, to be beloved by this new grassroots meant that you had devoted your entire career to engaging in hyperbolic conspiracism and hysteria.

For John Boehner, the more radical elements of this movement felt completely foreign to him. He could understand the Tea Party’s diehard faith in fiscal conservatism; he had been among its strongest soldiers throughout his time in Congress. Being someone who rose into the ranks of power on the back of it, he could sympathize with their anti-establishment crusades. He could even get behind the tactic of never giving the White House any bipartisan wins, something he would later exercise when he successfully united his entire caucus in total opposition to both the 2009 stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act. But the idea that he would never work with the President, or that he would entertain insane conspiracy theories about him or his party, made absolutely no sense. After all, while his party had built a majority in 1994 partially off the back of anger directed at Bill Clinton, they would still go on to work with the President on implementing critical elements of the Contract for America, most notably when both sides negotiated the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, better known today as Clinton’s signature welfare reform. To Boehner, if meaningful steps could be taken towards drifting the country away from aggressive spending, even if that meant cooperating with a Democrat, what exactly was the harm? Were we not sent here to address the ballooning deficit?

Ultimately, this was a disconnect that was never bridged during his first term as Speaker. Every time Boehner had expressed any interest in working with the White House, major voices on the right would chastise him as a traitor, sellout, and disgrace to the conservative cause. When he offered light concessions to the President in exchange for bigger cuts, there would be calls for him to step down from leadership altogether. This all left Boehner extremely frustrated, not only because it meant that nothing was actually getting done, but he also was smart enough to know that this chaos in his caucus was emboldening the very man he wanted to see defeated just as much as his right-wing critics did: Barack Obama.

For this part, I want to go over the budget battles John Boehner and Barack Obama found themselves involved in, the lessons they took from them, and how they each helped shape their parties’ respective outlooks ahead of the 2012 election.

Just a Golf Game

When the 112th Congress was officially sworn into office, it was difficult for Barack Obama to find any source of optimism in the event. Not only would the number of Republicans being sworn into the U.S. House be the largest since 1946, but so many of the new Republican freshman class were elected on the simple promise that they would resist his administration without any reservation. Some of these politicians even came from his own home state, such as Illinois’ 8th’s Joe Walsh, a former talk radio host who argued that Obama only got elected because he was black. Many of the fringe lunatics that could be previously ignored as irrelevant loons, such as Minnesota’s 6th’s Michele Bachmann, were now prominent enough that they could give their own State of the Union responses free from their own party’s pressure. This new Republican majority was large, in charge, and most depressingly for the President, chock-full of insane people.

It was amidst these feelings of dread that Obama would first find himself attaching to John Boehner. The speaker undoubtedly held misguided priorities, and his record in the opposition as a steadfast roadblock left the President with a poor first impression. But Boehner had also reminded Obama of the kinds of Republicans he used to work with back when he was in the Illinois State Senate: wealthy, suburban country club goers with a love for cigars and a nice glass of wine. They were always staunch fiscal conservatives, but they were also reasonable dealmakers who were willing to provide real concessions if it meant getting the job done. From this angle, Obama began to make strides towards the new Speaker, which started with him making an offer, something he knew that he could get behind: golf.

Playing together in a 2 vs. 2 match against Vice President Joe Biden and Ohio Governor John Kasich, Obama and Boehner worked well as a competitive duo, winning the game on the 18th hole and earning themselves $2 each. Afterwards, the men would sit down inside the nearby patio and enjoy some cold drinks while coverage of the U.S. Open played in the background. While much of the summit’s conversations were simple pleasantries between the four men, Obama and Boehner would also spend some of the time discussing what they wanted out of deficit reduction. With the debt ceiling cap looming and demands for action on the budget increasing, Obama saw it as a prime opportunity to work out a deal with Boehner that tackled this issue once and for all. Boehner, long eager to take on one of his favorite issues, happily accepted the gesture and took up the President on an offer to work out the finer details at the White House a few days later.

Well aware that his base would pan this move towards the President, Boehner opted to meet with Obama in secret. He didn’t even disclose the news to the House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, mainly out of fear that his uncompromising posture in public negotiations with Joe Biden would muddy the process further. On his part, Obama found negotiating the deal to be intensely invigorating, canceling fundraisers left and right to have more talks with Boehner. Eventually, the two men would each settle on their dramatic concessions, both of which could have done serious damage to their standings in their respective parties. On Obama’s end, he was willing to offer austere entitlement reforms, including cuts to Social Security and raising Medicare’s eligibility from 65 to 67 years. In exchange, Boehner would offer his support for tax increases on the richest Americans, even including the closing of loopholes beloved by many wealthy Republican donors. All in all, the proposals likely would have saved around 4 trillion dollars over a decade, a sizable sum that both parties could have taken as a win for their side. Entitled the Grand Bargain by its advocates, this package represented the most serious bipartisan attempt at addressing the growing debt in modern history.

Soon after this framework was agreed upon, hopes for getting it passed into law would be quickly derailed. It would start just days later when Biden unintentionally revealed the secret talks to Cantor, forcing Boehner to include his more bombastic #2 in discussions with Obama. This would immediately make progress on the issue slow down to a crawl, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid later stating that Cantor “shouldn’t even be at the table”. Not long after that, six Senators from the bipartisan Gang of Six would reveal their own plan to address the deficit. While this deal would save around 300 billion dollars less over a decade than the Grand Bargain, a far higher percentage of the cost savings would be from new tax revenue. Sensing an opportunity to snatch a far better deal, Obama would approach Boehner and demand additional tax increases in the Grand Bargain. Desperate to get his new pet project done, Boehner considered taking him up on the demand, even trying to convince Cantor to jump on board. Already feeling screwed by his Speaker over his past secrecy, Cantor quickly shot down Boehner’s offer and offered him an ultimatum: Pull out of the deal, or deal with a full-on floor revolt. Not wanting to end his career on such a sad whimper, Boehner would relent to the demands of his right-wing flank and publicly oppose the deal. And with that, the last great hope for centrist deficit hawks was dead in the water.

For the two men involved in the creation of the increasingly derided Grand Bargain, the political costs would rear their ugly heads. John Boehner was not only more distrusted than ever with the Tea Party caucus, but the snubbing of his aggressive number #2 left his relationship with him and others in Republican leadership in permanently shaky ground. For the rest of his first term, Boehner was not only incentivized to play the same kind of full-throated oppositional role that the Tea Party had always wanted him to, but the security of his new job had practically depended on his doing just that. There would be no more proposed tax increases, closed loopholes, or additional regulations. In the eyes of the Tea Party, cooperation with the far-left socialists in the Obama White House was not what the American people voted for. And given the ferocity of the new Representatives that Republican voters had sent into Boehner’s caucus, it wasn’t unreasonable for him to assume that they were right.

As for Barack Obama, he would be forced to spend the next few weeks enduring a painful humiliation ritual. Just a few days before the debt ceiling would be reached, Joe Biden would successfully strike up a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Not only was this no Grand Bargain, but it also included around 1.2 trillion dollars in spending cuts with absolutely no revenue increases. A financial calamity had been avoided, but it had involved a liberal President being forced to sign austerity cuts during a period of economic slowdown. This understandably angered the Democratic Party base, with Paul Krugman even describing the deal as taking America “down the road to banana-republic status”. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House leader who had voted for the bill, couldn’t bring herself to spin the reality of the bill, calling it a “Satan sandwich with Satan fries on the side”. Talks of a primary challenge to his left were more pervasive than ever, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders even seriously considering the idea before being shot down by Harry Reid. In the first poll conducted after the deal was finalized, Gallup found Obama’s approval rating slipped to a record low of just 40%. In the end, the only thing Obama got out of this long struggle was just a golf game.

More so than anything else, this fiasco reinforced a perception of the President that had come to haunt his first few years in office: he was weak. If he was going to fix his image ahead of the 2012 elections, he was going to have to start playing hardball with the Republicans and show the nation that he had the people’s economic interest at heart despite Republican pressure. It wasn’t something he initially felt he could pull off; despite his 2008 campaign containing many populist elements, the President had never really envisioned himself as one. Additionally, as stated in the previous article, Americans aren’t quick to blame economic problems on the people outside of power. But just as his leadership in the Bin Laden raid and Iraq War withdrawal helped reinforce his capabilities in dealing with foreign policy, a real pivot on strategy with the economy could help Americans regain the trust they had lost in him. While Boehner was taught not to cross his right-wing base, Obama was taught that it was necessary to flex his authority, both rhetorically and legislatively.

(Don’t) Pass This Jobs Plan

With that painful lesson now taken to heart, Barack Obama would spend the rest of August getting to work on rebuilding his vision for the economy. With his re-election campaign having already been in full swing for several months, Obama and his team quickly came to encounter a pervasive problem: People just didn’t know what he was selling. For as much time as Obama had spent trying to craft deals with Boehner behind the scenes, he wasn’t doing much of anything to convey his side to the public. As a result, when Obama would eventually conclude the debt ceiling saga by signing spending cuts with bipartisan support, it was the worst of both worlds politically. Voters inside his base were furious over their own services getting cut, and those outside of it didn’t care about it being bipartisan. When Obama would get on stage and complain about Republicans not working with him on the Grand Bargain, it was seen less as him being the one grownup in the room, and more as continued whining from a well-meaning but inexcusably ineffective commander-in-chief. Appeals to Republicans to stick to their word weren’t going to work; Obama needed to lay out his own vision and fight for it passionately. Essentially, he would have to fight on his own terms.

On September 8th, 2011, Obama would begin the process of doing just that. Delivering an address to a joint session of Congress, the President would introduce the American Jobs Act, a series of different bills that all made their own critical investments, each intended to reinvigorate the U.S. economy. From the 49 billion dollars dedicated to strengthening unemployment benefits, the 35 billion meant to protect the job security of teachers and law enforcement, to the 10 billion for the creation of a bank meant to encourage public and private investment in infrastructure repairs, the American Jobs Act effectively served as the second part of Obama’s first economic stimulus package in 2009.

Most importantly, however, there was not a single mention of entitlement cuts found anywhere in the bill. Yep, that’s right. In a time when the American people were supposedly hungry for spending cuts, Obama was proudly proposing even more spending.

Some observers found this confusing. After all, the very fact that the President was closing the door to even a single cut in the bill instantly made this bill a non-starter to Boehner and the entire GOP caucus, both of whom would be essential to passing it. But in choosing to craft the bill in this fashion, it showed two very important evolutions in the President’s thinking. The first was that he was once again returning to a more Keynesian approach to economic slowdowns, delighting the liberals in his base who were previously angered over his flirting with austerity. The second was that he was taking a fundamentally different, much more savvy approach with Boehner and the right this time around. Despite his insistence on Congress “passing this bill right away”, Obama knew full well that he did not have anywhere near enough votes to pass the American Jobs Act. But the purpose of the bill wasn’t to pass it in full. Rather, he was going to use the bill as a front for his public rehabilitation tour, wherein he would slam the Republicans for their inaction while casting himself as a fighter for basic common sense.

For the first time in years, Obama was taking his stance into the court of public opinion.

Referendum vs. Choice

Dubbed the “Jobs Act Tour”, Barack Obama’s public relations pursuit would begin just a day after his address to Congress in Richmond, Virginia, which would be a crucial city for him to turn out if he wanted to win this valuable swing state. It was here, in the Robins Center Arena near the eve of autumn, that the first hints of Obama’s strategy for the 2012 election can be spotted.

It begins with a basic acknowledgement of the reality that Americans were facing; the economy was lousy, there weren’t enough opportunities for young people to get employment, and people were right to be frustrated about it. This part is important because it sets up Obama not as an out-of-touch bureaucrat unaware of the reality on the ground, but instead as someone in tune with the reasons why economic optimism had long been running dry. From that premise, Obama lays out each part of the American Jobs Act and goes to great lengths to give each one a populist spin. On his plan to invest in infrastructure, Obama takes the protectionist angle, arguing that it is a necessity to ensure construction jobs aren’t outsourced to China. For his spending on teachers, he describes it as the main solution to continued teacher layoffs, and by extension, the solution to increasing problems in children’s education. Regarding his extension of unemployment benefits, he describes it as necessary to keep the economy afloat.

All of this would have been impressive enough on its own, but the topic of deficit reduction is where the President would truly strike gold. Instead of framing it as an issue of bipartisanship, where entitlement cuts are just an unfortunate part of the equation, he flips the discussion on its head and presents the public with a choice: Do you want to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and big corporations, or do you want to cut social services and repeal tax credits for small businesses?

It was absolutely brilliant political craftsmanship. Not only did the President successfully present a clear vision that voters could get behind, but he did so while avoiding making the question of the election a referendum on his performance. Everyone on his team, including the President himself, knew that they could not win the issue if they fought it like a referendum. They weren’t going to be able to explain away people’s economic struggles by meekly pointing to data or waving away responsibility. The President had to accept the reality around him, while also making clear what he was going to do, as well as what obstacles stood in the way. In pulling this off successfully, he was finally able to get more people to come around to what he had been thinking from the start: He was the grown-up in the room, and the Republicans were the children meant to protect the wealthy, even if that came at the expense of the middle class. It was their choice as to which one they preferred.

Over the course of the next few months, Obama would take this stump speech throughout the rest of the country. Most Republicans were initially dismissive, seeing how most polls did not initially see a spike in Obama’s approval rating. But as the tour went on and Obama hammered down on an extension of payroll tax cuts, voters became more receptive to the President’s message. By the time November came around, Gallup had Obama’s approval numbers rising to 43%, with his net approval compared to August going up by 7 points. Furthermore, coverage of the Republican Congress’s rejection of the plan only grew more negative, with the normally GOP-friendly Wall Street Journal describing Boehner’s and McConnell’s opposition as a giveaway to Obama’s re-election chances. Eventually, Boehner and other Republican leaders realized that ignoring the problem was politically unsustainable, but since they knew they would be blamed for any payroll tax increase, Obama was allowed to negotiate the deal on his own terms. What followed were two back-to-back wins for the President: first in the form of a temporary two-month payroll tax cut that was signed the night before Christmas Eve of 2011, and second in the form of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act on February 17th of 2012, which made those cuts last throughout the rest of the year.

With the legislative successes reinforcing his leadership and economically populist qualities, alongside fulfilling his promise on Iraq War withdrawal, Obama’s fortunes had finally begun to bear fruit in the polls. The first Gallup survey for March of 2012 gave the President an approval rating of 48% and a net approval of +4, his best numbers since the Bin Laden raids. Nate Silver, previously skeptical of the President’s chances for re-election in November of 2011, now believed in February that Obama was the clear favorite, noting how his new populist approach was a strong match for critical swing states like Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Despite alienating many of his wealthier backers with his populism, Obama was still able to consistently pull stronger fundraising numbers relative to his opponents. Considering that he was at risk of being challenged by his own party just a few months prior, the 44th President had to have felt pretty good about the way the tides had been turning.

With that being said, he was not in the clear yet. The effort to rebuild his economic image had thus far gone smoothly, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t get thrown off course. Beyond the fact that it was a real possibility that the economy could have just slumped further into stagnation for the rest of 2012, it was also apparent that the Republicans were not going to let him suddenly start playing the game by his own rules with no resistance. After all, it wasn’t the Republicans that presided over an unemployment rate that perpetually sat above 8%. It wasn’t Republicans who couldn’t find a way to lower gas prices. It wasn’t Republicans who failed to live up to the promise of “hope and change.” Simply put, Republican strategists had come to understand this fact just as well as Obama had: If the election is a referendum on the President’s performance, he will lose. And since their goal is to defeat Obama, they were going to do whatever it took to make it a referendum election.

For a while, it wasn’t entirely clear which Republican would be the one to take on this mantle of responsibility. Primary polls fluctuated constantly, with five candidates each having their turn at being the Republican frontrunner. Each of them had their own strengths the Obama team had to work around, as well as weaknesses they could exploit. There was Texas Governor Rick Perry, a right-wing kool-aid drinker who had a lot of charisma, but not the intelligence necessary to remember his own plans. There was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a longtime conservative champion with a history of questionable marital issues. There was Rick Santorum, a pseudo-populist social conservative who had managed to have real pull with some blue-collar workers, but also had the stain of losing by over 17 points in his own home state. Even Herman Cain, a former pizza CEO with a laughably simplistic tax plan, managed to steal the frontrunner spot before having to drop out over allegations of sexual harassment. As late as March, the Obama team still wasn’t entirely sure who they would have to slog against for the next several months.

But by the time the process concluded, the Republicans had finally settled on a guy who, at least on paper, was supremely qualified to take on this role. He had a well-established history as a successful businessman, even saving the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics from financial ruin. He had experience winning and governing as a Republican in a deep blue state. He had galvanized upon anti-immigration policies that had become very popular among the blue-collar workers whom the Obama campaign needed to win.

Theoretically, everything about former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney should have made him the perfect candidate to become Mr. Fix-It, harness economic discontent, and turn this election into the referendum that Republican strategists were dying for.

But over the course of the next few months, the Obama team would do everything they could to make sure this would never, ever happen.

Stay Tuned for Part Three!

Just two years after being swept out of power in a clear landslide, the Republican Party would roar back in a way that even the party’s biggest advocates couldn’t ever dream of. Not only did the GOP flip the U.S. House after four years of Democratic control, but their net gain of 63 seats was the largest that the party had seen in over 70 years. Democratic state control was shattered all across the country, including in solidly blue states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. While the U.S. Senate would remain under Democratic control, their near-supermajority of 59 seats was cut down to 53, putting their control of the chamber on borrowed time.

Wave elections in favor of the opposition party were nothing new by 2010, but this was far more than just a simple check on power against the Democrats. Not only would hundreds of Democrats lose their jobs, including several who had previously been considered deeply entrenched in their positions, but their replacements would often be the sons and daughters of the unapologetically conservative Tea Party movement, whose core principle was a complete rejection of compromise with the Democratic Party. They didn’t want to limit spending; they wanted to kill it. They didn’t want to fix the Affordable Care Act; they wanted to repeal it. They didn’t want to unite around centrist judges; they wanted to block any judge not sufficiently committed to moral conservatism. The message of the 2010 election, at least in the eyes of a sufficient chunk of the American population, was a simple one: Block the Democrats at all costs, no questions asked.

As election night wore on and this new political reality set in, the White House was consumed by despair. This outcome wasn’t much of a surprise to them; the polls had been pointing in the direction of a Republican wave for months by that point. But the visual of a wave so decisive was still hard to fully take in, and it left advisors with little sense of where to go next. Some would even leave their jobs altogether, including Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, both of whom had been among the most important members of the team since they first entered the White House. However, amid all this turmoil, the man at the center of this backlash found himself returning to a sense of political humility.

Up to this point, President Barack Obama’s career had been nothing short of astounding. First elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama would begin climbing the ranks in a fashion no one in the Democratic Party had been capable of since the days of Harry Truman. Quickly gaining a reputation as a charismatic talent, he would use this momentum to breeze his way into the U.S. Senate in 2004, crushing his Democratic and Republican opponents along the way. Less than three years later, he would announce his candidacy for the presidency on the same steps where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech, a less than subtle acknowledgment of the historic nature of his campaign. From here, his ascension to the top would overcome obstacles almost no one thought possible, dismantling the previously unchallenged Hillary Clinton machine and obliterating John McCain’s bipartisan maverick appeal with just a single year. The road that led him to this position was unprecedented in the modern age, and it left people forgetting a critical moment in the President’s career: his only loss.

In September of 1999, believing in himself just a bit too hard, 38-year-old State Senator Barack Obama announced his intention to primary against incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush in Illinois’ 1st congressional district. This was something many of his closest friends warned him against attempting, and as the campaign progressed, all of their fears would be realized despite Obama’s dismissals. He was never able to make a convincing case in favor of ditching Rush, bizarrely trying to argue that the popular 53-year-old Congressman elected just eight years prior was a symbol of the past. Meanwhile, he had very little to offer of his own, allowing his opponents to paint him as an out-of-touch elitist with little resistance. All of this culminated in a massive loss to Rush just a few months later, which had the very real potential of sending his political career into a death spiral. While he would manage to turn it around in a remarkably spectacular way, it stood out as the one moment throughout the 2000s that the Chicago-based superstar was ever truly humbled.

Fast-forwarding to 2010, sitting right in front of a TV that projected his party taking massive losses, Obama was forced to come back down to Earth once again. While he wasn’t on the ballot this time around, it was clear that the anger that was widespread throughout the country was directed at him, first and foremost. They despised the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, his signature achievement that he had spent his entire first year pushing through. Despite his constant attempts to reach across the aisle, he was increasingly being portrayed as a far-left radical by his opponents. The hope and change he promised to deliver began to look like a cruel joke, with unemployment still hovering at just under 10% despite his signature 2009 economic stimulus and other important pieces of economic reform. The stardom that had swept him and his party into power in 2008 was long gone, and he was now forced to work with a new Republican Congress that was elected to stop him at every possible opportunity. For the first time, results came in that showed the President a very clear message: re-election won’t come easily.

The next day, Obama was forced to come out of his bubble, describing the result as nothing less than a “shellacking”. While he stopped short of criticizing his own policies, he acknowledged that many of his supporters were deeply disappointed in a way they never had been before. It was a humiliating speech, and to many observers, it marked the beginning of a long story that would eventually end in the President’s political career in irrecoverable tatters. Not only were the tides against Obama similar to those against one-term presidents, but all of it came alongside his new image as a false political messiah. The promise of President Barack Obama was unlike anything seen in generations, and the evaporation of that image had the 44th President experience a fall from grace not seen in decades. Not even the Democratic primary looked like a sure bet anymore, with Independent Senator and Obama ally Bernie Sanders stating that a progressive challenge to the President would “enliven the debate”. Not since Jimmy Carter had the path for a second term looked more bleak for a Democratic President, and political obituaries for his tenure had already begun to be written.

However, just as the loss to Bobby Rush had paved the way for his rise to the top, the shellacking Obama took in the 2010 midterms would prove to be the spark needed for Obama to reclaim his image. Over the next two years, the battle-scarred President would run a campaign operation unparalleled in modern American history. Presiding as an incumbent over a poor economy, a mixed foreign policy record, and increasing populist anger directed towards his administration, Barack Obama managed to define his re-election campaign on his terms, turning seemingly every single perceived liability into a valuable asset. He would rebrand himself AND his opponent to his liking to the extent that it was sometimes difficult to remember that he wasn’t challenging an incumbent. Despite his failure to deliver on hope and change, he would manage to win back almost all of his base from 2008 within just a year and secure the mantle of change one last time. His team would commit to widespread outreach into growing communities of color in the Sun Belt while keeping their support among working-class whites in the Rust Belt largely intact. No matter the problem, the Obama campaign always had a working answer, serving as yet another example of the 51-year-old’s political astuteness.

The result of this was a decisive re-election, whose relatively close result underscores just how legendary the path to get to this point had been. Theoretically, no one should have been able to pull off what Barack Obama did. No one should have been able to get away with presiding over an unemployment rate of 7.7% and rising prices. No one should have been able to recover their political image after a historic rebuke to their government just two years prior. No one should have been able to run a change campaign after four years of being relatively meek. None of this should have happened, but Barack Obama made it a reality. In doing so, the newly crowned two-term President would end his political campaign career on a gargantuan high note, cementing his place in history as the face of the best-run political campaign in modern American history.

This series is about how he managed to pull this off, covering everything in between his initial announcement to Election Night 2012 itself. As the Democratic Party currently struggles to establish itself following its 2024 election defeat, it’s worth looking back at the most successful Democratic operation in the 21st century to remember that political ineffectiveness from the Democratic Party is by no means inevitable. Even under theoretically terrible circumstances, the Democrats are perfectly capable of running a spirited effort that can defy the odds. Obama may be an exceptional talent in some respects, but that doesn’t mean his campaign didn’t carry lessons that we can take to heart now. The playbook offered by this campaign has been ignored for far too long, so I’d like to shine some light on it.

The State of the Union

On January 25th, 2011, Barack Obama headed over to the United States Capitol to deliver his yearly State of the Union address. This would be the first time he’d be addressing a Republican-controlled House of Representatives since becoming President, and there was a degree of uncertainty in the air. Most of the freshmen in that room had been elected to serve as staunch foes to the President, and if Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst two years prior had proven anything, it’s that the Republican base was big fans of performative acts of disobedience. Before the speech, it would have been fair to expect these recruits to pull off something similar for their shot at fame in Tea Party circles.

However, just two days before the speech, the Republican Party found itself in a panic when Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a darling of the Tea Party movement, announced that she would be delivering her response to the State of the Union separate from the official Republican response. Many pundits saw this move as a very unusual display of disunity, especially for a party that had just won a massive victory just a few months prior. Republican leadership disdained Bachmann’s gesture, even forbidding her access to the GOP Capitol Hill Club where she had originally intended to deliver her response. After just twenty days of being in charge, there was a brand new, large crack in this new Republican majority, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last to come throughout the tumultuous 112th Congress. Despite Bachmann’s insistence otherwise, the message from this was still clear: The Tea Party’s target wasn’t just the Democrats, but also their party establishment.

All of this left the President in an awkward position. Obama was certainly familiar with how to campaign against Republicans; he wouldn’t have been sitting in the Oval Office if he hadn’t. He even had prior experience running against a crank in the form of Alan Keyes, his Republican opponent in the 2004 U.S. Senate election in Illinois. But never before had he dealt with a group as large and as aggressive as this new freshman class. The fact that they were capable of delivering their own State of the Union response was just the clearest example yet to prove that these guys couldn’t be safely ignored and muzzled by their leadership. They were going to step on whatever toes were necessary to make their voices heard, including their own party’s Speaker and his establishment allies. It was a tricky situation for the politically wounded President to navigate, and while he wouldn’t officially announce his re-election campaign yet, it was one of the first giveaways as to how Obama would conduct his effort.

For the most part, the speech itself didn’t feature anything out of the ordinary. After an acknowledgment of the recent assassination attempt against Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Obama’s speech largely consisted of bipartisan appeals he had expressed willingness towards in prior statements, such as lowering the corporate tax rate and tort reform. It was the exact kind of speech you would expect to be delivered by an incumbent President in the aftermath of a repudiation midterm, and while it received positive reviews and went on without a hitch, it also didn’t stick around in most people’s minds.

Ultimately, Obama’s address was not where the interesting story of the night lay. It also wasn’t the official Republican response by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, whose measured response was similarly unmemorable and uneventful. Rather, Bachmann’s speech would receive the most attention, and it wasn’t exactly pretty. The low production value was observed the second the speech began, with the first visual being Bachmann not making eye contact with the camera, a problem that would persist for the entire speech. The camera crew was not prepared ahead of time to zoom out for Bachmann’s clip-art visuals, leaving just the corner of the image for several awkward seconds until they could readjust. While she didn’t come off as extreme as her past statements may have suggested she would, her fast-talking and passionate appeals to American exceptionalism came off as bizarre gestures in a speech already plagued by peculiarity.

Despite hitting on many of the same points as the Tea Party, the reviews of Bachmann’s speech were generally negative. Democrats criticized it for relying on extreme rhetoric against the President, which came off as particularly distasteful just seventeen days after the mass shooting that nearly killed Gabby Giffords. The Republican establishment saw it as an unhelpful diversion that made their party look incompetent and radical, two liabilities that could have doomed them ahead of the 2012 election. Others made fun of the apparent lack of preparedness on display, with Saturday Night Live even releasing a parody of this speech to get in on the fun. While getting the spotlight is usually a positive opportunity to expand outreach, it can go south very quickly if the orator isn’t ready. In the end, the 3rd-term Minnesotan Congresswoman could not build off the post-election momentum, making her wing of the party look unappealing and loony.

In retrospect, this muddled response was among the earliest signs of a problem that would develop into a strong talking point by the Obama campaign the following year: Republican incompetence. Despite being provided a historic mandate in the lower chamber, House Republicans were bogged down in internal strife over the direction to take the party, leaving little sense of a united front ahead of their efforts in the 2012 election. This allowed the Obama campaign to define them instead, applying the worst perceptions that people had about the Republican establishment AND the Tea Party in one. In doing this, he was able to kill two birds with one stone, haunting his various Republican prospects' hopes later down the line and establishing himself as the early frontrunner.

Solving Iraq (For The Time Being)

For most of Obama’s first two years, foreign policy had largely fallen to the sidelines. While he had been elected in 2008 on a promise to rebuild America’s image, that commitment was partially held off amid a global economic crisis and grueling healthcare debate. Given the historic size of the Democratic majority he was elected with, it just made more sense for him and his team to prioritize their domestic agenda first.

However, once the 112th Congress made it clear that it had no interest in working with the White House, foreign policy suddenly emerged as one of the last areas where the President could still have meaningful sway. With his signature achievement signed into law and the effects of his economic policies slowly beginning to take shape, Obama decided to direct his focus towards implementing his foreign policy agenda, and from a political perspective, there was one clear issue to take care of.

Apart from the Great Recession of 2008, no other issue had been a bigger factor in Obama’s rise to the presidency than the U.S. involvement in the Iraq War. First started in 2003 under the guise that then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq War was initially extremely popular with the public and scored bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress. With American fears still high after the September 11th attacks, they were more than happy to rally behind the effort that they saw as bringing stability to the world, or as President George W. Bush described it, “a war on terror”. Mere days after the Iraq War had commenced, Bush’s approval rating in Gallup would shoot up to 71%.

However, there was always a critical error underlying this entire mission. While it was true that Saddam Hussein was a monster who was complicit in mass genocide and oppression, it was also true that he had been the only real stabilizing force in the country by 2003. Many in the Bush administration were well aware of this, including the administration’s figures who had also served with Bush’s father in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, like Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney. Despite being in the theoretically perfect position to do so, Bush Sr., Cheney, and Powell all agreed to hold off on toppling Saddam Hussein under fears that it would further destabilize the country and the Middle East as a whole. Contrary to what conservatives said at the time, this conclusion was hardly some critique limited to anti-war leftists in France and Germany; it was essentially just geopolitical common sense. Any justification for toppling him was always going to require a comprehensive plan to fill the vacuum, and if no such person could be provided, the reasons behind an attack should have been ironclad to justify the fallout that would ensue.

In the end, this problem was never even considered by the Bush administration, including by skeptics from within. After Bush initially declared the toppling of Saddam Hussein a victory within weeks under a now-infamous Mission Accomplished banner, the next five years of quagmire that followed would completely unravel him and his party. Not only were the promises of stability following the Ba’athist deposition proven to be a fantasy, but the Bush administration’s previous justification—Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction—was exposed to be a total lie. By the time the 2004 election season had rolled around, Bush’s approval ratings had officially sunk into the negatives for the very first time, forcing him to weaponize homophobia and fearmongering to secure his second term. This re-election mandate would only make the situation worse for Bush in the long run, as his handling of the war became increasingly disastrous and indefensible. His approval ratings only seemed to slip further down, and demands for an end to the war became the majority consensus among the public. With Democrats securing both Houses of Congress on an anti-war platform in the 2006 midterms, the nation looked towards a leader who had the credibility and judgment necessary to bring this dark period to an end.

Up until the last few months of the 2008 campaign, this had been the main appeal behind Barack Obama’s candidacy. While Hillary Clinton had long been assumed to be the Democratic frontrunner and had even spoken favorably towards eventual withdrawal, her vote to authorize Bush’s actions in Iraq back in 2002 would leave serious questions about her judgment and trustworthiness. By comparison, Obama’s opposition dating back to the war’s start permitted him to strike a strong comparison between himself and Clinton, and by extension, earn the trust of voters as a serious agent of change. This soon allowed him to take the frontrunner status away from Clinton and carry over all of these same talking points against John McCain, someone who had also voted for the war. Despite the economy taking center stage by Election Day 2008, exit polls still showed that 10% of voters who described Iraq as their biggest concern backed Obama by a 59%-39% margin. As such, any successful re-election would likely have to coincide with fulfilling his promise on Iraq to the public.

Of course, going through with this was always easier said than done. While ending the U.S. involvement in Iraq was still the obvious solution by this point, it wasn’t entirely clear if the Obama administration would be able to do so while still keeping the current government stable. Withdrawal was popular among the public, but the image of a lost war would have also had dire political consequences for the President, so a balancing act would have had to be made. As domestic policy took up most of his time and media attention during his first two years, his administration also began the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, which would be complete on August 19th, 2010. Describing this new phase as “Operation New Dawn”, the role of the U.S. presence was now to serve as a supporting role for the Iraqi army and help secure their hold over the country before the final withdrawal scheduled for December of 2011.

In retrospect, this stage of the process did not go according to plan in the long term. While the U.S. Army could spend as much time as it wanted attempting to train Iraqi soldiers, that was never going to be enough to fix the lack of morale present among them. The new government they were fighting for was not only a corrupt kleptocracy, but it was also dysfunctional and had little ability to exercise authority. Any attempt at being caretakers for the Iraqi state would have to take a lot more time and force than the Obama administration employed, and since they lacked the personal will and political capital necessary to do this, they had to make do with the time available to them. From that perspective, it’s no surprise that after the final withdrawal was complete on December 18th of 2011, the government would fall back into turmoil just a few years later and force the administration back into the country.

But since the worst effects of that turmoil did not crop up until his second term, Obama was able to successfully reap the political benefits that came from withdrawal. While his Republican rivals would criticize him for the hasty nature of the operation, the lack of a withdrawal plan of their own, combined with their concerns about a fast withdrawal not yet becoming clear, made their argument look confusing and out of touch with the public. Not only did 75% of Americans approve of bringing the troops home, but 60% continued to do so even if the Iraqi government was unable to keep a lid on violence. Bipartisan support to that extent had become increasingly rare since the start of Obama’s term, so the fact that he was able to get it just a year before the election was extraordinary by itself.

This latest political win would end up giving the President two important assets ahead of the election. The first was that it served as an example that the change he promised was translating into tangible action, which would be especially important as Americans had been increasingly disappointed in his presidency. The second was that it helped further contribute to his status as a competent executive. By avoiding the worst effects of withdrawal and sticking to his plan without much reservation, it made Obama looked like a competent statesman who had the clear vision and guidance necessary to lead America on the world stage. By comparison, the Republicans’ confusing and wishy washy criticisms of his withdrawal policy made them look rudderless, allowing Obama to once again define the narrative on his own terms. While the salience of the Iraq War to voters had dropped far lower than in 2004 or 2008, it was one of many foreign policy decisions he made throughout the year that helped him rebuild his image.

“It’s A Go”

On October 29th, 2004, the Qatari-owned news network Al Jazeera released an 18-minute video filmed by Osama Bin Laden, the prime culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. In the video, he confirms his role in carrying out the attacks for the very first time, criticizes the Bush administration’s response to the attacks, and expresses his intent to attack the United States again. The motivation of the clip is not officially known, but the language and timing could both be deduced as an intention to boost George W. Bush’s odds of victory in the 2004 election. Four days later, Bush would narrowly secure a second term, with some polls suggesting that the tape very well could have helped the President get over the finish line.

I mention this story because it serves as an important example of the extent to which Osama Bin Laden haunted the American public and government. With the 9/11 attacks still fresh in the minds of the population, the government’s inability to capture or kill Bin Laden left people paranoid to such a level that just his words alone could have potentially swung an entire presidential election. And with Bush ultimately failing to reap the political benefits that came with eliminating Bin Laden, it theoretically left Obama with the opportunity to score some political goodwill of his own.

For a while, it wasn’t clear that he would have much more success than his predecessor on this front. Not only had Bin Laden had plenty of time to encrypt his location from U.S. and international authorities, but the collapsing economy and costly battles over healthcare reform in his first two years meant that Obama had little time to concern himself with foreign policy matters. It was by no means ignored entirely; Obama would consistently reaffirm catching Bin Laden as his top foreign policy priority. But with the likelihood of his party maintaining its overwhelming Senate and House majorities dwindling, Obama opted to prioritize his legislative wins for the time being, leaving the Bin Laden case cold for the foreseeable future.

However, while Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders engaged in endless negotiation over healthcare and Wall Street reform, the seeds were slowly being planted for an eventual takedown of the Al-Qaeda leader. In July of 2010, the National Security Agency (NSA) successfully monitored calls from Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, one of Bin Laden’s most trusted associates, who was driving near the northern Pakistani town of Peshawar. This soon led U.S. intel to a massive compound in Abbottabad, whose size indicated that it was designed to protect a high-value target. Secret monitoring from the sky would soon begin, which only added to the case that the administration was slowly crafting. By the time working for legislative policy became impractical in early 2011, Obama was left with this new lead to consider.

When everything was said and done, it was the best lead the State Department had on Bin Laden’s whereabouts since he fled to the Afghan Tora Bora mountains in late 2001. However, that did not mean that any action taken against it wasn’t still extraordinarily risky. What evidence was available was striking, but what was equally striking was what didn’t exist. No photos of Bin Laden or his family at the compound were ever produced, leaving them with only what they described as “circumstantial evidence.” The two most effective means of taking him out—massive bombings and a helicopter raid—both had serious logistical problems that could have potentially thrown the entire operation into jeopardy. Not only was there no guarantee that Bin Laden would be found, but the consequences of getting it wrong were catastrophic in every respect. In the event of a failed bombing, the Pakistani government would be understandably furious at the death of innocent civilians via collateral damage, and it would give Bin Laden an excellent rhetorical recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda. If the helicopter raid failed, the U.S. soldiers would be thrown into immediate danger for no reason. In both cases, the public would deride the President for his failed leadership and incompetence, sending his already-slipping approval ratings down even further just as he plans to announce his re-election campaign. While success would be a massive foreign policy victory, a failure on this scale could have sent the Obama 2012 campaign to an early grave.

Some in the administration did not want to take this risk. Vice President Joe Biden emerged as one of the lead skeptics, arguing to the President directly that he should wait for more intel before making the final call. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was also skeptical, warning Obama of the political fallout that came from Jimmy Carter’s failure to secure American hostages from Iran. While Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were more favorable towards the raid, their support always held some degree of reservation. Outside of CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was reportedly the strongest voice in favor of the raid, everyone was anxious about taking a stance stronger than a soft leaning one way or the other. While Obama was always going to be the one who made the final call, the overwhelming sense of indecision among his staff meant that he had no one to lean on. He was going to have to rely on himself, taking all of the potential political praise, blame, or stagnation that came from this decision. Would he play it safe and contribute further to voters’ ongoing disappointment in him, or would he risk his entire presidency on something with just 60-40 odds?

On April 28th, the President quietly decided to give the go-ahead to a helicopter raid. He would tell his national security team the next morning, and over the next two days, the upcoming mission was constantly on his mind. Even as he was surveying tornado damage in rural Alabama, giving a commencement speech at Miami Dade College, and goading one of his biggest political adversaries into running for his job, Obama was anxiously anticipating the start of this make-or-break event. His charisma allowed him to hide this inner turmoil from the public, but he would later describe this period in a 60 Minutes interview as the longest of his life, only comparable to when his daughter Sasha had come down with meningitis at just three months old. Even on the day of the operation itself, he was careful about what he chose to wear to avoid adding suspicion, eventually settling on staying in his golf attire from a game he had played earlier in the day. When the clock struck 2:00 pm EST on May 1st, Obama and his team headed to the Situation Room to review final preparations. Not long afterward, the President found himself surrounded by his national security team in a windowless room, watching the television like a hawk as he waited to see whether or not his gambit would pay off.

The definitive outcome of the raid wouldn’t be immediately clear for the next few hours; all of the bodies would have to be further identified elsewhere. However, preliminary reporting around 3:50 pm indicated that Obama’s decision to launch a helicopter raid into the Abbottabad compound was a resounding success. Not only had the man himself been taken out and thrown into a body bag along with his associates, but multiple different items from the compound were successfully retrieved for intelligence purposes despite the pitch black darkness and the tight time frame of the mission. Once the identity of Bin Laden had been officially confirmed at 7:01 pm, Obama and his team began to call top congressional leaders to inform them of the news. At 11:35 pm, Obama would officially confirm to the nation that the man behind the worst terrorist attack on American soil was no more.

Celebrations over the news had been occurring before the speech, mostly thanks to a Twitter leak an hour prior. But after the news was certified by the White House, thousands more would go out into the streets to party over the demise of America’s top pariah. In Washington, D.C., chants of “USA! USA! USA!” could be heard from several blocks away. In New York City, the city most afflicted by the 9/11 attacks, celebrations were strongest around Ground Zero, with some climbing the poles around the area with American flags. Even sports games were hit by the news, with the baseball game between the Mets and Phillies that night being interrupted by celebrations among fans, and John Cena announcing the news at a WWE event in Tampa. Even if the death itself had little impact in the grand scheme of things, it still allowed Americans to reclaim a sense of patriotic pride in the fight against terrorism overseas and get some closure on the nearly decade-long effort to catch Bin Laden.

Leadership and Risk-Taking

Despite the gravity of the news, this did not meaningfully change much about the President’s political standing. According to a Gallup poll released soon after Bin Laden’s death, Obama’s approval rating had hit a net positive of +11, his highest numbers since late 2009. However, this bump would disintegrate within just two months, with a Gallup poll from late June seeing his numbers slip back down to -6, similar to what it had been before May 1st.

While this may seem confusing at first, further context of the shifting political tides since 9/11 makes it clearer why this bump was merely temporary. By the time Bin Laden had been killed, fears of terrorism and foreign policy had long since stopped being a top priority among voters. Their concerns instead shifted towards the economy, which had entered a state of pandemonium in late 2008. More so than any other issue, it was the poor economy that put Obama in the Oval Office, and the ever-growing consensus among the public was that he was not doing enough to combat its long-term effects. The economic stimulus did allow the U.S. economy to dig itself out of the crisis, but the package was not large enough to make the ensuing recovery a speedy one. By the time Bin Laden was killed, the unemployment rate still sat at 9.0%, hardly any lower than the 10.0% peak from earlier in his term. Mere months after the killings, the President’s approval rating on the economy hit a new low of just 26%, and almost all the gains he received from the public for killing Bin Laden were long gone. While voters may have appreciated his actions on foreign policy affairs, it was not going to be enough to save his presidency from the ongoing economic sluggishness that voters cared far more about. In the short term, it is hard to deny that the Bin Laden raid had little effect on the President’s increasingly poor image.

However, the long-term analysis shows where the Bin Laden raid fits into the puzzle. Similar to his actions in Iraq, Obama’s decisiveness in fulfilling a campaign promise with efficiency helped contribute to his status as both a change agent and competent executive, both major assets for the campaign trail. However, the Bin Laden experience in particular also left him and his team with two important lessons ahead of his re-election campaign. The first was that voters were more interested in the economy. They would be willing to give him high marks on his achievements elsewhere, but it would not be capable of fully moving the needle because it just wasn't what they were directly concerned about. Success at governing on the foreign policy front was helpful, but it needed to be paired with success on the economic front as well. That leads into the second and more important lesson that goes to the heart of Obama's decision to launch a helicopter raid on the Abbottabad compound: the need to take important risks.

Up to this point, despite being elected on a mandate for sweeping change, the President had largely been risk-averse. The small size of his economic stimulus package had partially been the consequence of Obama seeking Republican support for the bill, leading to the package effectively being engineered by Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the two Republican Senators from the Pine Tree State. Most of his cabinet appointments had backing from a considerable chunk of the Senate Republican caucus, with Timothy Geithner’s nomination to the Secretary of the Treasury in particular ultimately being saved by crossover support. Even Obama’s signature achievement—the Affordable Care Act—had been stuck in limbo for well over a year due to his insistence on reaching out to the GOP. While some important legislation was achieved during Obama’s first two years, his record still left a lot to be desired among his increasingly disillusioned base, who had been begging the President to stop reaching out to an opposition party that had explicitly made defeating the President their sole priority. Worse, due to this agonizingly slow progress and the lackluster economy that came with it, there was no bipartisan appreciation towards Obama that replaced the base’s disappointment. It was the worst of both worlds for the President: His bipartisan outreach weakened his ability to fix the nation’s many woes, and he wasn’t even being given credit from the other side for extending his hand out to them.

This flaw did not suddenly disappear once the helicopters landed in Abbottabad. As I’ll delve into in the next parts of this story, Obama would still go on to have moments where he felt it was necessary to reach out to the other side, much to his detriment. But by taking a risk that paid off among the public, even if temporarily, it showed him that there was a benefit to taking chances and expressing strength in his decisions. This kind of posture may not have been in character for him, but it showed the President an opportunity to reclaim the bully pulpit he had long since lost. As had been evident throughout his presidency before May 2nd, resorting back to the vague gestures about hope and change across partisan lines from his 2008 campaign wasn’t going to cut it. With an economy in a continued state of disrepair, people wanted to see positive results from their Commander-in-Chief. Whether or not progress was bipartisan was irrelevant, especially since the Republicans were always going to portray him as a vicious partisan regardless. Simply put, they wanted a leader who got things done, and they saw those qualities in Obama’s handling of the Bin Laden raid.

From there, the goal became how to connect the leadership qualities people liked from Obama here to the issue of the economy. This required reclaiming the bully pulpit, not as a unifier, but as a guy who tried to get things done despite considerable risks and steep opposition. His legislative achievements couldn’t be seen as bipartisan compromises that helped preserve the spirit of cooperation, but instead as the President’s fight for the people being partially thwarted by an elite opposition that insisted on giving more money to the rich and powerful. If it wasn’t for the Republicans and their donors blocking him at every turn, he could have crafted a healthcare bill that didn’t include an unpopular individual mandate. If Republicans couldn’t get Bin Laden after eight years of trying, what makes you think that their leadership could address our growing deficit? By framing his presidency in these terms, it helps present the public with a brand new, far more favorable way to perceive Obama. He wasn’t an unaccomplished neophyte who couldn’t deliver on the promises he expressed in his flowery speeches, but instead an unrelenting ally to the working class held back by an opposition party that cares more about protecting their donors and their party than something that does good for the country.

This kind of rebranding was undeniably risky. Regardless of how unpopular the congressional opposition may be, people aren’t usually quick to blame them instead of the sitting President for the nation’s woes. Jimmy Carter’s infamously poor relationship with the legislative body meant nothing to the public in 1980. George H.W. Bush’s attempts in 1992 to frame the Democratic Congress of the time as the face of the derided establishment completely fell flat. Bill Clinton campaigned against the congressional GOP in 1996, but it was also in the context of a booming economy and relative world peace that he earned widespread credit for. This wasn’t a strategy that had a great track record, and it very well could have backfired if Obama couldn’t deliver this message succinctly.

But if the Bin Laden raid had taught the 44th President anything, there was also great benefit that could come from taking a gamble. And as his polling numbers slipped further throughout 2011, taking this gamble began to look like his last hope for re-election.

Stay Tuned for Part Two!

If there was one event that I believe best summarizes the 1960 presidential election, both in regards to how it is viewed then and now, it would undoubtedly be the first presidential debate held on September 26th. The first ever debates to be televised, it is often retrospectively viewed today as the moment when a young John F. Kennedy began his ascension to the White House, much to the chagrin of a tricky Richard Nixon. To the television audience, the contrast between the two men became immediately obvious the second they walked out on stage. Kennedy looked calm, resolute, and had just the right amount of glow reflecting off his skin and hair. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon looked like his face was melting under the lights, made even worse by the fact that his choice of a light gray suit blended in with his skin tone. Additionally, while Kennedy stood confident and upright, Nixon was slumping with poor posture due to a knee injury that had occurred just hours prior. Some who watched even wondered if Nixon was ill, including his mother, who reportedly called him soon after the debate concluded. From there, so long as Kennedy didn’t completely bomb, he had effectively won the debate by default. While he had often been portrayed as an inexperienced novice in comparison to his opponent, this debate had presented television viewers with the exact opposite. Kennedy looked ready to lead, while Nixon looked nervous and unsure. After this, Kennedy would establish a clear lead over Nixon in Gallup polling, a lead which he would never relinquish over the next month and a half.

However, that is only half of the story. While the debate was televised, many others listened to it on the radio instead, so factors like posture and proper makeup did not factor into the equation. Naturally, this made things far more advantageous for the Vice President, who was still capable of articulating himself properly despite his evident physical ailments. While polling data on the matter is sparse and features questionable methodology, the few bits of information we do have suggest that Nixon had been victorious among radio listeners, a stark contrast from the overwhelmingly negative reception he got from television viewers. In just the very first televised presidential debate, public consensus had become strongly divided over perception. This even ran up to the top, with running mates Lyndon Johnson and Henry Cabot Lodge both reportedly believing their ticket partner had lost. While Kennedy would receive the polling bump and the retrospective praise, further analysis of the topic makes things much more complicated than initially assumed.

Over the decade, gaps in perception, thanks to television, would only become more and more commonplace. In his book entitled The Nineties, author Chuck Klosterman argues that television in the 1990s had “become the way to understand everything, ruling from a position of one-way control that future generations would never consent to or understand” (Klosterman, 271). I believe that the same principle applies to the 1960s as well, in a way that is perhaps even more dramatic. From Vietnam to civil rights to elections themselves, television not only transformed the perceptions of these issues among Americans living in the 1960s, but also our retrospective view on the decade as well. In this piece, I want to go over some of the most iconic events of the decade and explain how television played an irreplaceable role in defining our outlook on them.

The Civil Rights Consensus That Wasn’t

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the ongoing mistreatment of African-Americans, particularly in the segregated Jim Crow South, had slowly been attracting more and more ire from American liberals and activists. While most of the older ones had previously been willing to put these grievances aside for the sake of the New Deal, this clear violation of human rights became increasingly unacceptable to younger people, especially since many of them had just fought overseas on the pretense of protecting liberty from the horrors of German and Japanese fascism. The Cold War only made segregation look more outdated and hypocritical. After all, how can America claim to be interested in spreading liberty when a sizable chunk of its population isn’t even treated as equal?

This train of thought would only continue to grow more popular, particularly as landmark civil rights victories such as Brown v. Board of Education began to crop up throughout the 1950s. By the time the 1960 election had rolled around, both major candidates had been forced to provide lip service to the civil rights movement, albeit while also staying careful about it so as not to alienate white southerners. Ultimately, this is the last election where such a balancing act would end up being necessary, as the years to follow would ultimately force the hands of politicians in both parties. On June 13, 1963, the now-President Kennedy would declare his support for civil rights unequivocally and launch an initiative for legislation on the matter. After Kennedy was assassinated later that year, the new President Lyndon Johnson would take up his old boss’s effort, using his long-time experience as a legislator to break through the Southern filibuster with northern Republican support. This ultimately became the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which officially outlawed employment discrimination and segregation in public places. Months later, after his party secured a landslide victory in the 1964 election, Johnson would sign the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing practices previously used to prevent African-Americans down South from voting. In just twenty years, the previously unchallenged Jim Crow had come crashing down, retrospectively being viewed today as the time when America had finally begun to start living up to its promises of freedom and liberty for all.

How did such a dramatic downfall happen in such a short period? While it comes down to many different factors, television’s role in this is undeniable. To best explain this, let’s consider the context in which John F. Kennedy decided to deliver his address on civil rights. Mere hours prior, Alabama Governor George Wallace had decided to engage in a now-infamous act of political theater in which he stood in front of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent the enrollment of black students. While it would not devolve into a crisis that many in the Kennedy administration feared, the President still felt the time was appropriate to make an address on the matter in light of the disappointment he felt after seeing the television coverage. As explained by Robert Schlesinger in his book entitled White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters, the speech was written in less than two hours, with Kennedy even reportedly telling his speech writer that “For the first time, I thought I was going to have to go off the cuff” (Schlesinger, 136). Despite the rushed nature, the speech was very well received by the public, albeit alongside predictable scorn from southern whites. Many of them had been watching the same television coverage that Kennedy had been, and they were equally confused and upset by what Wallace was doing. Television coverage made the incident look like the last gasp of a reactionary and backwards society that was fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the United States.

This exact story would play out over and over again for the next year, and the civil rights movement continued to look more justified in its cause. This was one of the main topics of Aniko Bodroghkozy’s Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement, and she hits on two important elements that allowed television to work against segregationists. The first was that whenever television would cover a civil rights march, it was almost always one that was both peaceful and featured a considerable number of white people present. The famous “March on Washington” on August 28th, 1963, is the best example of this. While most of the marchers were black, the size of the crowd and the evident white presence on the television made the event appear harmonious and heroic to casual observers, making the cause of civil rights more popular in the process. As Bodroghkozy describes it, “The coverage celebrating “black and white together” in peace and harmony pointed to the solution to all the news about racial strife in Birmingham, in Cambridge, and elsewhere that preceded the march; the solution did indeed require the institution of change, but the insistent focus on black “civil rights subjects” and their respectable-looking white allies made change look not only unthreatening but positively desirable” (Bodroghkozy, 100).

This increased popularity led to the second element that helped civil rights advocates: the equal-time rule. Since networks were obligated to present two sides of an important issue with equal levels of coverage, it allowed civil rights advocates to break further into the mainstream. This was something that segregationist politicians were increasingly bitter over, such as Mississippi U.S. Congressman John Bell Williams, who said, “We know of no responsible person in Mississippi who would go on the air and speak for integration” (Bodroghkozy, 61). While some civil rights activists were also critical of this rule because it gave a platform to segregationists, it was something that would ultimately play to their benefit as coverage of segregation became increasingly negative and indefensible.

Ultimately, as television coverage became a more popular medium throughout the 1960s, it became increasingly more difficult to justify the merits of Jim Crow, including to top politicians like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The large, diverse crowds for civil rights posed against the anger present by politicians like George Wallace and John Bell Williams made the former side look like the inevitable future and the latter look like reactionaries desperately clinging to the past. When the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law, it would have been easy to assume that the march towards progress on civil rights could only continue to look upward.

However, just five days after the bill was signed into law, those same television screens would begin to show just how clouded this perspective was.

On August 11, 1965, the Los Angeles Police Department attempted to arrest 21-year-old Marquette Frey for recently failing a sobriety test. Frey would attempt to resist this with help from his mother, Rena, and brother Ronald, which ultimately ended in a physical confrontation where Rena was struck in the face and all three were arrested. While all of this was happening, a group of onlookers began to approach the scene, and rumors sparked that the police had kicked a pregnant woman. This provoked outrage, with many in the crowd viewing it as yet another instance of mistreatment by a racist and corrupt LAPD. While attempts were made to calm the situation, it quickly devolved into a five-day-long riot, resulting in 34 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.

This riot is the subject of the first chapter of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, and this is for a very important reason. Over the next few days, network television would glue its helicopter cameras to the ongoing chaos, with seemingly every possible angle being covered for the perfect amount of spectacle. It was utterly stunning to those on the top, with Lyndon Johnson questioning how such an event could have been possible, given everything that had been accomplished over the last twenty years. After the debate had supposedly been settled, a city would be caught in flames over that very same subject.

At the end of the day, this whole spectacle exposed how the television's perception of an inevitable civil rights victory was just that: a television perception. Given how poor coverage had been for the segregationists and how positive it had been for the civil rights crowd, it was easy to assume that the debate was over. But this had never been in line with the truth, and the coverage of the Watts riot put this fact on full display. There were still millions of people who had not come to terms with this supposedly ingrained consensus, and the Watts riots coverage made them impossible to ignore. As Perlstien himself puts it, “The supposed American consensus had always been clouded. The experts had just become expert at ignoring the clouds” (Perlstein, 11).

After this, fights for civil rights would never again be seen in the same light. While there were noticeable advancements for them in the latter half of the 1960s, such as the 1968 Civil Rights Act that dealt with fair housing, these wins are not generally remembered much today. Instead, the legacy of the movement is usually cut off at August 6th, with August 11th being the start of a season of riots that would become one of the most popular symbols of this tumultuous decade. By television having such a large role in the coverage of civil rights fights and the Watts riots, it made it easy for those in the past and present to overlook those who stood in the way of civil rights, as well as overlook how civil rights fights had progressed after August 6th. With no television, it is nearly impossible to imagine either of these events playing out in our collective memory as they have.

The Victory That Was Lost

If there was anything that has defined Lyndon Johnson’s presidency more than civil rights, it is undoubtedly the war in Vietnam. While he was not the first president to have been involved in the conflict, he had been the prime architect of its massive escalation following the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This was initially uniformly supported by both sides of the aisle, but it soon became obvious that the United States was stuck in a grueling quagmire, resulting in thousands of young men being killed or wounded. Despite promises of victory right around the corner at seemingly every opportunity, the Johnson administration was never able to achieve its objectives, sending the entire presidency into a doom spiral and forcing Johnson out of the 1968 presidential election.

On a base level, it’s clear that television had a large role to play in this total erosion of confidence. Footage of the war and coverage of the United States’ failures in the conflict had become common news throughout the mid to late 1960s, fully exposing the increasingly unbelievable rhetoric of final victory coming from the Johnson White House. While this by itself is a good representative of television’s influence, I still don’t believe it fully accounts for just how much it was capable of shifting public perception. For that, I think it’s important to analyze the event that likely did the most damage to Johnson’s cause: the Tet Offensive.

From a military standpoint, it’s hard to argue that this was anything but a loss for the North Vietnamese. While they had some initial success in the early days of their invasion due to catching the South Vietnamese and Americans off guard, they were soon easily repelled once forces were reorganized, inflicting heavy casualties on the Viet Cong in the process. Additionally, their goal of sparking revolution among the South Vietnamese populous went nowhere, even despite how dysfunctional the South Vietnamese government had become by this point. While the first few days were certainly shocking, the outcome of the fight was a military success for the United States.

However, the television made sure that none of that mattered. While the outcome may not have been a victory for the North Vietnamese, the show of retreat on the part of the Americans looked like nothing less than a total rebuke of the narrative that the Johnson administration had been showing. This is best detailed in George Pavlidakey’s An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Tet Offensive and its Effect on Public Opinion about the Vietnam War, which goes over numerous examples of images that would come to scar the American psyche, such as North Vietnamese soldiers taking over the U.S. Embassy in South Vietnam and a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong POW. It was a stunning example of just how television could alter the reality on the ground through sheer coverage alone. Pavlidakey hits directly on this point, saying, “What the U.S. media did not say explicitly, it said implicitly, especially through images. All the imagery of bombings, corpses, shootings, fires, and other destruction gave the appearance that all of Vietnam “was in flames or being battered into ruins, and all Vietnamese civilians were homeless refugees”. Even when journalists knew otherwise, they were overruled” (Pavlidakey, 48).

Today, the Vietnam War is rightfully viewed as having been a failed mission from the start, and the Tet Offensive is often regarded as an American failure. As detailed by Michael Kazin and Maurice Isserman in America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, the idea that a victory in Vietnam could have ever been achieved was delusional at best and cynical at worst. It had always been built on the fundamental misunderstanding that people would always appreciate any alternative to communism that was backed by Americans, even if said alternative was even more morally depraved. Backlash to this mission likely would have still existed without television, as the core of the operation had always been broken.

However, it’s hard to imagine that it would ever evolve to the extent that it did. The fact that the war had received such widespread coverage day in and day out helped reinforce Americans’ perceived decline in prestige. The images being contrasted so strongly with what the establishment had been telling the people only made this disconnect worse, and not even a military victory like Tet could come even close to overturning this. Not only had televisions been able to spark more outrage via increased attention to evident failure, but they had the power to have people perceive victories as failures.

The Anti-War Party (Featuring The Pro-War)

On February 27th, 1968, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite—often labeled the most trusted man in America—would deliver a speech that declared that the ongoing war in Vietnam had devolved into a “dire stalemate”, criticizing the Johnson administration for portraying a message of blind optimism despite the reality on the ground. These are sentiments that he had been long been harboring before this, but the crisis around Tet prompted him to speak out, declaring that “it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could”.

Just a few weeks later, Lyndon Johnson would suffer a crushing blow on March 12th in the New Hampshire Democratic primary by Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. This showing by an incumbent President was remarkably weak, and television networks stopped at nothing to report it as such. Since it had happened so close to the Tet Offensive and Cronkite’s address, it was easy to assume that this was the culmination of an anti-Vietnam War movement that had been slowly building up throughout his presidency, and that their fervor had finally come back to bite Johnson in the ass. This was certainly how Johnson himself perceived it, announcing 19 days later that he was dropping out of the presidential race to negotiate peace with North Vietnam. This is also the outlook we generally view the result today, with one Politico article making note of McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam War bona fides before anything else. Based on everything surrounding it, it’s easy to assume that television’s perception of this as a vote against war was clear.

However, you may have noticed that I did not mention the actual margin in the race. That’s because, despite everything I just listed, it was a race that Lyndon Johnson had won, 49-42. The contest that had been one of the key drivers behind his decision to withdraw from the presidential race altogether had been a win. While this wasn’t a fact that was hidden from the public, this was similar to Tet in that the poor perception by television played a much bigger role than the actual result itself. Someone who was influenced by this was Lawrence O’Donnell, who details in Playing With Fire: The 1968 election and the Transformation of American Politics how he had long assumed for decades that Johnson had lost the New Hampshire primary due to just how poor the coverage had been for him in its aftermath, as well as happening to miss the more specific headlines produced by the New York Times the next morning. All of this was maddening to Johnson, or as O’Donnell put it, “This was the night that LBJ could finally see how completely upside down his world was. Everyone thought the guy who came in second ‘won’ the New Hampshire primary” (O’Donnell, 131).

Additionally, while much attention in television was and has been directed to the Vietnam War as an overriding factor in this result, the data does not point to this consensus. In a Louis Harris poll conducted days after the result, it found that had the issue of Vietnam been the only issue on the minds of primary voters, McCarthy would have only scored 22% of the primary, a loss of nearly half of his total support base. In addition, once again covered in Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, “two polling experts, Richard Scammon and Benjamin Wattenberg, looked more closely at the data and learned that 60 percent of the McCarthy vote came from people who thought LBJ wasn’t escalating the Vietnam War fast enough” (Perlstein, 232).

Ultimately, the sentiment behind the New Hampshire primary result was much more a general opposition to the Johnson administration, and while some of that included those who believed he was escalating too much in the Vietnam War, there were also plenty of others who viewed it in the exact opposite direction. This opposition was also the minority faction, at least within the confines of the New Hampshire Democratic voting electorate. However, both of those facts ultimately got overshadowed both then and retrospectively by how the result looked on television, in addition to the context preceding it. Given how disastrous Tet had been, how increasingly widespread the anti-Vietnam War movement had grown, and how it had respected allies like Walter Cronkite speaking on their behalf, it was easy to assume that the New Hampshire primary result was just the culmination of all of that. By presenting it in this fashion, television helped warp our perception of one of the most critical election results of the 1960s.

Conclusion

When I finally finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties, the main element that stood out to me was just how much Americans in the 1990s had experienced important cultural events through their television screens. From the Persian Gulf War to the O.J. Simpson trial, much of what came to define the culture of the 1990s in our collective memory was based on perceptions that were made from what was presented by the television media.

I had initially planned to do a project covering how much the television media networks had influenced the 1960s broadly. This is still an important aspect of what I’ve covered here, but I also realized that I desired to do more than just connect television coverage with historical events. Ultimately, I wanted to figure out how much television could shape our understanding of events we associate with the 1960s in comparison to reality. In looking at it from this angle, it’s clear that no analysis of the events of the 1960s, nor our collective memory of those events, can be understood without television. The assumption of a permanent coalition on civil rights was born from how television stations had initially portrayed both sides of the fight, and its subsequent erosion was aided by those same television stations. A military victory had images produced that were so damaging to American prestige that it was widely regarded as an unmitigated disaster. Lyndon Johnson’s victory in the New Hampshire primary was not only viewed as a career-ending defeat but a direct repudiation of his escalatory policies in the Vietnam War, all despite evidence to the contrary.

None of this is meant to criticize the media networks of the time or now, nor is it to argue that television’s influence is negative overall. Media perceptions that go against the reality on the ground were nothing new by the 1960s, and they would have continued to exist regardless of whether televisions were produced or not. Rather, I believe that this serves as an important historical research lesson to be cognizant of how media coverage, intentionally or otherwise, can shape perceptions of events to such an extent that the reality is hardly even recognizable in our collective memory. While causality and contingency are incredibly important for research, neither of them will work without also considering context.

That’s what makes the 1960s so interesting: It is perhaps the clearest example of a time defined almost entirely by pure perception, regardless of whether it was true or false.

Works Cited

Perlstein, Rick. “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America”. Scribner, 2008. Accessed 22 Apr. 2025.

“Walter Cronkite’s Report on Vietnam - February 26, 1968” Internet Archive, 26 Feb. 1968, https://archive.org/details/CBS1968. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.

Isserman, Maurice and Michael Kazin. “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s”. Oxford University Press, pp. 67-82, 1999, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wXX18KsNGjRxK1OnuW5p6EAalMZTnJDh/view. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.

History Editors. “The Kennedy-Nixon Debates”. History, 21 Sept. 2010, https://www.history.com/articles/kennedy-nixon-debates. Accessed 25 Apr. 2025.

The Learning Network. “Sept. 26, 1960 | First Televised Presidential Debate”. The New York Times, 26. Sept 2011, https://archive.nytimes.com/learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/septe-26-1960-first-televised-presidential-debate/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.

NCC Staff. “How the Kennedy-Nixon debate changed the world of politics”. National Constitution Center, 26 Sept. 2017, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-debate-that-changed-the-world-of-politics. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.

“Gallup Presidential Election Trial-Heat Trends, 1936-2004”. Gallup, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20170630070844/http://www.gallup.com/poll/110548/gallup-presidential-election-trialheat-trends-19362004.aspx#4. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.

Klosterman, Chuck. “The Nineties”. Penguin Books, 8 Feb. 2022. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.

Schlesinger, Robert. “White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters”. Simon & Schuster, 15 Apr. 2008. Accessed 1 May. 2025.

Bodroghkozy, Aniko. “Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement”. University of Illinois Press, 1 Aug. 2013. Accessed 2 May. 2025.

Pavlidakey, George. “An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Tet Offensive and Its Effect on Public Opinion about the Vietnam War”. New College of Florida, Apr. 2012, https://ncf.sobek.ufl.edu/NCFE004648/00001. Accessed 6 May. 2025.

Glass, Andrew. “McCarthy nearly upsets LBJ in New Hampshire primary: March 12, 1968”. Politico, 12 Mar. 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/mccarthy-nearly-upsets-lbj-in-new-hampshire-primary-march-12-1968-220521. Accessed 8 May. 2025.

“Poll Finds Vote for McCarthy Was Anti-Johnson, Not Antiwar”. The New York Times, 18 Mar. 1968, https://www.nytimes.com/1968/03/18/archives/poll-finds-vote-for-mccarthy-was-antijohnson-not-antiwar.html. Accessed 8 May. 2025.

O’Donnell, Lawrence. “Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics”. Penguin Publishing Group, 6 Nov. 2018. Accessed 8 May. 2025.

Sound familiar?

The number of parallels between the 2004 election and the result we saw last Tuesday is a little startling, but I would be lying if I said anything I just listed was the reason I started drawing these conclusions. What truly got me questioning this link was the results we saw in the North Star State because they were almost identical to what we saw in 2004.

On paper, it was a decent night for the Minnesota GOP. Trump would come within 4.2% of victory, a swing rightward of 2.9% from 2020. The State House would come down to a 67-67 split, effectively deadlocking the DFL agenda for the next two years. All of their U.S. House incumbents won re-election comfortably, all of them improving on their numbers from 2022. They achieved some of the best numbers the party has seen in generations with rural voters. If you are a Republican, these results are hardly the worst you could have asked for.

However, when you factor in how the rest of the country voted this year, these results come out looking much more bleak for the Minnesota GOP. They present the picture of a party that is incapable of making up ground where they need to, and in the process, are locking themselves out of victory entirely. While there were places elsewhere in the country where the Republicans made very important gains, Minnesota was not among them. Just like in 2004, these results are not a cause for celebration for the Minnesota GOP. Their showing should be deeply concerning, and if they don’t get their act together very soon, they are on track for a large defeat in 2026.

But why? Well, let’s get into it.

Where the GOP Did Well

Before we get to the areas where the party failed, let’s first examine the places where the party made notable improvements.

As I said previously, Trump did manage to build on his margin compared to 2020, taking the state 2.9% closer to him this time around. Almost all of that was due to gains in Greater Minnesota, the part of the state not included in the Twin Cities metro. This is where the positive story for the Minnesota GOP lies, and it’s not an entirely unfounded one. To gain a better idea of the importance of these gains, I want to compare this recent result to the 2022 Minnesota Attorney General race, which saw incumbent DFLer Keith Ellison win re-election by just 0.8%. One-half of that underperformance story was due to massive losses in rural areas, and frighteningly for the DFL, Kamala Harris replicated much of that last Tuesday. Here are some examples:

Stevens County (Western Minnesota): Schultz+26.9 → Trump+26.9 (R+0.0)

Nicollet County (Southern Minnesota): Ellison+0.1 → Trump+0.5 (R+0.6)

Itasca County (Northern Minnesota): Schultz+19 → Trump+20.1 (R+1.1)

Pine County (Northern Minnesota): Schultz+33.3 → Trump+35 (R+1.7)

Mower County (Southeast Minnesota): Schultz+7.2 → Trump+10.5 (R+3.3)

Cass County (Central Minnesota): Schultz+35.7 → Trump+33.4 (D+2.3)

Polk County (Northwest Minnesota): Schultz+37.8 → Trump+33.7 (D+4.1)

While the result wasn’t uniform across every county in Greater Minnesota, the general trend was the continuation of the DFL’s slow death in rural communities, with Kamala Harris either failing to make any gains from the worst 2022 DFL showings or just outright underperforming them. This netted Trump and the Minnesota GOP a sizable chunk of votes, effectively guaranteeing the election of all four of their U.S. House incumbents.

Make no mistake, these gains are good for them. As I said in an article last year, if the GOP wishes to carve a path to statewide success in Minnesota, they have to take steps to emulate Jim Schultz’s near-victory against Ellison in 2022. One of the ways to do that is to max out gains in rural areas as much as possible, and I would argue that the GOP mostly passed that test this year with rural voters. If you’re a Minnesota GOP operative and you’re looking for optimism about your prospects, these gains would be the first place to look.

But The Math Doesn’t Add Up

Unfortunately for them, this is where the positive signs for the Minnesota GOP end, because when you look at everything else that happened on Tuesday, they do not point to the optimistic future that the Dustin Grage’s of the world are looking for. These results have done little more but confirm my analysis from last year that—assuming the party does not get its act together soon—they are on track to continue their status as clear underdogs in the state’s politics. But why?

First of all, it’s important to stress a caveat about those rural gains I mentioned earlier. While I maintain that those gains are important, they also pale in comparison to other trends we are seeing across the country right now. For this part, I’m going to assume that Trump’s final victory in the popular vote is around 1.5%. This would represent a national shift of around 6% to the right from 2020, and if applied to Minnesota, would have resulted in a Harris victory of just 1.1%. If this was the result that we saw last Tuesday, I would have put the DFL’s dominance in the state into serious question.

But that didn’t happen, and a comparison of the swing compared to the nation reveals the problem for the Minnesota GOP. While the gains with rural Minnesota were impactful, they weren’t necessarily devastating either. Out of the 87 counties in the state, only 3 would shift more than 6% to the right, suggesting that there is virtually no opportunity left for the GOP to make the massive gains with rural communities that they saw in 2016. This is made even worse by the fact that most of these counties are becoming less electorally relevant with each passing day, with young people moving to the cities and conservatives leaving the state entirely. Making gains with rural voters is important, but it’s not clear that it will net the GOP many more votes than they already have going forward.

However, this is only a fraction of the problem that the party faces. Where things begin to truly look calamitous for them is when you enter the Twin Cities metro. This has been the Achilles heel for the Minnesota GOP since Trump came on the scene, and this election has confirmed that it will continue to be a very, very heavy anchor on their ship. To prove this, let’s go back to comparing this election to the 2022 Attorney General race, this time looking at how each candidate did in the seven Twin Cities metropolitan counties:

Hennepin County (Minneapolis, West Suburbs): Ellison+36.3 → Harris+42.4 (D+6.1)

Ramsey County (St. Paul, North Suburbs): Ellison+40.4 → Harris+43.1 (D+2.7)

Washington County (Eastern Suburbs): Ellison+1.5 → Harris+8.9 (D+7.4)

Dakota County (Southern Suburbs): Ellison+5.7 → Harris+12.8 (D+7.1)

Anoka County (Northern Suburbs): Schultz+9.9 → Trump+4.4 (D+5.5)

Carver County (Southwest Suburbs): Schultz+15.2 → Trump+5.4 (D+9.8)

Scott County (Southern Suburbs): Schultz+15.5 → Trump+8.4 (D+7.1)

The takeaway from these results is clear. Unlike Keith Ellison—whose failure to make up significant ground in the suburbs nearly cost him the race—Kamala Harris was able to hold onto Joe Biden’s margins in the suburbs from 2020, thus delivering her the state by a relatively comfortable margin. Since none of these counties saw a rightward swing even close to 6 points, all of them trended significantly to the country's left.

To put it simply, the GOP winning with these kinds of margins and trends in the Twin Cities metro is little more than a fantasy. These counties all overpopulate Greater Minnesota substantially, and with the rural population in continuous decline, this disparity will only become more prevalent as time goes on. With Trump and his wing emboldened by a clear victory last Tuesday, his effect on the party is as obvious as ever. While this may present the party with gains elsewhere, it only serves to remind suburban voters of why they hate the GOP now, isolating the party even further. Unless this second Trump administration ends up going so poorly that even the biggest hardliners in the party break away from him, there should be no expectation that the party can break through the suburbs, and by extension, no expectation that they should win the state barring the largest red waves.

One counterargument that a Republican could make to this claim is that while Donald Trump himself failed to make gains in the suburbs, that didn’t extend to many other Republicans down-ballot. To their credit, this argument isn’t entirely without basis when you take a look at the State House results. When looking across the Twin Cities metro, DFL candidates for State House consistently underperformed Harris, with five districts that voted for the Vice President also splitting their tickets for a GOP State House representative. This notable gap down-ballot ultimately resulted in the State House splitting exactly down the middle, and the final popular vote was a DFL victory of just over half a point. If the Minnesota GOP could replicate these down-ballot suburban numbers elsewhere, they could theoretically pose a major threat to the DFL’s long-held dominance.

However, this by itself doesn’t fix the problems they’re facing going forward. On a base level, even if the GOP can find a way to get closer to the suburban numbers scored by their down-ballot officeholders, that still probably wouldn’t result in a win. After all, even when factoring in the suburban decline, the State House DFL still won more votes in total, just like Keith Ellison did in 2022. It would certainly be much easier for the Minnesota GOP to score a win, but since the state would still be to the left of the country by 2 points, it’s still nowhere near its 2016 peak.

More importantly, nothing about the trajectory of the national or state GOP suggests that they’ll hold onto these gains, and there isn’t anywhere they can go to counterbalance losing them. Out of the six districts that split between Harris and the Minnesota GOP, five of them were located in the Twin Cities metro. All five of these districts contain a similar demographic profile: A high percentage of college-educated voters, higher income than average, and suburban. All of these groups are where the GOP has lost the most ground since Trump came on the scene, and with him securing a mandate from the rest of the country, it’s highly unlikely that his hold on the party will be going away any time soon.

All of this makes the DFL’s path to retaking the State House in 2026 an extremely simple one: They just have to tie their opponents to the Trump administration. The president-elect is already deeply unpopular with suburban voters, and it’s unlikely that he’ll be any more popular by the time 2026 rolls around. Not only are presidents usually underwater in approval by the time midterms come around, but with his promised plans for across-the-board tariffs and mass deportations on track to cause economic and moral chaos respectively, Trump will likely serve as an anchor around the neck of every Republican in the country. It’s not too difficult to imagine that some suburban Republicans hold onto some of their crossover appeal, but depending on how Democratic the national environment is in 2026, it might not even matter.

Further analysis into this promise only makes the conclusion more obvious: The math just doesn’t add up for the Minnesota GOP. For them to be able to gain a majority in the State House, not only do they have to hold onto every single seat they currently have, but they also have to flip a DFL-held seat. Assuming that 2026 is a favorable year for Democrats because of Trump’s unpopularity, this would mean that the suburban incumbents have to put up overperformances to the scale that we haven’t seen yet and go against every single current demographic trend. While I don’t want to discount the possibility that it could happen due to the unpredictability of elections, there’s also no evidence suggesting that it will either. Until the Minnesota GOP can make real headwinds in the suburbs with Trump-esque candidates, their path to a statewide majority remains extremely narrow.

Suburbs, Suburbs, Suburbs

Once again, I reached the same conclusion that I made last year regarding the Minnesota GOP’s future: The Twin Cities suburbs are killing them and they have no plan to fix it.

While their rural support does give them a sizable support base, it was never going to be enough to turn the state red. They’re just too small. A Republican victory in Minnesota is going to require gaining meaningful support in the Twin Cities metro, but the Minnesota GOP continues to ignore them. Rather than looking at the strengths of Trump’s showing in rural areas and figuring out ways it could be balanced with strong support in the suburbs, the party has decided to forego any real introspective analysis and just embrace Trump wholeheartedly. The result is exactly what you would expect: a party stuck in perpetual decline, still desperately trying to chase the dragon that was their 2016 performance.

Donald Trump’s win last Tuesday was undoubtedly a triumph for the Republican Party. Many predictors, including yours truly, were thrown off guard by how quickly the election wrapped up for him. Their victory was decisive, and it left several state party branches far better off for it. The Minnesota GOP may gaslight themselves into believing that they are one of them for the next four years, just as they’ve done since Trump nearly won the state back in 2016.

But eventually, they will have to confront reality and face the facts: So long as Donald Trump and his movement run the party, Minnesota is going to be far out of reach.

Now that we are just a single day away from the election, I’m here to say that I don’t think the top line has changed much. The Kamala Harris campaign has not been free from occasional slip-ups, but her operation over the last month has done an excellent job of keeping up the momentum she has gained since she entered the race in July. Nowhere is this more evident than right now. While Donald Trump has spent this last week desperately trying to pivot away from the racist controversy surrounding his now-infamous rally at Madison Square Garden, Kamala Harris has largely stayed the course and stuck to her months-long pitch on competence, democracy, abortion, and the economy. With many voters now tuning into the election, this distinction between the two candidates could end up being critical, especially if reports on late-breaking voters are to be believed. Whatever the case may be, these last few days have only reaffirmed my months-long resolve on the election: I believe that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be elected President and Vice President on Tuesday. Here’s why.

My Official 2024 Presidential Prediction: November 4th, 2024

When looking strictly at the Electoral College, there isn’t much difference with this new map. Compared to my prediction in September, only Arizona has changed hands, depriving Kamala Harris of 11 fewer electoral votes than I gave her two months ago. At face value, this makes it appear that she lost ground and that the race has tightened up, albeit not that significantly.

However, my conclusion is the exact opposite of this. While the race hasn’t evolved much since September, I believe Kamala Harris has made up important ground that leaves her in an even stronger spot to win than my last prediction. To demonstrate this, let me show you every change I made:

Arizona: Tilt Democratic → Tilt Republican

Nevada: Lean Democratic → Tilt Democratic

Kansas: Safe Republican → Likely Republican

Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District: Safe Republican → Likely Republican

Iowa: Likely Republican → Lean Republican

Ohio: Likely Republican → Lean Republican

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District: Likely Republican → Lean Republican

Pennsylvania: Tilt Democratic → Lean Democratic

Minnesota: Likely Democratic → Safe Democratic

Virginia: Likely Democratic → Safe Democratic

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District: Likely Democratic → Safe Democratic

As you can see, nine of the eleven changes I have made to my prediction since September have improved the Vice President’s standing. While her odds of getting to 319 electoral votes are lower than two months ago, her chance of crossing the 270 electoral vote threshold of victory has gone up noticeably, which is ultimately what matters more than anything else.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the main culprit behind this is my shift toward Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania. While early voting numbers still point to a close race, high-quality polling has consistently given the Vice President relatively solid numbers in the Keystone State. On top of this, the recent controversy at Madison Square Garden and late breakers skewing towards Harris have made Trump’s chances of making important gains in the Philadelphia area considerably more difficult. Trump certainly can’t be counted out, but most signs point to his standing being shaky. Since Pennsylvania is the most likely state to be the final tipping point, this shift towards Harris boosts her overall chances considerably.

As for the other changes that favor her, most of them aren’t too substantial. Almost all of them are in solidly red and blue states, none of which are going to decide the election tomorrow. With that being said, the most eye-catching shift is in Iowa, a state that most election nerds—including yours truly—had written off entirely before this year. While 2022 and early Selzer polls had made me assume that the state was off the map, recent data has indicated that something real may be brewing. Despite voting for Trump by solid margins twice in a row, the latest Selzer poll has shown Harris leading by 3 points, a gigantic shift to the left compared to 2020.

I’m still skeptical that this points to an upset Harris win in the Hawkeye State—even Selzer hasn’t been free from minor polling misses—but it is worth considering from this important perspective: How this represents the backlash to the Dobbs ruling in the northern swing states. Back in July, Iowa’s courts permitted the legality of a six-week abortion ban, and this has resulted in a massive backlash against the Iowa Republicans. The incumbent Republican Governor’s approval rating has tanked down to the negatives, abortion was rated as a top issue among Iowa voters in the Selzer poll, and older women in Iowa backed Harris by eyewatering margins. While the radical nature of this abortion ban likely means that much of Iowa’s Democratic shift is localized, it still portends a major problem for the Republican Party in other pro-choice, midwestern states. Since the Trump campaign has made almost no attempt to moderate this issue, the backlash to Dobbs will be alive and well, and if Trump can’t replace those losses with meaningful gains elsewhere, his path in the Midwest becomes very difficult to conceive. This—alongside some solid polling—is what compels me to make my shift towards Harris in Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska’s 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

As for the two shifts I’ve made towards Trump, both of these are the result of early indicators and polling not being nearly as strong for Harris as I assumed. Arizona is the most notable example of this, with most high-quality polling still showing Trump narrowly ahead of Harris. While there is reasonable skepticism behind this, especially in the aftermath of 2022, there aren’t enough high-quality surveys for Harris for me to be confident enough to go against the polls this time. It’s easily the toughest call on this list, but if I had to tip the scales towards anyone in the Grand Canyon State, I would go with Trump. Nevada is a similar story, but since I’ve long been more bullish for Harris in the state due to better polling and the early vote numbers, I still feel comfortable giving the Vice President the advantage, albeit more narrowly than in my last prediction.

Overall, while her margin in the electoral college has decreased since September, Harris’ easiest path to victory—a clean sweep of the northern swing states—is looking more favorable to her than ever. While Trump picking one of them off is not out of the question, Harris comes into Election Day as the clear favorite in all three, and by extension, the election itself.

Additional 2024 Predictions

As of now, I haven’t made official prediction maps for the U.S. Senate or the eleven governorships up this year. So, let’s change that!

My Official 2024 U.S Senate Prediction: November 4th, 2024

Most of these shouldn’t be too controversial. All of these follow the trends we have seen in polling pretty closely, and unless there is a major polling miss in favor of Republicans tomorrow, we should anticipate a 51(GOP)-49(Dem) U.S. Senate.

Though, for what it’s worth, a U.S. Senate that depended on the vote of Dan Osborn would make for some amazing content to analyze for the next two years. To Nebraska voters, please don’t deprive us of this golden opportunity.

My Official 2024 Gubernatorial Predictions: November 4th, 2024

Once again, most of these aren’t too controversial. Since most of these are in states with solid leanings or popular incumbents, there wasn’t ever going to be a lot of variance in how these states leaned throughout the year.

However, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anything interesting. As I’m sure you’re all aware at this point, the North Carolina gubernatorial contest has become a total disaster for the GOP, with their porn-addict Nazi nominee on track to lose by well over double digits. Even a historic polling error can’t save him anymore, and depending on how badly he loses, it could be a real problem for the top of the ticket. Indiana has also seen some interesting polling as the current Republican nominee has fully embraced his right-wing extremism, though it probably won’t be enough to produce anything more than an embarrassing underperformance. Lastly, we have New Hampshire, by far the most competitive gubernatorial contest all year. While I’ve long held the belief that polarization would eventually boost the Democrats enough to flip this seat, polling has not meaningfully improved for them. I hesitate to give the Republicans a large advantage because the Granite State will also vote for Kamala Harris by a very solid margin on the same ballot, but the polls are just too harsh for the Democrats to ignore.

You’re probably also curious about my feelings on the U.S. House. While I don’t have enough information to make a specific prediction on every district, I would say that the Democrats are likely to flip the chamber tomorrow. The results will almost certainly correspond with the presidential result, and since I believe Kamala Harris is favored to win, I’m extending that to the House Democrats too.

Final Thoughts

Fundamentally, the reason why Kamala Harris is favored to win the presidency has not changed since September. heading into 2024, there was no other contest that the American people were dreading more than a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Both were extremely unpopular and older than dirt, a depressing sign for the future of the country. Anyone who was willing to offer an alternative to that could have emerged as a clear frontrunner. While some in the GOP hoped that they could be the ones to take that call, the Democrats would beat them to it when Biden was dropped in July.

While this move would come late, it has undeniably paid the party massive electoral dividends. Once on track to be defeated by Trump quite comfortably, the Democrats are now on track to keep their hold on the Oval Office for another four years. By embracing a sense of new energy and enthusiasm, the Democrats took a bold risk that has undeniably paid off. Even if Kamala Harris ends up losing on Tuesday, the fact that the party has been able to make this close is very impressive.

It’s also extremely concerning for the future of the GOP. Make no mistake, they should be winning right now. Perceptions of the economy are sour, the incumbent Democratic president is deeply unpopular, and anti-incumbency sentiment is sweeping the democratic world. This should be a prime opportunity for the GOP to take power in a landslide.

But they aren’t on track to do this, and it’s pretty much all thanks to these guys.

After putting a historically bad performance that confirmed America’s biggest fears about him, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign appeared to be spiraling into a complete disaster. Polling had already been mediocre for the 46th president for the entire year, but this would mark the turning point where it became downright apocalyptic. Most swing states gave Trump comfortable leads, states previously thought to be likely for Biden became highly competitive, and even some safe blue states started to show some cracks. Not even my home state of Minnesota, which I had previously written off for Republicans almost entirely, looked like it would be spared from a Trump victory. By the start of July, any hope for a decisive Biden victory was long gone, and the possibility of a Trump landslide began to look probable.

Thankfully for Democrats, the situation has completely flipped on its head. While there were some skeptics within the DNC of just how well it would go, the transition from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris as the leader of the Democratic ticket has been a massive success for the party. Solidly blue states are back to being solidly blue, swing states are once again back in play, and even some red-leaning states have been showing small hints of potential. It’s been an extraordinary turnaround, and in the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ clear victory in the presidential debate, I believe that as of right now, she is the favorite to win the presidency.

In this article, I’d like to show why I believe that by going over every single state I deem to be potentially competitive, and in the process, go over why I believe each candidate is favored in each case. While Trump’s path to victory is definitely still there, Harris has many more paths to work from, a better chance at gaining ground, and more momentum on her side.

My Official 2024 Presidential Prediction: September 18th, 2024

Minnesota

Starting this list, we have my home state and frequent subject of Roose Thoughts, the North Star State of Minnesota. As stated previously, I’ve already covered my thoughts on the political standing of the state in the 2024 election before, but since that article was written almost a year ago, I feel it’s important to provide an update on how it’s been going here.

In short, if you were to take a snapshot between then and now, not much would have changed. While Biden’s collapse in support nationwide throughout 2024 did put the state’s status as a blue state in question, Harris’ entry into the race has put the back where it was when I wrote my first article: solidly in the Democratic column. While Democratic gains in the Twin Cities metro looked to be in trouble with Biden thanks to the large uncommitted vote, Harris’ presence alone has largely stopped them from leaving the fold. With the Dobbs decision and anti-democratic rhetoric still fresh in the minds of suburban voters, there is virtually no opportunity for Trump—a man who embodies both of those things to a tee—to make any gains with them. Rural areas are not only deeply Republican already, but they are also slowly losing population as young people move to the cities and conservatives move to more conservative states. There just isn’t much for Republicans to work with, and Harris should win the state comfortably.

However, I’m leaving the state out of the “Safe Democratic” column for two reasons. The first is that while every statewide Democrat did win the state in 2022, not all of these victories were created equally. While Governor Tim Walz and Secretary of State Steve Simon each won by solid, high-single-digit margins, the other two statewide candidates had a far tougher time, with Attorney General Keith Ellison and State Auditor Julie Blaha each only winning their races by 0.9% and 0.4% respectively. Additionally, polling hasn’t presented the picture of a runaway Harris victory, with her leading by around 6 points. While 6 points is still a pretty good margin overall, it’s also a decline from Biden’s 7-point win in 2020, so it’s not nearly enough to properly write off the state.

To be clear, the state should still be voting for Harris when all is said and done, likely by a sizable margin. The state of the race is mostly set, and it’s extremely unlikely that we get an environment terrible enough that Minnesota is suddenly in play. But it’s not impossible either, so I hesitate to take the state off the map just yet.

Minnesota Rating: Likely Democratic

Virginia

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, no other state in the entire country—besides Colorado—was easier to take off the swing state table than the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Once a solidly Republican state throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Northern Virginia would begin to urbanize rapidly at the turn of the 21st century, bringing in hundreds of thousands of educated, white-collar workers in the process. While the Republican Party once had a respectable level of support among these voters, the rise of Trump and education polarization has completely eroded it, significantly limiting its appeal in the state in the process. While the state was highly competitive during the Obama era, it broke away from the GOP in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the state by 5 points, improving on Obama’s margin despite performing worse nationwide.

While some initially chalked this up to Tim Kaine—the state’s junior U.S. Senator—being on the ticket, results since 2016 would prove that this result was no one-off. In 2017, the Democrats would win the Governor’s Mansion by 8 points and nearly flip the State House. In 2018, Tim Kaine would win re-election by 16 points and Democrats would flip three U.S. House seats, all of which were in highly educated suburbs. In 2019, the Democrats would flip both the State House and State Senate, giving them a legislative trifecta for the first time since 1994. Finally, the 2020 election would see Joe Biden carry the state by a 10-point margin, making massive gains in the suburbs in the process. Throughout the entire Trump presidency, Virginia Democrats had successfully utilized the unpopularity of the president among educated voters to their full benefit, and in the process, made it appear that Republicans were shut out of the state for a long, long time.

However, 2021 would throw a large wrench into this perceived strength. As the shakey Afghanistan withdrawal and slowing Build Back Better negotiations made Biden’s approval rating fall into the slumps, Virginia Republicans would make a roaring comeback, flipping back the Governorship, Lieutenant Governorship, Attorney General’s office, and State House in just one night. While some of this was the result of the strong Republican environment nationwide, the outright victory by the Republicans was still a highly impressive feat, singlehandedly putting the Democrat’s perceived lock on the state into doubt. While 2022 and 2023 would prove to be much better results for Democrats, neither of them were won by margins similar to those during the Trump era, suggesting that at least some voters had flipped over to the right since the start of Biden’s presidency.

So, what does this mean for 2024? In all likelihood, not that much. While Biden’s incredibly weak standing made some consider the state a sleeper flip for Trump in November, Harris’ entry into the race has put the state’s polling back into a solid place for Democrats, with an average of around Harris+8-9. While the results in 2021 suggest that these educated suburbanites can be willing to break from the Democrats once in a while, it’s usually only under highly negative circumstances and for a Republican that has perceived moderation. Unless the news starts to get really bad for Democrats and Kamala Harris in the next two months, Trump’s path to winning the state will remain minuscule.

Virginia Rating: Likely Democratic

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District

In comparison to the other batch of places I’m going over in this article, this one will be one of the shortest of them all, entirely because the story behind this entry is a pretty simple one.

Since Nebraska splits its electoral votes by congressional district, the Omaha-based 2nd district has been able to play a small role in national politics that doesn’t exist for other blue cities stuck in red states. That role, just like Virginia, is a story representing Republican decline among educated, white-collar suburbanites, something that Omaha is filled to the brim with. While the district was highly competitive in the late 2000s and 2010s, the district would shift solidly to the left in 2020 when it voted for Biden by 6 and a half points, making it the biggest swing leftward for any flipped electoral college vote.

There are still some minor warning signs, such as the district being gerrymandered to be slightly more Republican and the Republican Congressman Don Bacon’s continued electoral success in the 2nd. But since there is virtually no indication of Harris meaningfully slipping with educated suburbanites, this should be an easy win for her.

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District Rating: Likely Democratic

Michigan

In comparison to almost every state in the country, Michigan has stood out as one of the clearest examples of Republican decline thanks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

After two presidential elections where the state voted to the right of the nation, 2022 would see the Wolverine State be swept with a massive blue wave that took every observer by storm. Despite being the constant target of right-wing attacks, incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer would not only win re-election by a gigantic 11-point margin, but she would bring the rest of the party with her too, with Michigan Democrats sweeping every statewide office and winning a legislative trifecta for the first time since 1984.

It was an absolutely remarkable achievement that was spawned in large part thanks to Michigan Democrats successfully using the backlash from the Dobbs decision to full effect. Not only did they put a statewide vote on codifying abortion access on every ballot, but they tied all their other statewide and local races to it too, promising that they’d do everything they could to protect it. It was an extremely effective play, with Democrats not only winning suburban cities that they had flipped in the post-Trump era by massive margins, but they also won back many industrial, blue-collar cities that they had lost during the Trump era too. The final result was a Democratic landslide, and it put the Democrats in a very solid place ahead of the 2024 election.

However, there are still some notable problems for the party that could put their chances in jeopardy. Firstly, the ongoing war in Gaza has resulted in notable losses of support for Democrats among core constituencies, particularly among young people and the Arab American community. While Harris’ entry into the race has dampened this vitriol to a certain extent, she still faces questions among this group of voters, which based on the uncommitted vote from a few months ago, is around 100,000 strong. If Harris can’t get enough of these voters on board, her chances in the state could start to look more bleak. Additionally, while abortion rights played its part in securing a massive Democratic victory in 2022, its ability to secure another Democratic victory this time is far less certain. Michigan—unlike many of the other swing states we’ll be going over—is currently being controlled by a Democratic trifecta that already enshired abortion rights into the state constitution. While the backlash against Republicans for Dobbs will never truly go away, it could play less of a role than Democrats might hope for.

However, when all is said and done, I’d still argue Kamala Harris comes out favored. As I said previously, Harris’ entrance into the race has noticeably calmed the tension between the Democratic Party and its Gaza critics. While she’ll still likely lose a solid chunk of them, it won’t be anywhere near as cataclysmic as it would have been for Biden, the man who inspired those 100,000 uncommitted voters in the first place. While abortion may not be as central as it is in other states thanks to Democratic rule, the competitive nature of the state will still be more than enough to inspire people to vote out of protection for their rights. Higher turnout among black voters compared to Biden will net Democrats a significant chunk of votes that could very well be decisive. The fastest-growing parts of the state are almost all leaning Democratic thanks to their gains with educated voters. While polling suggests a tight race ahead of November, Harris still leads Trump on average by just under 2 points, giving her a slight edge in this critical state.

Overall, while a Trump victory in Michigan is certainly very plausible, Harris comes out favored when looking at the most important factors. Whether it’s past elections, the fundamentals, the important issues, and even the polling, the Vice President comes out on top in every category, albeit narrowly. A Trump victory wouldn’t be a major upset, but that doesn’t mean their hill to climb isn’t noticeably steeper.

Michigan Rating: Lean Democratic

Wisconsin

Throughout the first half of 2024, as Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was slowly unraveling, Wisconsin bizarrely stood alone as the only major swing state where his numbers weren’t moving much. Even as Biden lost massive ground in the Sun Belt and modest ground in the rest of the Midwest, Wisconsin was remarkably consistent throughout most of the campaign, with Biden still often managing to pull small leads with pollsters that gave him far worse numbers elsewhere. While this phenomenon would eventually break following his atrocious June debate, it still gave Democrats a strong place in Wisconsin politics, something that was thought to be on the decline throughout the entire Trump era.

With that being said, how is the race now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee? Well, thanks to the boost that the Democrats have gotten from swapping Biden out, we have a far clearer picture of how Wisconsin is going, and it’s a pretty good one for Democrats. Not only has Harris held onto Biden’s strength with white voters, but she has also been doing significantly better than Biden with many core Democratic constituencies, particularly young people and minorities. Both of these will be vital to a Democratic victory in a state where so much of its base is from two deeply young, diverse, urban, and Democratic cities: Milwaukee and Madison. Not only are Republicans going to pay the price for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but their legislative stranglehold on the state means that their presence will get people out to vote in droves, especially since this is the first election since the Wisconsin Supreme Court redrew the legislative maps to be more balanced. All of this and more has resulted in Harris polling ahead of Trump by an average of around 3 points, a very solid margin that makes it her best major swing state. From this, it’s quite easy to make the case that she’s favored in the Badger State.

However, similar to Michigan, there are still some question marks on display on here. While Harris is polling very solid numbers in Wisconsin, it’s important to mention that many of these same polls have also underestimated Republicans in both 2016 and 2020, giving the impression that the state was far less competitive than it really was. While both of these misses are explainable—with lack of education weighing affecting the former1 and COVID-19 nonresponse bias affecting the latter2—Wisconsin still came out of it as the largest swing state miss in both cases. While I don’t generally like believing that these kinds of polling errors exist for no reason, I don’t think it’s necessarily an absurd conclusion to arrive at in Wisconsin’s case. Additionally, despite Dobbs, Wisconsin Republicans didn’t entirely flame out in the 2022 elections. Granted, it wasn’t a stellar performance by any means, after all, they still lost three competitive statewide races. But unlike their neighbors in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin Republicans were able to score two statewide wins, those being for the U.S. Senate seat and the Treasurer’s office. While neither one of their victories exceeded 2 points, it still gives them something of a winning model in a post-Dobbs world, even if Trump is not the best guy to win on said model.

Even when factoring in every Republican advantage, Democrats still come out as the clear favorites. While the potential for a polling miss isn’t off the table, there isn’t much to indicate that it will occur in 2024. While Republicans do have recent statewide victories under their belt, Democrats have a far more energized base and more impressive results to counteract them. While Trump is still polling close to Harris, 3-point leads aren’t usually wrong either. For these reasons, while Republicans are still in play, the land of beer and cheese is trending toward the Democrats.

Wisconsin Rating: Lean Democratic

Nevada

Throughout most of this presidential campaign, there wasn’t a single state that Biden won in 2020 that looked more likely to flip than the Silver State of Nevada. Even when compared to other states in the Sun Belt, polling for Biden was hilariously atrocious. Not only did he never lead a single poll in the state after October 10th, 2023, but he wasn’t even putting in remotely respectful numbers when he was down. At best, he was only barely within the margin of error with his best pollsters, and at worst, he was down by double digits. Even when I was able to make somewhat bullish cases for Biden, I couldn’t even imagine a world where he’d somehow hold onto Nevada. Prior to July 21st, I wasn’t far away from just writing off the state entirely.

However, once Biden was swapped out with Harris, everything changed. Outside of North Carolina, there is no other swing state where Democrats have seen such a turnaround in the last two months. Once struggling to even poll above 45%, recent polls have shown Harris taking the lead from Trump outright, completely erasing his gains over the last year. While this lead is very small—the best averages still only show her ahead by around 1 point—it still represents a miraculous recovery that keeps the hopes of Nevada Democrats alive. If I was one of them, I’d consider myself blessed.

But the important question is this: will the switch be enough to keep the state out of Trump’s hands by itself?

Honestly, I’d say that’s more likely than anything else. Firstly, from a demographic standpoint, Harris’ surge makes complete sense. While Nevada is a highly diverse and unionized state, its educated population is also lower than most other states in the Sun Belt. This was terrible news for Biden, who struggled immensely with minority voters, particularly Hispanics who make up a massive portion of the state. However, since Harris is far more popular with people of color than Biden ever was, this demographic makeup is significantly less problematic for her. Additionally, Nevada Democrats also managed to get a vote for abortion rights on the ballot via referendum, a massive vote and enthusiasm boost for them in this heavily pro-choice state. Finally, thanks in large part to its small size and mostly uncompetitive U.S. Senate contest, Republicans haven’t bothered to invest much of anything into saving Nevada, not even securing any new ad reservations for September, October, and November. Given the fact that Nevada only has 6 electoral votes and is unlikely to influence the race one way or another, Republicans have reason to give up on the state and focus their endeavors elsewhere, but it does notably lower their chances in my eyes. As this cycle continues, I would expect Harris’ numbers to improve in Nevada polling, and by November, I don’t think it’s going to be in the discussion much.

However, this is by no means guaranteed. While he isn’t leading there anymore, and I don’t expect he’ll take it back barring major problems for Democrats, Trump is still polling extremely close to Harris right now, and that isn’t for no reason. While Nevada’s highly diverse population has been much more favorable to Harris than Biden, Trump still polls fairly well with Hispanic voters, meaning that if he were able to get larger shifts among them, it could tip the balance enough to win back the state, especially since Harris doesn’t have many educated suburban voters to fall back onto if she falters. While abortion rights being on the ballot will hurt his chances, it’s worth noting that pro-choice politics are far more popular than Democratic politics, so much like in Florida, there will be a sizable chunk of Nevada voters who will vote for Trump AND abortion rights. As contradictory as that is, it represents a chunk of voters large enough that a vote on abortion by itself doesn’t necessarily doom Trump.

However, I don’t suspect either of these will change the trajectory of the state. While Harris may not be able to eliminate all of Trump’s increased appeal with minority communities, her presence alone has already made a massive difference in winning back the thousands of people who left Biden behind, in addition to the boost she’ll get from increased minority turnout. As Republican funding dries up, this is a problem that will only get worse for Trump, and by November, I imagine that Harris will have the clear, but narrow edge.

Nevada Rating: Lean Democratic

Arizona

Plenty of Republican parties have seen a fall from grace since the start of the Trump era, but almost none of them are as self-inflicted and clearly deserved as the Arizona Republican Party’s downfall.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the party could have avoided much of the backlash. Trump being on the national stage was always going to cause major bleeding in the party, especially one that was built on strength with white-collar, educated voters in the Phoenix area. But ever since 2016, they have done no favors for themselves in trying to solve this problem. Rather than try to play for moderate voters turned off by Trump’s rhetoric against John McCain—their decades-long serving U.S. Senator who always won elections in the state by landslide margins—the party would decide that these voters didn’t matter and shunned them from outreach almost entirely. The end result is exactly what you would expect, with each election cycle only making the party more and more irrelevant as moderates flocked over to the Democrats. This brings us to 2024, where Democrats now have control over the Governorship, Attorney General’s office, Secretary of State’s office, and both of the U.S. Senate seats3. In addition, all signs point to the Arizona Republicans facing yet another shellacking statewide this year, with their numbers in the U.S. Senate race being utterly pitiful and their state legislative chances looking worse by the day. Thanks almost entirely to their insanity and strategical incompetence, the Arizona Republicans are on track to hand the Democrats a legislative trifecta for the first time since 1966, a remarkable fall from grace that is almost unrivaled anywhere else in the country.

Clearly, this puts Kamala Harris in a theoretically strong position to take Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. When your party is on track to win the U.S. Senate seat AND both legislative chambers, you are in a strong starting place. Beyond just that, though, Harris also benefits from many of the same factors that boosted her numbers in Nevada, from its highly diverse population, an abortion rights referendum on the ballot, and strong results in the 2022 midterms. All of these will boost her chances substantially, especially since Harris will also be able to benefit from continued swings in favor of Democrats with educated suburbanites, something that proved to be critical for Biden’s victory in 2020.

That being said, when looking at the data we have gotten thus far, the reality on the ground is less pretty than the theoretical one. While Harris has made up a ton of ground compared to where Biden was, she still finds herself behind Trump in most polling averages by around half a point. While this result is certainly one that is primed for Harris to make up some more ground, it’s still not the most ideal situation to deal with, especially since other efforts by Arizona Republicans are going down in flames. If Trump chooses to make larger money and time investments here, it could potentially prove decisive, especially if Harris chooses to take her efforts elsewhere.

However, given that the Harris campaign is flooded with cash and the Trump campaign has been spending most of its time in Pennsylvania, I don’t envision this happening. While some decent polling by Trump leaves me more bearish for Harris than I otherwise would be, factoring in everything else still gives the Vice President the slightest advantage in the Grand Canyon State.

Arizona Rating: Tilt Democratic

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.

Ever since the Trump era started, the Keystone State has been the undisputedly most important swing state in the entire country, and for very good reason. Being worth 19 electoral votes, virtually all indications point to it being the tipping point state for the 2024 election. It was the state that pushed Trump over the top in 2016, Biden over the top in 2020, and in all likelihood, will push whoever the winner is in 2024 over the top too. As a result, both Harris and Trump have spent most of their money and time here, and every last second they spend in the state will be vital. So, how is it going so far for them?

As of now, most signs are pointing in favor of Harris being the one to take the commonwealth. Just like in Michigan, the Dobbs ruling ended up playing very badly for the Republican Party in 2022, with them losing the Governorship by a landslide, the U.S. Senate seat by 5 points, and even control over the State House that was not assumed to be competitive. Shifts in the suburbs towards Democrats have kept them in a strong spot in the face of rural decline, with it ultimately being vital in Biden’s 2020 victory. With minority turnout projected to be on the rise, Harris will benefit from thousands of new voters, particularly from the deeply Democratic Philadelphia area. The concurrent U.S. Senate election is unlikely to be competitive, with the Democratic incumbent up over his Republican challenger by a large margin. For more reasons than one, Harris comes out of Pennsylvania in a strong spot, and in the process, comes out as the favorite in the presidential election too.

With that being said, what works out in Trump’s favor? The answer here is simple: Money. Unlike other states where he has been significantly outspent by the wealthy Harris campaign, the Trump team has a massive war chest for Pennsylvania on par with or even exceeding Harris'. This makes it distinct from almost every other state on this list, which has seen the Trump campaign retreat large amounts of financial ground in favor of a hyperfocused strategy on flipping Pennsylvania back to their side. Whether it will work is still yet to be seen, but it does make it more likely that the state will remain an ultra-competitive horserace for the next two months. For what it’s worth though, Trump’s focus on the state has certainly shown up in polling averages, with most of them showing Harris only up on Trump by less than a point. While low-quality right-wing pollsters have certainly done a number on many of these averages, the ones who don’t include them still aren’t much more decisive for Harris, giving Trump a lane for victory here wider than in the other northern battleground states.

Barring any seismic event between now and November, Pennsylvania will almost certainly come down to the wire once again. Both candidates possess valuable arguments in favor of winning the state, and I do not doubt that the polls will remain neck and neck for weeks to come. But if forced to choose a side here, I would tilt the scale towards Harris, because you’d rather have four big points in your favor than one.

Pennsylvania Rating: Tilt Democratic

Georgia

Heading down south, we once again have a crucial swing state that is near the top of the radar for both the Harris and the Trump campaign. Out of all the states on this list, this was one of the hardest for me to judge for a wide variety of reasons, but I think we still have somewhat of an idea of who’s favored here.

In comparison to Pennsylvania—which has been consistently close since the start of the 21st century—this distinction as a purple state is relatively new for voters from the Peach State. Throughout the 2000s and the former half of the 2010s, Georgia was a solidly Republican state, consistently voting solidly to the right of the country in every single election year. While Democrats had previously been able to contend in the state thanks to strong holdover support from rural whites, this advantage would eventually disappear as the Republicans played up their cultural conservatism to them. This change, combined with strong support from educated suburbanites in the Atlanta metro, gave Republicans the status of the dominant party in Georgia. Heading into 2016, their future looked very bright, especially since the fastest-growing parts of the state were those aforementioned Republican suburbs.

However, contrary to what many had anticipated, 2016 would end up not being a continuation of this Republican trend. While Donald Trump would still win the state by a 5-point margin, his numbers were nearly 3 points worse than what Mitt Romney had put up in 2012, making Georgia one of the few states in the country where Democrats improved from 2012. While Trump would make sizable gains in virtually every single rural county, his numbers would collapse in the suburbs, with three major suburban counties flipping blue outright. For the first time in decades, Republican strength among their core base of suburbanites looked to be in jeopardy, and in retrospect, it ended up being the beginning of the end of Georgia’s ruby-red status. While this was difficult to see initially, the 2020 election would make this abundantly clear. Not only did Biden become the first presidential Democrat to win Georgia since 1992, but Georgia Democrats would also flip both of the U.S. Senate seats in just one night, giving them control of the chamber in the process. After this, there was no denying it: Georgia is a swing state now, and both parties are going to need to do what they can to win it. Of course, that begs the obvious question: Who will win it?

Well, much like Nevada, it’s important to remember just how much this race has evolved in the last year. Back when Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee, Trump’s chances in the Peach State looked very solid. Thanks to Biden’s lackluster numbers with minority communities, Trump had consistently held a comfortable lead, with Biden failing to lead a single poll after May 17th, 2023. While it wasn’t nearly as striking as his numbers in Nevada and North Carolina, Trump was still well on track to flip Georgia back to the GOP, thus limiting Biden’s hopes of victory considerably.

However, much like in Nevada, Harris’ entry into the race has completely changed the ballgame. While most polling averages still show Trump leading by just under a point, this still represents a massive improvement for the Democrats that put them within striking distance of victory. As of now, most signs have been fairly good for the Harris campaign, thanks in large part to increased enthusiasm among core Democratic constituencies and successfully holding onto gains with wealthy suburbanites concerned over Dobbs and anti-democratic rhetoric. Those two factors have been massive boons for the Democrats, and it leads me to give Harris a very slight advantage in Georgia. The Trump campaign certainly has plenty going for it, especially if he manages to keep even a small percentage of the minority support he gained when he was running against Biden. But while they may currently have the lead, I don’t think it holds up in the face of momentum.

Georgia Rating: Tilt Democratic

North Carolina

If there’s one thing almost everyone in the election analysis community can agree on, it’s that North Carolina is the master of getting Democratic hopes up every single time.

Starting off the century as one of many Republican strongholds in the South, the Tarheel State would end up shifting massively to the left in 2008, with Barack Obama becoming the first presidential Democrat to carry the state since 1976. While his margin of victory was extremely narrow, this would be enough to begin North Carolina’s transition into a perpetual battleground, but unfortunately for Democrats, it still wouldn’t be especially friendly to them. Simply put, the Democrats were not able to recreate the 2008 magic, coming up painfully short in all of the last three presidential elections. It didn’t matter how much money they spent or how high their turnout numbers were, it was never good enough to make a difference. Heading in 2024, all signs pointed to this disappointing streak continuing, especially as Donald Trump kept putting up commanding leads in almost every single poll. With Biden’s campaign seemingly collapsing, it looked like North Carolina’s purple-state status was coming to a close.

However, much like with Nevada and Georgia, Harris’ entry gave a shot of life for Democrats. Once on track to being a potential blowout, polling has shown North Carolina being a dead heat, with various different polling averages unable to agree on which candidate is in the lead. For all intents and purposes, North Carolina is currently a tied race, making it one of the hardest states to rank. On the one hand, the Republican’s past strength in the state gives Trump a decent model from which to work from, including two instances where he won the state twice. On the other hand, higher minority turnout and a cash advantage give Harris a strong shot at the state as well, especially since Democrats still have plenty of statewide victories to work from too. For the longest time, I had a difficult time thinking of a winner here.

However, if I had to pick a favorite, I’d go with Harris for one reason: Mark Robinson. The current Republican nominee for Governor, Robinson has developed a name for himself as one of the most visibly insane, far-right extremists running for office right now. Thanks to his crazy positions and personal shortcomings, his campaign has become nothing less than a total trainwreck, resulting in his Democratic opponent's polling margins being consistently above double digits. While the existence of reverse coattails is difficult to prove, the fact that many Democrats statewide are already tying other Republicans to Robinson suggests that there is a lot for them to gain by doing this. Ticket splitters still exist, and it’s not impossible to envision Trump carrying the state even if Robinson goes down by a large margin. But in this current era of political polarization, the loss of any statewide Republican by a margin that large is a good sign for every other Democrat, including Kamala Harris.

North Carolina Rating: Tilt Democratic

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District

Now, we arrive at the part of this article that is far less friendly to Democrats. To get started on this journey, let’s go to another 2nd congressional district, this time in the Pine Tree State. Much like the section on Nebraska’s 2nd, this one will be pretty short because its story is also pretty easy to explain.

Based out of rural, northern Maine, the 2nd district has served as a symbol of Democratic slippage among rural and secular whites. While the district voted for Obama by an 8-point margin in 2012, Trump carried it by nearly 11 points in 2016, a rightward shift larger than even some of the biggest ones seen in the Midwest. After this result, it would have been easy to write off the seat, but future results would be somewhat murkier than expected. In 2018, Democrat Jared Golden got himself elected as the district’s U.S. Congressman, a very impressive feat when considering he was up against an incumbent. In 2020, while Trump would once again carry the district, his margin of victory would decrease to 7.4%, a larger shift to the left than the rest of the country. Finally, despite being heavily targeted by the House GOP, Golden would win re-election to a third term, defeating his opponent by a very solid 6-point margin.

Of course, Golden’s results don’t mean that the district is trending leftward. He’s a unique political talent who has consistently managed to break free from his party every election cycle, so his victory in 2024 is no guarantee that anyone else will carry the seat. But it does give Democrats a model for victory in the seat, and given how pro-choice the area is, it would be impossible for me to write it off entirely.

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District Rating: Likely Republican

Ohio

If you were getting into electoral politics before the Trump era, you could always be almost certain of one thing: as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. From 1964 to 2016, the industrial Rust Belt Buckeye State seemingly always had its finger on the pulse of the nation down perfectly, voting for the winner in every single election from that period, even often getting close to the margin. When Democratic president Lyndon Johnson won a massive landslide in 1964, Ohio voted him in by a landslide margin too. When the country was splitting down the middle like in 1968, 1976, and 2004, Ohio was there to vote for the winner every time, all by less than 3 points. When Ronald Reagan ushered in a conservative revolution, Ohio was happily drinking the cherry Kool-Aid. When Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each brought Democrats newfound life, Ohio switched over to blue raspberry. For decades, Ohio was unmatched in its consistency as a swing state, and it made analysts place a massive chunk of their coverage into it.

However, things began to change rapidly in the latter half of the 2010s, when Ohio suddenly voted for Trump by an 8-point margin despite barely winning nationwide in 2016. Compared to 2012—when Ohio voted for Obama by just 1 point less than he won nationwide—Ohio had voted for Trump by over 10 points more than the nation did, making it one of the largest trends rightward in the country. This was largely thanks to Trump’s massive gains with rural whites and blue-collar workers, the latter of which had been the core of every Democratic victory in the state for almost a century. While in other states these losses would be somewhat or even fully offset by Democratic gains in suburban and urban areas, these places and trends weren’t sizable enough in Ohio, putting the state’s future as a purple state in serious doubt.

Fast forwarding to 2024, and not much has changed in this regard. Absent Sherrod Brown’s successful re-election in 2018, no Democrat has managed to win statewide since Trump’s win in 2016. Despite 2018 being a massive blue wave, the Democrats failed to flip a single statewide office into their hands. In 2020, despite losing by a wider margin nationwide, Trump would once again carry the state by an 8-point margin, making the state 12 points more Republican than the nation. In 2022, Republicans would win every statewide office in the state once again, further cementing the state’s new Republican bent. With Trump as popular as ever with rural, blue-collar, and white working-class voters, we should theoretically anticipate this trend to continue, making a strong argument for a “Safe Republican” rating.

However, I disagree with such a rating for three reasons. Firstly, while the state has certainly stayed solidly in the Republican column, it hasn’t moved much since the 2016 election either. Trump’s margin in the state was identical in both 2016 and 2020, and polling indicates that his margin will likely remain around 8 points in 2024. This suggests that Democratic strength and positive trends in urban and suburban areas, while minimal, have done a decent job of stopping further bleeding, making it highly unlikely that their status in the state gets any worse. Secondly, this presidential race also coincides with the U.S. Senate race, which has incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown running for re-election. Despite being a high-priority target for the Senate GOP, they have failed thus far to break through, with Brown up on average in polling by around 4 points. If this lead holds, it would suggest that the Democratic brand itself is not toxic enough to cost them, which keeps Ohio in some degree of contention, if only narrowly. Finally, while Democrats have mostly failed to break through statewide since the 2016 election, they have had more significant success on the referendum front, with both abortion rights and marijuana legalization passing by 13 points each in 2023. Since every Republican in the country is stuck with the anchor that is the backlash from the Dobbs decision—including Trump himself—this creates a small opening for a shock in Ohio, even if minuscule.

For those reasons, I don’t think I can write off the state entirely. It’s certainly a large reach, and you should still expect Trump to carry the state on election night. But there are simply too many variables in favor of Democrats to say the situation is entirely hopeless for them.

Ohio Rating: Likely Republican

Iowa

I’m going to be honest: When I was initially writing this piece, I wasn’t even planning to write about Iowa at all, and if you have been paying close attention to electoral politics since 2016, I’m sure you know why. While its reputation as a blue-leaning swing state was mostly solid throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the 2010s would completely shatter it overnight. In 2016, despite Obama carrying the state by a 5-point margin just four years prior, Donald Trump would win the state in a near-landslide of 9 points.

Not only was this the largest swing toward Republicans in the entire Midwest, but the second largest in the entire country. No other midwestern state—not even Ohio or Michigan—could come even close to this, and it’s something that Iowa Democrats have never been able to recover from. While they would have some decent results in 2018 and 2020, they would hit their nadir in 2022, losing all but one statewide office and all of their U.S. House seats for the first time since 1994. Heading into 2024, all signs pointed to this continuing, and when the gold standard Selzer poll showed Trump up over Biden by 18 points, I wrote the state off entirely with little doubt in my mind.

So, that begs the question: Why the hell am I talking about it now? Even when factoring in Kamala’s gains nationwide compared to Biden, why would it ever be enough to make Iowa even remotely competitive?

The answer to this question is simple: Selzer came back with another poll that now only shows Trump over Harris by just 4 points, a stunning shift of 14 points leftward compared to their last poll. Obviously, there are important caveats to point out here, most notably that Selzer’s polls are known for their high volatility, and that their gold standard reputation mostly comes from their final poll. But if the state was truly off the map, Trump would be leading by far more than 4 points, and the fact that he isn’t is a sign that there is still something there for Democrats.

You shouldn’t expect Kamala Harris to carry Iowa. It’s extremely white and rural, and Iowa Democrats haven’t shown much hope of victory since 2016. It’s far more likely that Trump wins the state by double digits than anything else. But if things get really, really bad for Trump, Democrats could probably eke out one last victory, if only barely.

And, for what it’s worth, Democrats do have a model for a statewide victory!

Iowa Rating: Likely Republican

Texas

Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that if blue Texas were to ever become a reality on the presidential level, Republicans could win every single major swing state except Nevada and STILL lose the election? More so than any other state in the country, Texas has the unique ability to—if it wants to—completely kill off Republican chances for a generation. As the state has gotten closer in recent years, it’s a prospect that has been impossible for Democrats to pass up, making it a prime target for investment in this election.

However, this fact is also well known to the Republicans, who have also spent a considerable amount of time and money making sure a blue Texas never comes. Thus far, their efforts have been successful: they still hold every single statewide office, they successfully gerrymandered the State House and Senate to their benefit, and polling ahead of the 2024 election indicates a Trump lead of around 5 points. Despite seeing large slippage in urban and suburban communities, Texas Republicans have managed to make the rural parts of the state more red than ever, even breaking through the historically Democratic Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Exurban parts of Texas are also growing rapidly, most of which is being populated by conservative transplants from California and other blue states. While neither of these factors has prevented their margins from slipping significantly compared to the 2000s, it has allowed them to keep a solid, if not massive lead in the state. Heading into November, Trump is the clear favorite in the Lone Star State.

So, why am I not rating the state as “Safe Republican”? My answer to this question is simple: trends. While Texas has mostly stayed put in the Republican camp since the start of the 21st century, almost every election has seen the state drift further to the left, sometimes even by substantial margins. It started in 2016 when Hillary Clinton performed 6.8 points better in the state than Barack Obama did in 2012, continued in 2018 when Beto O’Rourke came within 3 points of unseating the incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and nearly became purple in 2020 when Biden came within 5.6 points of winning the state. Most of this shift is thanks to rapid and dramatic shifts towards Democrats in populated Texas metros, almost all of which are rapidly growing. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, and many more have all shown Democrats making massive strides among the populous, and it has allowed them to take Texas into the national conversation, even if their chance of actually flipping the state is still low. While 2024 is likely too soon to expect this to flip the state to Harris, it does give Texas an interesting future in the national spotlight. Trump should win the state, but I’d advise paying close attention to the margin.

Texas Rating: Likely Republican

Florida

If there is any state in the country that has disappointed Democrats more than North Carolina throughout the 21st century, it is undoubtedly the Sunshine State of Florida.

Starting the century as the state that helped give George W. Bush the presidency via dubious rules, Florida has been extremely consistent at destroying the hopes and dreams of Democrats all across the country. While it hasn’t been immune to voting for Democrats every now and then, the state’s general trend is to reject Democrats at all costs, often by cartoonishly negligible margins. In 2016, despite Hillary Clinton’s massive gains with Hispanic voters, Florida would vote for Trump by 1.2 points. In 2018—despite a massive blue wave sweeping the rest of the country—Florida voted out its Democratic U.S. Senator and elected Ron DeSantis to the Governorship. In 2020, the state voted for Trump by a 3.4-point margin, making it one of just six states to vote more Republican in 2020 than in 2016. Finally, the state would make its full transition into a Republican stronghold in 2022, with Republicans winning every statewide office by at least 16 points, shutting Democrats out of a single statewide office for the first time since Reconstruction. After 2022, the state wasn’t even giving the appearance of competitiveness anymore. It looked well and truly over now, and for the first time in decades, Florida is no longer in the conversation as an all-defining swing state.

But should it be?

It’s difficult to say. On the one hand, Florida should not be covered as a state that is coming down to the wire as it has been for the entire 21st century. In this era of political polarization, Republicans winning Florida by 20 points is not a one-off. It’s a sign of greater problems, and further analysis into said problems makes them obvious for Democrats. While the sizable Hispanic population once gave Democrats hope of an opportunity, these communities have been swinging to the right by wide margins, crippling Democratic support in Miami-Dade County, the biggest county in the state. Its most loyal voters are slowly moving away and dying off, replaced with deeply conservative transplants from blue states. Despite being the most pro-choice state in the South, the Dobbs decision has made little impact in stopping the bleeding for Democrats. For those decisions and many more, it shouldn’t be a surprise when Trump wins the state.

However, it’s not necessarily impossible for Democrats. Unlikely for sure, but it’s not completely out of the question. After all, it only voted for Trump by 3.4 points last time, DeSantis’ approval rating in Florida has begun to slip, the Republican U.S. Senator up for re-election in Florida is deeply unpopular, there are marijuana legalization and abortion referendums on the ballot, and polling averages have indicated a Trump lead of around 5 points. A sizable margin, for sure, but not an impossible hill to climb either. If things end up going extremely poorly for Trump in the next few weeks, Florida could present itself as a sleeper flip for Democrats.

Since such a situation is unlikely to occur, however, I’d caution Democrats from developing any more unfounded optimism. It’s okay to forget about Florida.

Florida Rating: Likely Republican

Alaska

In the spirit of an election full of twists and turns, I think it’s appropriate to cap off this article with the Last Frontier of Alaska, the biggest potential surprise out of all the states listed here.

Ever since it became a state back in 1959, Alaska has been home to some of the most bizarre and politically idiosyncratic elections in the entire country. While it hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, the margin that Republicans have carried in the state isn’t particularly consistent, nor has it translated much to down-ballot success. While Republicans have usually won the state by wide margins on the presidential level, Alaska is often the best state in the country for third-party challengers, both left-wing and right-wing. On the state level, Alaska has had a tendency to buck national trends, from electing Mark Begich to the U.S. Senate in 2008, Bill Walker for Governor in 2014, to Mary Peltola’s back-to-back victories for the U.S. House seat in 2022. In this era of political polarization, Alaska has stood out as one of the last places where ticket-splitting remains alive and well, making it very unique in a ranking such as this one.

So what does this have to do with the presidential level? Well, for what it’s worth, you probably shouldn’t expect too much. Alaska, while certainly an interesting wildcard, is still a Republican-leaning state that voted for Trump by 10 points in 2020. While the state is pro-choice, it is also extremely pro-gun, making Kamala Harris—who has openly supported a ban on assault weapons—a tough sell for many. While it has urban and suburban areas that have trended leftward, it also has a lot of rural areas that swung rightward in 2020. While its natural beauty makes it a hub for environmentalists primed to support Harris, its abundance of oil also makes it a hub for refinery workers who are primed to support Trump. While you shouldn’t expect the state to swing rightward, you probably shouldn’t expect it to vote Democratic either.

Probably.

While the state should be voting Republican this fall, I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t a case to be made for Democrats. While Alaska’s rural areas are plentiful and sizable, it’s worth remembering that some of these places are also populated by Indigenous communities, who have been solidly in the Democratic camp for decades now. While most of these places swung to the right in 2020, Harris’ stronger appeal with minority voters when compared to Biden could provide her a nice chunk of votes that would have otherwise been lost. Additionally, the fastest-growing parts of the state—particularly Anchorage—have been zooming leftward at a breakneck pace, and with Harris on track to keep Biden’s gains with suburban and urban voters, this trend should continue in 2024. Finally, while Alaska hasn’t been home to much polling, a recent survey conducted by Alaska Survey Research—the firm that predicted Peltola’s victory perfectly back in 2022—shows Trump only leading in the state by 5 points, 47% to 42%. While this margin indicates that Trump should be winning the state again, it is a notable decrease from his 10-point victory in 2020, and since the Harris campaign is flushed with cash, they have every reason to invest some money into the state. For the first time in decades, Alaska is in the conversation for competitive presidential politics, if only barely. While you should anticipate a Trump victory in the Last Frontier, you also shouldn’t count it out.

Alaska Rating: Likely Republican

Conclusion

In this current era of partisan polarization and division, it can often seem like it’s impossible to find much of anything that unites the American people. However, throughout the first half of this election season, there was always one very clear consensus that broke through party lines: No one wanted a Trump vs. Biden rematch, and it’s not difficult to see why. Both candidates were extremely old, deeply unpopular, and were both associated with separate periods of malaise. Almost no one was excited about the prospect of the race, and the image of the American government as a retirement home was stronger than ever. For a while, the only thing that mattered was who was perceived as more capable of doing the job, and in the aftermath of the June debate, it looked like Trump was going to walk away with that advantage with ease. Had Biden chosen to stay in the race, the Democrats would likely have walked themselves off a cliff, giving Trump and the GOP a clear mandate that they could previously only dream of.

However, Democrats would finally answer the call on July 21st, and as we have established throughout the article, it has been an extraordinary success for them. Once seen as being out of touch and wrong for the time, the Democratic ticket of Harris/Walz has taken the mantle of change, enthusiasm, youth, and seriousness. With no Biden to distract voters with, Trump’s advantage of perceived competence is completely gone. Nowhere was this more evident during the debate, where millions of Americans got a showcase of who Trump really was: an old, out-of-touch lunatic spouting off insane conspiracy theories about immigrants eating dogs. Any charisma and energy from 2016 is gone, his age has clearly caught up to him. While he could look like the safe pick against a president who looked too old to serve, now he looks like an unhinged madman who can never be trusted with power. For voters looking for an escape from the unpopular Biden and Trump presidencies, Kamala Harris has emerged as the clear favorite, and as a result, she is the favorite to win the presidency.

Ultimately, that was always going to define the direction of this election: Who will save us from another Trump vs. Biden race? Because Democrats decided to take up that responsibility, they are the favorites to win. It’s not much more complicated than that.

However, just a few hours later, tragedy would strike in the small iron-mining city of Eveleth, where at approximately 10:22 am, Paul Wellstone, alongside his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia, and the pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess, would be killed in a plane crash.

Upon learning of this news, Minnesotans from all across the political spectrum were in utter shock and disbelief. While the passing of any U.S. Senator would be shocking, the death of Wellstone struck a chord with Minnesotans in a way no other politician has done since. Nothing shows this fact better than the image below, which shows Pakou Hang, a Hmong outreach coordinator for the Wellstone campaign, crying in utter disbelief upon learning the news of the plane crash.

Not too long after the plane crash, a new bumper sticker would appear on the back of cars, that being the simple question: What Would Wellstone Do? Because truly, no one in the DFL knew how to move forward. After all, Paul Wellstone was no ordinary U.S. Senator. Throughout his entire career, he was nothing less than a proud champion for a Democratic Party that embraced liberal, progressive goals, describing himself as a “member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”. This was in stark contrast with most Democratic leaders at the time, most of whom wanted to move the party to the center and concede to the framing of Republican talking points. In the process of moving the party left, he was also able to bring every corner of the state together, using his extraordinary organizing skills to beat back the Republicans twice in a row despite being heavily outspent. While conventional wisdom suggested that he would have blown out before ever getting a breath in, he would defy it every single time, and had he lived past October 25th, would have likely done it a third time. Simply put, there was no other DFL politician who gave the party’s supporters more hope than him. Not only did he know how to fight for progressive goals, he knew how to win with them too, even in tough political environments. It’s why he was beloved while he was alive, and it’s also why Minnesotans were devastated when he passed.

After all of this, it would have been easy to imagine DFL and progressive activists losing any hope in the future and becoming apathetic, plugging out of the process entirely. However, they were determined to uphold Wellstone’s progressive legacy even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and over the last twenty-two years, they have slowly managed to dominate the politics of the state, especially from within the DFL. But what exactly is that legacy? What can we learn from Wellstone’s career? Moreover, what does it say about the current state of politics in 2024?

In this article, I want to answer all of these questions and show how Wellstone’s legacy is just as important today as it was in 1990, 1996, and 2002. Whether it be policy, strategy, or rhetoric, I believe the career of Paul Wellstone serves as an example of how liberals and progressives can succeed, and in the process, shift the overton window back in our favor.

Carleton College

Early on in his Senate career, if there was anything that U.S. Senators in Washington knew about the newly-elected Senator Wellstone, it was that he didn’t follow the traditional rules of decorum. Instead, for the first few months of his tenure, he became infamous among Senators for his strong stances and attitude, particularly when it came to the hot-button issue of the time, that being the 1991 vote on authorization for U.S. involvement in Iraq.

This on its own wasn’t that controversial, at least within the Democratic Party. Most Democrats opposed the resolution, and Wellstone had already been elected on a platform that was opposed to further action in the region. Rather, what set him apart was how he chose to address his concerns, that being in a press conference in front of the Vietnam War Memorial, drawing parallels to the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While this made sense in theory, it ended up outraging many veterans groups, and Wellstone was forced to apologize and, taking advice from Walter Mondale, tone down his aggressive entrance.

While this bombastic start confused many of the entrenched Senators in Washington, it made sense when considering Wellstone’s background. In fact, it was very similar to a past incident he had at his previous line of work, that being as a Carleton College professor. First joining the university in 1969, Wellstone quickly grew a reputation for his political activism, whether it be on local issues like supporting the rural poor in Rice County and criticizing the college’s ties to corporate interests, or national issues like opposition to the Vietnam War and support for civil rights. This activism made him very popular and desired by students, something Wellstone himself would take advantage of, bringing students along for protests he participated in. He seemed much more down to earth than other professors at the institution, something that was reflected in his student-like attire and refusal to publish in academic journals.

This frightened the administration at Carleton. Much like how Senators would view him decades later, the leadership at Carleton viewed the young professor as a toxic force, a disruptor who simply could not be reasoned with. They knew that not only did he threaten their interests through his work, but he also could turn their students against them. As a result, tension between Wellstone and the higher-ups continued to grow, until it finally came to a head three years later when Wellstone was finally fired from his post for his activism. Initially, it looked like the administration had finally eliminated one of its biggest threats.

However, it soon became very clear that Wellstone and his students would not go down without a fight. Immediately, successors to Wellstone’s job protested on his behalf, students held a sit-in to get him back, and Wellstone himself soon joined the protests. Eventually, these protests became too large for the administration to ignore, and they were soon forced to reinstate Wellstone, giving him back everything he had previously held at his job.

In my view, this is the best example of Wellstone using a lesson he held throughout his entire life, that being the power of activism and organizing. To Wellstone, activism was inseparable from politics, and work within it could not be solely restricted to traditional means. This is because in traditional structures, what’s considered possible and up for debate is often not where it should be, and to change that, outside actors must enact pressure to shift the debate back in favor of what is right and just. The firing of Wellstone initially wasn’t up for debate, but thanks to public pressure, it came back into the discussion, ultimately saving his job and in the process, his future political career. This would also extend to his advocacy for other important issues like universal healthcare and campaign finance reform. As the left seeks to grow its power within the DFL and Democratic Party broadly, I think it’s important we use this story as an example of how to push for those goals.

The Definition of Politics

As I said previously, Wellstone’s first year as a U.S. Senator was somewhat tumultuous. His activist mindset, which he had held for over thirty years at that point, just wasn’t working in this new job environment. While it made him a lot more appealing as a professor and worked wonders in his 1990 campaign, people were now expecting a legislative worker, someone who was willing to cross the aisle to get things done. His initial introduction made doing that job considerably more difficult, with one fellow Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings describing this issue best in a conversation he had with Wellstone, where he told the freshman Senator “You remind me of Hubert Humphrey. You talk too much.”

However, as he began to settle into his new role, and thanks to some advice from Walter Mondale, Wellstone would adapt to his new position. While he would never shed his passion for “happy-warrior” activism or his liberal politics, he understood the need to keep things in perspective when it came to working on the inside. The Senate was not the kind of place where everything was possible, nor was the political environment particularly forgiving to liberals. After enduring three national losses in a row to right-wing conservative Republicans, national Democrats were desperate to break the streak and were willing to compromise much of their agenda in order to make it happen. That desperation culminated in the nomination, and eventual election, of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a charismatic southern baby boomer who ran on a centrist platform of “ending welfare as we know it”, embraced Republican rhetoric on crime, and strayed away from discussing issues regarding race.

For a staunch liberal like Wellstone, navigating through the presidency of Bill Clinton was a difficult balancing act. Given that they shared parties and both had to deal with the conservative political environment of the 1990s, Wellstone couldn’t completely break from the president, especially if he was looking to use his political influence from within the party. However, he also couldn’t completely align with the president either, as it would risk alienating his progressive base and killing off the momentum he had in 1990, which was the main reason why he was able to win as a staunch liberal in the first place. It was never gonna be easy, and had it gone poorly, it could have either doomed him to an easy defeat in 1996, or leave behind a legacy of being a total sellout to centrist forces.

But at the end of the day, I believe he handled this period admirably, albeit with one visible stain I’d like to mention, that being his vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned recognition of gay marriage on the federal level. This vote was very controversial among progressive and LGBTQ+ circles, which forced Wellstone to re-evaluate his position, eventually concluding that he was in the wrong and apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community. For many in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s difficult to look at Wellstone favorably because of this vote, which is entirely understandable and reasonable. On a personal level, it is disappointing to know that someone like Wellstone voted for a bill that would have made my life harder as a bisexual man. But this kind of open, personal evolution was rarely seen in politics, much less over an issue as unpopular as gay marriage, so I think there’s much more to it than meets the eye.

Outside of that blunder, Wellstone would do a great job at keeping the liberal message alive in the halls of the U.S. Senate where it mattered. This could be seen in two major bills, those being the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In the first case, Wellstone would approach the issue the same way then-Representative Bernie Sanders did, that is using the political moment to get his priorities signed into law. In particular, he and his wife Sheila held an interest in dealing with domestic violence against women, which culminated in the passing of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that Wellstone co-sponsored and got passed thanks to Sheila organizing women to support it. In the second case, well aware that the new Republican congress wouldn’t give him an inch of influence over the bill, Wellstone would express staunch opposition to welfare reform, making a clear-cut case in favor of welfare in a time when almost no Democrat wanted to come across as protecting “freeloaders”. In both instances, Wellstone knew when and how to make the liberal case, and in the process, keep his wing of the party alive and make progress when possible.

Beyond that, however, Wellstone also worked across the aisle on important issues whenever it was possible. In 1996, Wellstone would work with Republican Senator Pete Domenici to address the issue of mental health, something that Wellstone’s brother had struggled with. At the time, mental health was usually ignored and pooh-poohed. If insurance companies even bothered to cover it at all, the financial limits of spending they would pay for it were much smaller than other kinds of medical care, meaning that access to mental healthcare was difficult to come by. This problem would be eliminated in the bill that Wellstone and Domenici passed, a significant piece of progress in the fight for mental healthcare. In 2000, Wellstone would work with his fellow Minnesotan and Republican colleague Rod Grams to address the growing influx of Hmong legal refugees into the state. At the time, most Hmong refugees had difficulty becoming U.S. citizens, as most of them were still dealing with war trauma and didn’t know how to speak English. As a result, most Hmong people in Minnesota, most of whom were lower-income, couldn’t take advantage of the social services that helped others in the state get out of the cycle of poverty. The bill that the two would get passed, that being the Hmong Veterans’ Naturalization Act, would get rid of most of the requirements typically given to refugees, allowing thousands of Hmong people to become citizens and remain in Minnesota. Finally, in 2002, he would work with Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold on their bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, something he had been an advocate for since his first Senate campaign. In particular, he wanted to close what he saw as a major loophole in the bill, that is the protection of “advocacy” groups that would serve as a roundabout way for special interests to run ads close to election day. This loophole was closed via the Wellstone Amendment, which made it so they could only use money raised under strict “hard money” limits. While many argued that this would serve as a poison pill and kill off the project entirely, it would end up staying in and the bill was signed, Wellstone amendment and all.

What all of this shows is that he may have been a passionate liberal, but he was also willing to settle down and do the hard work when it was necessary. He understood the importance of activism, and would even sometimes engage with it as a U.S. Senator. But he also understood the importance of politics and working within the system too, as he believed that it was the vehicle to make what was considered possible, well, possible. It was a very important tool, one that could be used to make a big difference. As he would define it:

Where is Rudy Boschwitz?

As of now, we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the various ways in which Wellstone made a big impact on the U.S. Senate and the progressive movement broadly. In a time when his party wanted to shift right whenever possible, his voice was indispensable and incredibly valuable. Had he not been there, the DFL and Democratic Party would likely have been much worse off for it, so I think it’s important to mention one fact about his Senate career: None of this was ever supposed to happen.

When he first announced his 1990 Senate campaign, absolutely no one in the press or political world was taking it seriously. Not only was he a staunch liberal during an era of conservative dominance, not only was he running in a political environment that (mostly) wanted to keep the status quo, not only did he already lose a campaign for State Auditor in 1982, but he was also going up against incumbent Republican Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a popular, well-funded incumbent who no one else in the DFL was ever seriously considering challenging. Wellstone had everything going against him in this election, and early polls showed him down by as much as 30 points and severely underfunded. At this point, most candidates would have just given up the race entirely, dooming themselves to be nothing more than a sacrificial lamb remembered by no one other than election nerds.

Wellstone, however, was not like most other candidates. He was determined to win, and he knew that Boschwitz, while very strong, was by no means invincible. While he was popular, Boschwitz had also become harder to get in contact with by his constituents, and while he won his first election in 1978 as a moderate, he had voted and acted as a loyal Republican. If there was any way that Wellstone was going to beat Boschwitz, he would have to hammer home the point that Boschwitz, thanks to his bucketloads of cash and complacency, had lost touch with Minnesotans.

And in his most popular ad of the cycle, that’s exactly what he did.

The mini-documentary, simply titled “Looking for Rudy”, features Wellstone walking into Boschwitz’s many offices, each time trying to get ahold of the Senator to set up a debate between them. This goal was never achieved, representing how Boschwitz was unwilling to take the concerns of Minnesotans seriously because he just didn’t care anymore. Since Wellstone didn’t have much money and a 2-minute ad was very difficult to keep on the air, the ad would only appear once. As it turned out, this was more than enough, scoring tons of attention for Wellstone and even earning comparisons to the famous “Daisy” ad from the 1964 election. It was funny, understood the moment, and made Wellstone look like an underdog fighter for the people.

As the campaign progressed, attacks like these would continue, and by extension, Boschwitz’s massive lead would slowly begin to crumble. Wellstone’s green campaign bus, once ignored for its malfunctions, became a famous symbol throughout the entire state, with those driving by even sometimes offering to help assist Wellstone in fixing the bus when it did break down. The Republicans, after ignoring the race for months, were suddenly being forced to pump millions of dollars into the race, doing whatever they could to stop Wellstone’s momentum. Ultimately, they would doom themselves days before the election, where in an infamous letter, Boschwitz’s campaign would get some of its supporters to insinuate that Wellstone was a fake Jew. This, alongside the ongoing nominating crisis for the Governor’s race on the same ballot, would ultimately doom Boschwitz’s last-minute campaign, and on election day, Wellstone would defeat Boschwitz by a 3% margin, making it the only Senate seat to change hands in the entire cycle.

Granted, much of Wellstone’s win can be attributed to the fact that the Republicans simply did not take the race seriously, and even when they did, ran a bafflingly bad campaign that played into everything that voters had begun to hate about them. But it also cannot be understated just how much ground Wellstone had made up. After all, there’s a reason why the Republicans had to start trying and act like he wasn’t a real Jew. Over the course of just a few months, he turned a race where he was down by landslide margins into a horserace contest where he was setting the narrative on his own terms. The fact that he was able to do all of this as little more than a progressive college professor with some organizing experience is spectacularly impressive. No one, perhaps not even himself at some points, thought he could do it. Following conventional wisdom, there is no reason he should have been able to do it. But he did it anyway because he actually knew what the race was about and tried to make a real play for it.

As the Democratic Party tries to strike the balance between candidates who are both committed to basic party principles and are electable, I think Wellstone’s story is an important one to remember when trying to figure out who fits the bill.

The Legacy of Paul Wellstone

On November 5, 2002, 11 days after Wellstone was killed in the plane crash, the DFL would suffer a significant defeat at the polls. Thanks to backlash from what was perceived as the politicization of Wellstone’s funeral, as well as the Republican-leaning environment present in 2002, the DFL would not only lose the Senate race to Norm Coleman, but they would also fail to flip the governorship, State House, State Auditorship, Secretary of State, and lost seats in the State Senate. When all was said and done, the result was the Minnesota GOP winning its largest victory since the famous “Minnesota Massacre” of 1978, and it left the DFL in utter disarray.

It would have been easy for the party to give up after this. Where do you even go after this? Not only did the party lose its most passionate liberal advocate, but it lost most of its other statewide elected officials too. Besides, the Iraq War was just starting, which caused the approval rating of George W. Bush to spike back up into the 70s. At first glance, it looked like there was nowhere to go but down.

But if Wellstone had taught the DFL anything throughout his long career, it’s that you should never assume anything is set and stone. It was something he proved in 1990, and the DFL’s supporters were ready to follow his lead.

The party immediately got to work repairing its image, making it a goal to make sure that George W. Bush did not carry the state in 2004. On top of this, they ramped up their efforts in the State House, doing everything they could to weaken the newly elected Republican governor Tim Pawlenty. It wasn’t easy and the result wasn’t perfect, but when election day came, it was clear that their work had made a massive impact. Not only did George W. Bush lose the state by a larger margin than in his first election, but the DFL would come extremely close to flipping back the State House, putting them in a prime position ahead of the 2006 election.

From there, the sky was the limit. In 2006, the party would expand its majority in the State Senate, flip the State House, and take over every single statewide office except for Governor. In 2008, Barack Obama would carry the state by double digits and the DFL would defeat Coleman in his re-election bid, officially putting Wellstone’s seat back into DFL hands. In 2010, while they would lose some influence thanks to the national red wave, they would hold onto every single statewide office and flip the governorship, thereby preventing a Republican trifecta and still leaving them alive and well. This pattern would continue on for another twelve years, until liberals would finally win a majority of their own in 2022, flipping the State Senate and holding onto all their previously held power. While the DFL had held many trifectas before, this new trifecta was on track to be the most progressive one in state history, a major achievement for Wellstone’s faction of the party.

I could keep going on, but I think you get the idea. The 2002 loss was massive and a major setback, but it was also not the end of the road. While liberals didn’t have a domineering figure like Wellstone to look up to anymore, they still had his wisdom and lessons to work off of going forward, which helped them recover the party from the lowest depths it had fallen into. Just like Wellstone himself in 1990, they didn’t give up even in the face of seemingly impossible odds, and while progress was slow, it eventually all came to fruition, making the DFL one of the most progressive and effective state parties in the nation.

The accomplishments that this wing of the party has seen, whether it be electoral or political, are not guaranteed to stick around. While the DFL has been extraordinarily successful since 2002, it’s also true that their dominance won’t last forever. Minnesota is not the safest blue state, and as people get tired of the party in charge, the demand for change will naturally come about. When this will actually happen is still up in the air, but thanks to Wellstone’s legacy, I have faith that not only will the DFL recover from any future downfall, but stick by their ideological principles too.

That’s the legacy of Paul Wellstone, a passionate and pragmatic fighter who knew how to navigate politics and activism better than almost anyone else in his time. It didn’t matter how big or small the problem was, Wellstone would do whatever it took to get it done, whether it be through passionate activism or cautious dealmaking. Balancing those two principles is not easy, nor is it always satisfying, but its the approach that gives the most credibility to liberal and progressive ideals.

As the Democratic Party looks to replicate the success that the DFL has seen in the last decade, it would be best for them to start looking closer at the career of Minnesota’s fastest Paul.

Going into Super Tuesday, I had expected the uncommitted vote in Minnesota to be larger than most states. Not only is the DFL base considerably more progressive and engaged than most other state Democratic parties, not only would a bunch of Biden voters be crossing over to vote for Nikki Haley thanks to the open primary system, but Minnesota is also home to around 64k Somali Americans, the highest percentage of any state in the country. When putting it all together, there were many reasons to be bullish on the Uncommitted campaign’s strength.

But I would also be lying if I said this result didn’t surprise me. Not only was Minnesota the strongest Uncommitted showing of any state on Super Tuesday, but it also blew past Michigan’s 13.2%, scoring around 19% of the vote when all is said and done. Combining that with Dean Phillips’ 7.8%, it left President Biden barely scoring above 70% of the vote, his worst showing in a primary where he was on the ballot.

Granted, I could add some caveats to this performance, such as the low turnout or the fact that a bunch of Democrats crossed over to vote for Nikki Haley out of spite for Donald Trump. But even when considering all of that, it’s still impossible to ignore that as many as 45k people were so disillusioned with their own party’s president that they got out of bed, went to the polls, and voted out of a singular desire to express that anger. This is even notable when you consider that, compared to the campaign in Michigan, this one received far less media attention and had far less money to work with. Had there been more attention on this movement before Super Tuesday, it would have done even better.

Make no mistake, this is a big deal. That kind of energy doesn’t come out of nowhere, and it’s also not something you can ignore. If I were the Biden campaign right now, I’d be figuring out how to address this problem immediately.

In this short article, I want to go over what this result means, as well as how this problem, while sizable, can also be easily solved. In making this, I want to acknowledge both the work that the uncommitted campaign put into this race, as well as how the Biden campaign can navigate this issue heading into November.

Understanding Uncommitted Voters

First, I think it’s important to address a narrative that has become popularized by some liberals in light of both this result in Minnesota and the results in Michigan a few weeks ago. In an attempt to dismiss the strong showing uncommitted had in both cases, some have argued that it is not worth it to try to get their votes back because they are simply unwinnable. After all, if they are voting against Biden and pledging to use their leverage in the presence of an inevitable Trump nomination, what makes us think that they will come back in November? Besides, some people have already pledged that they won’t vote for him anyway, so why bother spending that energy trying to win back their votes? Isn’t it better to bite the bullet and move on?

While I won’t deny that some people voted uncommitted and probably won’t vote for Biden no matter what he does, I also think painting broad brushes like this is deeply dishonest and counterproductive.

When looking at where the uncommitted vote was strongest, it’s clear that its strongest spots in the state were predominantly in the Twin Cities metro, particularly in majority Somali neighborhoods that have been voting for the DFL for generations. Voters here are loyal Democrats, and I highly doubt that any of them are even remotely close to pulling the lever for Trump, especially since they already voted against him overwhelmingly in 2016 and 2020. But they are also deeply disgusted with Biden’s policies regarding Israel-Palestine, so much so that they were willing to go to the polls and vote against him in a primary where he was always guaranteed victory.

Additionally, this argument by some liberals for dismissing uncommitted voters is also dangerous from an electoral standpoint. Granted, Minnesota has a Democratic firewall higher than most other swing states, so the possibility that Minnesota itself flips red because of left-wing apathy is very low. However, that firewall also simply doesn’t exist at the same level in other swing states. Sure, Biden could probably take a beating in a state he won by 7% in 2020. But what about Wisconsin, a state he only carried by 0.6%? What about Michigan, which he only carried by 2.8%? What about Pennsylvania, the state that narrowly pushed him over 270 electoral votes in 2020? All of these states are also northern swing states, but unlike Minnesota, they simply don’t have the same level of pre-established Democratic support to save them if turnout goes south. Biden is going to need every vote he can get in these states, and if he is bleeding as much as 20% of support from his own party’s primary, that doesn’t spell much optimism for November.

Simply put, the people who voted uncommitted are sending a clear message to Biden: Change the course, or we stay home. Dismissing that as selfish or helping Trump accomplishes nothing but driving them further away and making the problem worse in the long run.

So, how does Biden turn it around?

What Biden Needs To Do

Here’s where things get a bit more optimistic for the Biden team. As we have established thus far, most people who voted uncommitted are ones who are disappointed with Biden’s policy regarding the ongoing conflict in Gaza and are sending a clear message that their vote is important and cannot be ignored. Electorally, while this doesn’t necessarily apply to Minnesota itself, the strong showing it gave in Minnesota is a warning sign for the Biden campaign, as if such results are replicated in other swing states, it could very well be game over. To avoid that, Biden must win back the trust of these voters.

Fortunately, this is a pretty easy issue to solve. Over the last few months, we have seen support for Israel slowly decline further and further as the lunacy of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is put on full display. Additionally, support for a ceasefire is at an all-time high, a remarkable shift away from Israel compared to where its support began back in October. This notable shift is affecting Democratic lawmakers in Washington too, with even some mainstream Democrats going public about the need for change in how we approach this war.

While Biden has reportedly expressed sympathy with these points in private, he has virtually never been publicly vocal about any of it and has rarely made a point to criticize Israel or Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict in public. This has been a grave mistake, not only giving an image separate from the rest of the Democratic Party but the rest of the country too. He looks completely out of touch and unwilling to listen to critics, hence why he keeps losing thousands of people to the uncommitted movement. If he wants to earn their trust back, he needs to make a strong, public case. He needs to condition aid, similar to how George H.W. Bush did in 1991. He needs to call for an immediate ceasefire and voice his concerns about what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip. This may not win back every voter lost in the last few months, but if the goal is to defeat Trump, the first voters to win back are ones that we’re already going to vote for you before all of this happened.

Will the Biden campaign do this? It’s difficult to say. While their current comments about this issue haven’t been satisfactory, it is also a few months out, and there have been notable Biden allies sounding the alarm on this issue, most notably today from Governor Tim Walz. In his CNN interview, while he mentions that he believes most will come home to Biden in November, he also argues that the Biden administration can and should do more and that the uncommitted result cannot be ignored. This sentiment was also shared by Ilhan Omar, who argues that this was a call for the president to take clear, decisive action.

For the sake of the future of our democracy, I hope Biden chooses to listen to Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar.

All of this success has culminated in the recent 2023 Minnesota legislative session, which saw Minnesota pass some of the most transformative policy goals in the country, such as expansions of labor rights, the establishment of a paid sick leave program, and LGBTQ+ and abortion protections. While there is still more that the party can and will do, this extraordinary session is the result of years of organizing, hard work, and passion by DFL leaders. It’s a sign of hope in an otherwise dark time, a sign that our votes and organizing can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

Make no mistake, however, none of this is guaranteed to stick around. The Republicans have already made a considerable effort at stopping all of it, and if there is anything you should know about progress, it’s that someone can always come along and reverse all of it. I don’t expect that to happen as of now, the Minnesota GOP has been one of the worst state parties in the country ever since it nearly struck gold back in 2016. But there is no telling what the future holds, and if the Minnesota GOP decides to get its act together, the DFL is going to need to put in a strong effort to defend the progress it has made, and to do that, it will need strong candidates who can meet the moment.

But just who can meet the moment? What makes these candidates appealing? What are the flaws of these candidates? What do I think of each of these candidates? Well, to answer those questions, let’s start at the bottom of the list and work our way up.

F Tier

Jacob Frey (Mayor of Minneapolis)

For every other politician on this list, even if they are ranked quite low, you’ll find that I can still find a positive thing to say about them, whether it be on policy or their electoral record. While some candidates are certainly more flawed than others, I can find good reasons for why someone would support them, even if I have them ranked lower than you may agree with.

However, this is not the case with the only figure I have ranked in F Tier. Ever since he first became the Mayor of Minneapolis back in 2018, Jacob Frey has been a consistently negative force in city politics, more focused on his grievances than doing anything meaningful for the people of Minneapolis. He has no idea how to work with his city council, frequently getting into pointless skirmishes that could have been easily avoided. He is almost entirely beholden to the police union, even despite the Minneapolis Police Department being well known for its use of excessive and cruel force. He is constantly picking fights with Ilhan Omar, even endorsing her de-facto Republican opponent in the 2022 primary.

Normally, someone of his stature would, at the very least, have a decent enough electoral profile to compensate, but Frey might just be the worst out of everyone on this list in that regard. In fact, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a group of people who don’t harbor feelings of distrust. Despite constantly pandering to their interests, Frey is despised by virtually every corner of the right, giving him nearly sole blame for some of the riots that broke out in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. He’s also largely hated by the left, who view him as a total sellout to the dysfunctional and immoral police unions. While he’s likely to find the most friends in the moderate wing of the DFL, many of them remain skeptical thanks to his tenure presiding over those previously-mentioned riots.

All of this has resulted in him only being re-elected with 56% of the vote in 2021, a sharp contrast from past mayors like R. T. Rybak who won with near unanimous party support. Simply put, he is the absolute worst the DFL could ever possibly put up from an electoral and policy perspective. Even if he were to somehow overcome his terrible image and win a statewide office, he wouldn’t even do a good job at it. There is not a single upside to a Frey candidacy, and any effort made by him to expand his reach, whether it be a statewide office or primarying Ilhan Omar, should be opposed at all costs.

D Tier

Ilhan Omar (U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 5th District)

Next up, we have a choice that I’m sure is going to infuriate my more progressive readers and friends, so before I get into anything, I want to make something clear: I like Ilhan Omar. I think much of the hate that she gets is entirely unwarranted and unfair, and her progressive voice in Congress is an important one to have. While I have some problems with her stances on some issues, I have no interest in primarying her and think efforts to do so are entirely wasteful. She’s been a solid vote for not just Democratic policy, but progressive policy beyond that too. As a U.S. Representative, she’s a good servant for the people of Minneapolis.

That being said, I will also not pretend that she should or could go anywhere beyond that. While her stances are very solid, one thing is undeniable when analyzing her campaigns and electoral record: She is a terrible politician.

The easiest place to see this is her electoral record. While her first performance in 2018 was fine enough, her next two showings would fully reveal her as one of the weakest politicians in the entire country. In 2020, despite Joe Biden winning her district by 63 points, Ilhan Omar would only win by 39, making it an underperformance of 24 points. No, I didn’t mistype anything. She underperformed Joe Biden by 24 points! This terrible standing did not improve throughout Biden’s first two years. Not only did she drastically underperform every other Democrat on the ballot once again, but she even managed to nearly lose her primary to Don Samuels, a Republican plant who joked about watching a kid drown.

Certainly, some of this underperformance can be attributed to her status as a Muslim, Somali woman who is frequently used by both the national and state GOP as a punching bag to attack Democratic policies. Most of these attacks are unfair and vicious, and it would have likely been this way regardless of how good of a politician she may have been. It’s something that has hurt her other Squad co-partisans like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Jamaal Bowman. Ilhan Omar is no different from them in this respect, so not all of these terrible results can necessarily be attributed to anything she did.

But it’s also true that even among members of the Squad, she is by far the worst-performing one out of all of them. While some of her weakness could be attributed to racism and islamophobia, it would also be dishonest to say that this is the only cause of it. While she would pull off a very impressive primary win in 2018, none of that infrastructure and campaign structure would carry over as an incumbent. In both her 2020 and 2022 campaigns, she did nothing regarding advertising and getting out the vote despite signs being present throughout the entire contest that there was opposition to her that had real support. This stands out in contrast with other Squad leaders like Rashida Tlaib, who has consistently fended off primary challengers with relative ease.

To be clear, I don’t want this to be the case. Her policy record is very solid, and she’s been an important voice for progressive causes in the U.S. House. But an electoral record this poor and a campaign strategy this terrible simply cannot be ignored or swept aside. She’s a good representative for Minneapolis, and any attempt by the city’s centrist wing to primary her should be opposed. But unless she gets her act together in the electoral department, it should never go beyond that. She’s above Frey on account of her policy beliefs, but make no mistake: she’d be a bad candidate statewide.

Julie Blaha (State Auditor of Minnesota)

If I were to use any fact to prove to you how effective the DFL is, it’s that ever since the 2010 midterms, they have yet to lose a single statewide race. Whether it be a blue or red-leaning year, the party has won every office, every time. It’s a remarkable achievement, one that represents the strength of the candidates and the organizing abilities of the DFL. It’s something that no one should take for granted.

However, while they’ve been able to keep up their winning streak for a remarkable amount of time now, there have been close calls that almost put it to a stop. There have been several examples of this, like Mark Dayton’s incredibly small gubernatorial victory in 2010, Steve Simon's narrow victory for the Secretary of State office in 2014, and Keith Ellison’s back-to-back underperformances for State Attorney General in 2018 and 2022. But none of these would end up being the closest result, which would take place in a year you probably wouldn’t expect it to. Of course, it didn’t come in 2018, a massive blue wave year where their ability to keep up the streak was never in serious doubt. But it also didn’t come in 2010 or 2014, both massive red waves that should have killed it off with ease. Rather, it came in 2022, a year that shouldn’t have taken any of the incumbents down.

But for State Auditor Julie Blaha, she would come within just 0.34% of losing it all, barely managing to win re-election against her Republican opponent, being the worst-performing Democrat statewide in the process.

While the strong results by the DFL in 2022 would still ultimately save her, it made it clear that when compared to other DFL politicians, there is something about her that people don’t find appealing. In a less favorable environment and against a candidate who wasn’t a total nobody or lunatic, it’s very likely that she would have been the one to lose the coveted statewide streak that the DFL has held since 2010. While her electability isn’t nearly as poor as the two politicians I’ve ranked below her, her record thus far has indicated that nominating her for any future statewide office is a considerable risk, one that isn’t worth taking when considering how many amazing options the DFL has in its bench.

C Tier

There is no one currently ranked in the C-Tier. This is probably where I would have put Dean Phillips if he hadn’t thrown his future political career into a woodchipper, but alas.

B Tier

Angie Craig (U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 2nd District)

When I was in the process of making this article, I frequently shifted my placements for most of the people I have included in this list. None of them were particularly large ones, usually just the difference between being ranked slightly above or slightly below someone else. Nevertheless, there were changes I had to make, as giving their viability more thought and doing some more research on their policy record caused me to have to shift my reception.

However, in the case of Angie Craig, this question was never once on my mind, and further research into her electoral and policy record has only confirmed my priors. Out of everyone on this list, she is by far the most average in virtually every respect. Her voting record is pretty much right in line with the party, rarely straying away from them outside of symbolic gestures of independence. Her electoral record suggests no significant underperformances or overperformances, with Split Ticket’s WAR model giving her 2022 performance a rating of just R+0.4. She has fashioned herself as a moderate Democrat, a common theme among Democrats first elected in suburban districts as part of the 2018 blue wave. She is very happy to flex her record of working across the aisle in an era of congressional dysfunction, just like other swing-seat Democrats. Essentially, she’s the least offensive DFL politician they could put up in a statewide race.

This makes the prospects of a Craig nomination vary depending on who you ask. On the one hand, someone could see her as a safe, competent nominee who could beat back the GOP relatively easily and keep Minnesota on a steady course. On the other hand, someone could see her as nothing more than a symbol of the status quo, a sellout who won’t be willing to fight for any meaningful progressive causes.

My view of Angie Craig takes from both of these viewpoints. While I think she’s a good representative for her district, I would be lying if I said the idea of her being nominated wouldn’t be somewhat underwhelming. I don’t think she would veto or fight anything that the DFL would pass, nor do I buy the idea that she’s a sellout, but I can’t imagine her being particularly vocal about many DFL goals either. I think she would win a statewide campaign, but not by any more than expected for a DFL candidate.

Overall, I think she would do fine enough. There are better options that the DFL can choose from, hence why she’s only ranked at the bottom of B tier, but I find it difficult to imagine her being outright bad, as a lot of left-wing faction of the DFL seems to think. Truly, the perfect median candidate for this list.

Keith Ellison (Attorney General of Minnesota)

Truth be told, at least in regards to Minnesota’s result in the 2022 midterms, it was really hard to find anything that wasn’t truly exhilarating on election night for me. Virtually everything went the way it should have, from every statewide candidate holding on, the DFL holding onto their majority in the State House, to flipping the last bastion of Republican power in the State Senate, thus giving the power to enact the broad change we’ve been seeing since the start of 2023. It was an incredible night, and it took me a while to think of a result that made me the happiest of all.

However, I think I found the answer, that being Keith Ellison holding onto his seat. This was a race that, going into election day, I assumed was flipping over to the GOP. Not only was he far more controversial than any other statewide candidate, not only was his Republican opponent far less scandal-ridden than others, but polling had suggested that he was running well behind every other statewide candidate. I was anticipating a loss, an unfair rebuke of one of Minnesota’s finest public servants.

Fortunately, however, he would manage to barely hold on and defeat his Republican opponent by a 0.8% margin, keeping the Attorney General's office in Democratic hands.

This slim margin does undeniably cause him to rank lower, as similar to Blaha, it gives the possibility of a future statewide candidacy a risk factor that doesn’t exist with many other party leaders. But unlike Blaha, his policy and legal record allows him to stand out and earn himself a higher spot than he otherwise would have. Not only has he done a good job at handling hot topic cases such as the Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter cases, but he has also been a strong, consistent voice for criminal justice and police reform, both as State Attorney General and as U.S. Representative. He has also remained a solid progressive on other issues, and I have no doubt he’d be a strong fighter for DFL priorities if given the opportunity.

If he were nominated, it would certainly be a very tough race, especially against a strong Republican nominee. But given his strong record thus far, it’s a risk I’d be far more willing to take.

A Tier

Melvin Carter (Mayor of St. Paul)

Wow, the better side of the Twin Cities gets the cooler mayor. Go figure.

Despite his neighbor to the west being by far the worst politician on this list, Melvin Carter has managed to do a pretty solid job as Mayor of St. Paul. Thanks to his willingness to work with the city council, he has managed to preside over some legitimate policy wins for his city, whether it be a $15 minimum wage increase, reforms to the St. Paul Police Department, or financial support for immigrants entering the city. While it hasn’t been a perfect tenure, I would be lying if I said I haven’t been impressed with his performance, especially in comparison to Jacob Frey. As we watch other mayor’s political careers go down in flames, Carter’s role as mayor serves as a rare bright spot of competence and action, and as a result, he has successfully positioned himself as a future DFL leader going forward.

With that being said, how do I think he would do if given a higher role? Well, as I said before, Carter has had a pretty solid record thus par on policy, so I have little doubt that he would do a good job at promoting and keeping the DFL agenda alive. I also have full confidence that he could unite both the moderate and liberal wing of the party, something he has already done in his 2021 re-election, which saw him crush all of his opposition with ease in the first round of voting. Despite facing the challenges that come with being mayor, he has done an excellent job at uniting forces within the party to back him, and in a time when the DFL needs to stick together to protect its many achievements, that’s a major asset.

His only question mark, if you could call it that, is that he is technically untested on a statewide level. As of now, his only elections have been in the city of St. Paul, and while he has done quite well at campaigning and won by solid enough margins both times, it doesn’t always lend itself to a great statewide campaign, especially given the often unfair negative reputation that mayors get in this country. I think he would win, but compared to some of the other candidates in this tier, it’s slightly more risky.

But hey, Hubert Humphrey started his political career as a mayor too, so Carter’s got that going for him.

Steve Simon (Secretary of State of Minnesota)

Out of all the candidates listed in this article, this one’s placement is the easiest to explain. If you are looking for someone who is guaranteed to win and do so by a large margin that isn’t named Amy Klobuchar, I’ve got your guy.

While Steve Simon’s political career would begin with a somewhat underwhelming electoral showing in 2014, his performance in elections would continue to improve in every election, with him easily riding the blue wave to re-election in 2018, and then pulling off his masterpiece in 2022, defeating his Republican opponent by a 9-point margin, the best of any statewide DFL candidate and the only one to improve his margin compared to 2018.

Granted, there are some asterisks you could point to regarding his 2022 showing, such as his opponent being a complete lunatic and Democrats benefitting substantially from the issue of small-d democratic principles. But the mark of a good politician is being able to use the political environment of the time to their advantage, and in the case of Steve Simon, he has done this masterfully. If your number one concern is electability above all else, it’s hard to argue that anyone could beat Steve Simon.

So, why is he not in the S tier? I’ve thought about this placement quite a bit, but I ultimately decided to settle on an A-tier spot, because while he has done a great job at defending Minnesota’s democracy and liberal voting laws, he’s pretty low profile, and it’s less certain how he would manage the top job. This isn’t so much a point of doubt in Simon, I think he could do a good job, it’s just that the people above him have more experience in this regard, making them slightly safer picks.

Speaking of which…

Melissa Hortman (Speaker of the Minnesota House)

Whenever discussing the many accomplishments of the DFL-controlled legislature since it took power in 2023, I think it’s important to sometimes step back and remember something: None of this was inevitable. Winning a trifecta was certainly a major boon, but if the DFL legislative leaders had been incompetent and couldn’t get their caucus in order, the election could have served as nothing more than a wasted opportunity.

Fortunately, however, we had Melissa Hortman and Kari Dziedzic as the leaders of the party, so this dark timeline isn’t one we have to live through. Despite being given a slim majority with little room for error, Hortman has done an extraordinary job at bringing the caucus together behind practically every single DFL priority, from LGBTQ+ rights, paid and sick leave, and pro-union legislation. While some leaders in her position may have chosen to compromise and water down these priorities to get GOP votes, Hortman knew that such efforts were counterproductive and pointless. After all, she had the votes! Together with Dziedzic, she has managed to deliver several transformative, game-changing bills to the Governor’s desk, and in the process, make this state better with each passing day. In regards to policy and competence, Hortman is one of the very best not just in the state, but in the country too.

Similar to Carter, she does carry the minor issue of being untested on the statewide level, and Republicans will undoubtedly be ready to rain holy hell on her out of spite if she decides to run statewide. But given her record of competence thus far, I would have full faith in her ability to run a strong campaign against the Republicans. If the DFL chooses to nominate her for a statewide office in 2026, we should consider ourselves very lucky.

Erin Murphy (Minnesota Senate Majority Leader)

Here’s someone who has become a new addition to the state political radar, albeit under gloomy circumstances. After the resignation of Kari Dziedzic following her cancer diagnosis, the DFL was suddenly given the responsibility of picking a new State Senate leader. There were certainly many qualified people for the job, but throughout the entire process, I was always rooting for Erin Murphy, someone who I’ve supported politically since her first run for Governor in 2018. Clearly, the DFL listened to me and my friends, because low and behold, they decided to go with… Erin Murphy!

I didn’t expect it, but I’m thrilled that the DFL has decided to pick her. Ever since she entered politics through the State House in 2007, she has been one of the most steadfast and consistent allies for progressive causes, while also being one of the most effective in terms of rising through the ranks of the party, serving as one of the leaders behind the DFL’s progressive 2023 session and the top Senate leader behind its ongoing 2024 session. She has been more than happy to take on those who stand in her way, with her return to politics in 2020 starting with her forcing an incumbent into retirement, and even telling Jacob Frey to shove it by endorsing Kate Knuth for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2021. Even despite this, she remains in good graces thanks to her campaign skills, such as in 2022, where she led the DFL to victory in the State Senate. When it comes to policy, there aren’t many in Minnesota who are more willing to fight than her, whether it be against the Republicans or even those in her party, while also being pragmatic when necessary.

An Erin Murphy candidacy wouldn’t be flawless. She’s older than most of the people here, the Republicans will spend tons of money against her, and her 2018 primary loss does poke a small hole in her ability to appeal to moderates. But just like Hortman, her record thus far has indicated that she will handle an election with ease, and once in office, continue and expand on the DFL’s accomplishments. If she decides to run in 2026, I’ll be supporting her when I vote in the primary.

Well, unless…

S Tier

Peggy Flanagan (Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota)

Sometimes, the obvious choice is the correct one too.

More so than anyone else on the list, Peggy Flanagan is always floated as the defacto successor to Governor Tim Walz, which makes perfect sense. After all, she’s the lieutenant governor, and very rarely does the person second in command not receive speculation, whether they are qualified or unqualified. Many of Minnesota’s important governors have been former lieutenant governors, including Rudy Perpich, who was the subject of Roose Thoughts a few months ago. It’s a very strong place to start, and of the candidates I listed here, she’s the most likely to become the nominee in the event of a Walz retirement. So, the question is, would she do a good job?

Absolutely. Truth be told, I struggle to think of anyone else who could do better than her at this moment, hence why she’s the only candidate I have ranked in the S-tier. The other non-Frey candidates on this list, while each maintaining very positive qualities in their own right, do come with negatives that put a question mark on their potential efforts, whether it be big or small. Ilhan Omar, Julie Blaha, and Keith Ellison have electoral issues. Angie Craig isn’t particularly inspiring or much of a fighter. Steve Simon is low profile. Erin Murphy, Melvin Carter, and Melissa Hortman are untested on the statewide level. While I think you could support each one for different, entirely legitimate reasons, they harbor issues that could be to their detriment in the event of a statewide nomination or job.

In the case of Peggy Flanagan, I genuinely struggle to think of any flaws. She has been a lifelong advocate for left-liberal and progressive causes, particularly on indigenous rights and more recently, LGBTQ+ rights, giving her appeal to the left wing of the party. She has been right alongside Tim Walz throughout his entire governorship and won by very solid margins with him in elections. She’s still quite young, meaning there won’t be any concern over old age. Similar to her predecessor, she has taken an active role in the legislative process as lieutenant governor. Her victory would have a historical attachment to it, being the first woman and indigenous person elected as Governor of Minnesota, with the latter being especially important given Minnesota’s tragic history with Native communities. She has been more than happy to fight Republicans when necessary, understanding that fighting for progressive causes has been the key to the DFL’s success in recent years.

Look anywhere you want, and you’ll end up coming to the same conclusion I did while writing this: She’s truly spectacular. She carries much of the best qualities of the other candidates on this list, while also harboring none of the downsides. She can appeal to moderates while also keeping the DFL’s achievements alive. She can fight the Republicans when they try to oppose her agenda, whether it be in the legislative chambers or the polls, and win.

Keeping the DFL agenda alive won’t be easy. The Republicans will do everything they can to kill it, as I said before, progress is always in danger of being reversed. While there are certainly many capable politicians on this list, no one has proven that they can do the campaign and the job better than the North Star State’s 50th Lieutenant Governor.

Fast forward to today, and it’s clear that expectations were shattered, even among those who already held the party in very high regard. For the entire 2023 session, there seemingly wasn’t a single day where the DFL wasn’t in the process of passing a transformative piece of legislation. Virtually every single progressive and left-liberal policy goal was addressed here, from the expansion of LGBTQ+ and abortion protections, paid family and sick leave, putting Minnesota on track to be a clean energy leader by 2040, free school lunches for K-12 students, marijuana legalization, outlawing non-compete agreements, getting rid of the ugly and racist state flag, and so much more. As Governor Tim Walz loves to say, while other states were banning books and attacking trans youth, Minnesota was banishing hunger in schools. Simply put, the 2023 session was incredibly productive, ambitious, and set an example for what Democratic trifectas in other states could be doing.

With all of that being said, there is still work to do. After all, the DFL trifecta still has an entire year left to work with, and while the last session did successfully address several major progressive policy wishes, there are still changes left on the table the party can make ahead of the 2024 election. Beyond that, the 2024 session also forces the party to think about its leadership and electoral prospects, both of which are going to be key points of interest in the next few months. Unlike the 2023 session, the DFL is going to have to deal with issues outside of writing and passing policy, which makes it ripe for political analysis.

In this article, I want to go over what 2024 has in store for the DFL, from the policies it could address, to its standing in the 2024 elections, and capping it off with how the year could force a change in leadership, something that hasn’t occurred in well over a decade. In doing so, I want to show not just what I believe the DFL could do, but also how this year has the potential to be one of the most important in the history of the party.

Policy Goals

First, let’s go over the most important part of this article: What policies can the DFL address in the next session? While the 2023 session has a nearly endless list of goals thanks to years of trifecta preparation from top DFL leaders, the 2024 session is a bit trickier to predict, as the 2023 session’s highly productive nature meant that virtually every salient issue to voters was passed with relative ease. When it comes to issues that matter to the DFL base, such as abortion, gun control, the environment, and healthcare, there isn’t a lot more that the party can do that it hasn’t already done, something that top DFL leaders are acutely aware of. As such, the 2024 session will likely address more niche and local issues than the 2023 session, so there won’t be nearly as much to celebrate.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues left on the table. There is always more to do, and not every problem can be solved throughout a single legislative session. In particular, three major issues have caught public interest that I think is worth addressing in this piece: public construction projects, physician-assisted suicide, and the establishment of an Uber-Lyft minimum wage.

First, let’s go over public construction, which is the issue that the Governor is most interested in. Since the 2024 session is supposed to pass a bonding bill, it is a prime opportunity for both parties to get some spending for local projects in their respective districts. Unlike the other two issues I addressed, this one requires some support from the Republican Party, since bonding bills need 60% of the vote to pass. While this does somewhat limit the prospect of infrastructure investment, it’s still essentially guaranteed that some form of public construction investment will be passed. Even in the 2023 session, where the DFL struggled to get more than a single Republican vote for any bill they passed, they were still able to work together on a bonding bill that also included significant investment in public construction and infrastructure, mostly due to the DFL threatening to weaken investment in areas represented by Republicans. If there is anything I can guarantee heading into this year, it’s that the DFL is going to pass a bonding bill that includes significant investments in public construction by playing ball, just like they did last year.

Second, there’s the issue of physician-assisted suicide, which is when someone with a terminal illness voluntarily ends their life with the help of medical professionals. This is almost always done by those who know that the end of their life is near, and continued life would leave them dying in pain and suffering. It’s certainly very sad and heartbreaking, but it allows people to die in dignity and to go out on their terms, and it’s a choice the government should allow and respect. This is a position the DFL shares, which has already proposed a bill to address this exact issue. While some worried that the bill would be far too lenient and resemble the Canadian system, the bill only allows people suffering from terminal illnesses with less than six months to live to get assisted suicide. While this makes the policy itself a no-brainer, it’s still very unlikely to get a single Republican vote, who have been opposed to right-to-die legislation ever since the DFL considered it. This means that the bill will come down to getting every DFLer on board, which could be somewhat tricky given the nature of the policy itself. While DFL leadership has been extraordinarily skilled at getting the caucus together on almost every other issue thus far, right-to-die bills have been difficult for other states to rally behind or put much work into, so the path to getting it done is a bit more questionable than public construction.

Finally, there’s the Uber-Lyft minimum wage bill, where the story is a bit more complicated. In the 2023 session, after significant pressure from Minneapolis State Senator Omar Fateh, the Minnesota House and Senate passed a bill that officially created a minimum wage standard for Uber-Lyft drivers, as well as protections for drivers from company neglect. Of course, Uber and Lyft fought the bill at every turn, and after it was officially passed and sent to the Governor’s Desk, they threatened to pull out of the state altogether. Walz, likely believing that his ability to fight this was limited, issued his first veto as Governor against the bill, while also signing an executive order to create a commission to look into ways that would help compensate the workers while also keeping Uber and Lyft in the state. While I can understand the decision he made, it was still disappointing that the Governor didn’t call their bluff, especially since his commission ultimately failed to create a workable alternative by its conclusion in December, although some worker protection goals were shared by both Uber-Lyft and the drivers. Nevertheless, given the lackluster result of the commission and Omar Fateh’s insistence on getting it done, Uber-Lyft will almost certainly get a vote once again, and like last time, predicting what will happen with it is difficult to say. On the one hand, Walz could end up signing the same bill he had previously vetoed, either because he sees it as the lesser evil to doing nothing or because he wishes to use it as a political tool for the DFL in 2024. On the other hand, he could end up vetoing it again for the same reason he did in 2023, which could potentially be amplified in his mind considering the upcoming elections in the fall. For the sake of the drivers, I hope the Governor signs the bill or at least finds a compromise solution, but that’s something we are going to have to analyze in these next few months.

Overall, while the policies I listed are not nearly as eye-catching or transformative as the ones passed in the 2023 session, they still represent a significant change in public policy that would continue to see Minnesota go in the progressive direction it has been going since the beginning of last year. From a policy perspective, these are all good changes I think would better the state, and it would be a shame if the DFL missed on any of them out of fear of the election.

Speaking of which…

Election Prospects

As I’m writing this piece, President Joe Biden’s 2024 standing is not looking peachy. While he entered 2023 potentially on track to get back some popularity he lost in 2021, his handling of the debt ceiling issue and his uncritical support of Israel have pushed him back down in the slumps, with most polls showing him behind Donald Trump in the popular vote and several important swing states. While his standing could improve in the next few months, starting the year off in a position this poor is not a good sign, and it paints a dangerous picture for Democrats as they fight to retain control of the White House.

So, what does this have to do with Minnesota? Well, first and foremost, it means that the DFL is going to have to deal with sharing the ticket with an unpopular president. Assuming that Biden’s position doesn’t improve by November, it could result in the DFL losing a few points that it otherwise would have held due to the unpopularity of Biden. Given how narrow the DFL’s victory in the State House was last year, this is an anchor that the party is going to have to look out for, and if it gets bad enough, we may look at an election that sees the Republicans flip the State House, and potentially even win the state on a presidential level due to third party vote splitting.

However, this is by no means a guarantee for three main reasons. The first is Amy Klobuchar, who is going to be running for a fourth term this year. As I’ve discussed in previous articles, the senior Minnesota Senator has always been an electoral powerhouse, and heading into 2024, she is essentially guaranteed to win re-election even if Biden ends up losing Minnesota. While her popularity has not historically been able to trickle down to other DFL candidates on the ballot, her presence does allow her to play the “generic Democrat” role that an unpopular president simply cannot, which could give some breathing room to other DFL candidates who aren’t nearly as well known. The second factor is the Minnesota GOP, a hopelessly incompetent state party that has been dealing with severe financial issues ever since it got swept out of power in the 2022 midterms. While it could get flushed with more cash and could even get some power thanks to Trump’s obsession with the state, their extremism and lack of a clear vision for the state serves as a major asset for the DFL. Finally, there’s the Dobbs effect, which has been a massive boon to the DFL for well over a year now. This is reflected in presidential polling, where Joe Biden still manages to lead against Trump in Minnesota even despite his terrible standing nationwide. While the passage of abortion protections could prove to weaken the Dobbs effect somewhat, the Minnesota GOP’s extremist policies and image can help bring the issue right back to the forefront, which could prove to be decisive for the DFL in its fight to keep the State House.

Ultimately, while Biden’s poor standing could prove to be disastrous for the DFL at first glance, looking further into the problem reveals that the party’s outlook isn’t quite as depressing as it seems. Deep down, they’d probably prefer not sharing a ballot with an unpopular president, and most DFL candidates will likely do whatever they can to avoid talking about him. But their chance of holding the State House is still alive and well, and as of right now, the fundamentals still currently favor the party scoring a third and fourth trifecta session. That being said, a Republican win is also not impossible, and if they can ride Trump’s coattails in any meaningful sense against a weakened Biden, it could result in them pulling off a narrow victory in the State House. Either way, this election is going to prove to be a challenge for leadership, and depending on the result, could prove to be game-changing when all is said and done.

Well, this brings us to the final topic…

Leadership

As I’ve mentioned in articles before, the DFL is a remarkably successful statewide party. Ever since it managed to flip the governor’s office from red to blue in the 2010 midterms, the party has not managed to lose a single statewide race since then, whether they be in red, blue, or neutral political environments. While they have lost the State House and Senate a few times, the DFL’s dominant position in the state has not been in doubt for decades, and it has allowed the party to be flushed with cash compared to their GOP counterparts.

Of course, this success is due to many different factors, and it would be a mistake if I gave all the credit to leadership. But they have played an undeniably important role, and the one guy who has presided over all of that is Ken Martin, the head of the DFL and one of the longest-serving state chairs in the entire country.

Ever since he first became chair of the debt-filled party after the 2010 midterms which saw them lose the State House and Senate, Ken Martin has been at the head of a party that has kept up a record of some success every election cycle. His first election in 2012 brought immediate success for him and his credibility as the DFL flipped both the State House and Senate, winning a trifecta for the first time since 1988. While 2014 and 2016 would prove to be disappointing for the party, the statewide streak continuing and Clinton’s narrow victory in the state proved to be enough for Martin to keep his job, and in retrospect, it would be the weakest point for the party under his leadership. The next three elections that followed would prove to be very solid showings for the party, with 2018 seeing the DFL flip the State House, 2020 seeing Biden doing far better in Minnesota than Clinton, and 2022 seeing the DFL take full control of the state via flipping the State Senate. While Martin’s tenure hasn’t been perfect for the party, he is generally regarded very favorably by top Democratic Party officials for his fundraising and his party’s success at the ballot box, with him even being promoted to Vice Chair of the DNC in 2017, and Tim Walz leading the gubernatorial effort for the Democrats in 2024. The DFL’s success keeps his leadership role alive, and if the DFL does well in 2024, he’ll likely be re-elected to the chair with a comfortable mandate.

As I said before though, while the DFL is favored to do well in 2024, there is a real possibility that things go south, especially if Biden’s standing in the polls gets worse and hurts the DFL down-ballot more than expected. If the DFL manages to lose in 2024, despite his long tenure of overseeing success, Ken Martin may go down with it for two reasons. The first is pretty simple: He’s been in charge for more than a decade and people will want to clean house if his party goes down in defeat, especially if the all-valuable statewide streak is broken. While Martin has presided over mediocre results before in 2014 and 2016, he was still only in his first or second term, was good at fundraising, and had a history of success before those hiccups. While that would still be true if the DFL blew it in 2024, that would be a much harder case to make in the face of demand for new blood, which would be further amplified by the second reason there might be pitchforks out for Martin: His colorful personality. It’s no secret to those in the progressive DFL that Ken Martin is not exactly friendly with their wing of the party, as can be observed here, here, here, and much more. While this has understandably annoyed the progressive wing, Martin’s record of success has prevented them from making a serious case to topple him. However, if Martin oversees a DFL failure in 2024, the case for removing him suddenly becomes much more legitimate, and combined with the progressive wings’ anger against him, it could potentially result in a change in leadership for the first time in over a decade.

That being said, this is all ultimately just speculation. It’s possible that even in the worst-case scenario, it all still works out for Martin thanks to his past successes and excellent fundraising ability. He may retire even after a big victory, seeing it as a strong way to go out after leading the party through countless victories. He may be ousted even in the event of a victory as more progressive DFL officials win elections in 2024. In any case, I believe that this year could potentially bring big changes within the DFL itself, especially if things go poorly, so be on the lookout at the latter end of the year.

Conclusion

In my piece going over the failures of the Minnesota Republican Party, I mentioned at the end that the party missed a huge moment to capitalize on a strong performance, in their case being the 2016 election. Of course, much of that was thanks to their own issues, whether it be through nominating extreme Trump-worshipping candidates, lack of effort to take down DFL incumbents, and terrible fundraising numbers. But much of that was also due to the DFL understanding the moment after 2016, with the party seemingly always knowing what issue to hit Republicans on. While it hasn’t been perfect, their performance in 2018, 2020, and especially 2022 was nothing short of fantastic, and when combined with Republican failures, it has allowed Minnesota to stay solidly in the left-of-center camp, albeit by a slim margin.

Heading into 2024, this task is going to be difficult to keep up in many respects, whether it be pleasing the base in the legislature itself, getting the party under control and unified, and putting up a good fight against the Republicans. There’s a small chance that all of this pressure could cause the party to spiral out of control, taking down the party’s trifecta and any hope of continuing Minnesota’s left-liberal project. But these same difficult problems existed in 2018, 2020, and 2022 as well. It wasn’t like there weren’t any internal divisions then either, especially after the party was reeling from Trump nearly winning the state in 2016. But when all was said and done, thanks to the party’s strong ability to get everyone together and exploit Republican weaknesses, it went to the ballot box and crushed it, reaffirming its status as the dominant party of Minnesota each time.

As an optimist, I’d like to think we should expect the same in 2024, and as a DFLer myself, I think the future is bright. There are reasons to be concerned, and I’ll be the first to turn on the alarm bells if I believe they are going to take down the trifecta in November. But as of right now, I think the party of Hubert Humphrey will remain the top dog after 2024, which is great for everyone who lives in the land of 10,000 lakes.

If nothing else, I hope my optimism is proven right just so guys like this can stay out of power.

But you’re probably also asking yourself, why exactly did the Mall of America end up in Minnesota? Why would they put America’s biggest shopping mall in a state that gets forgotten by most people outside of the Midwest? Why would they build a shopping mall in a state that not many were ever considering moving to? Why sacrifice the opportunity to build a mall in the quickly growing Sun Belt?

Well, it came down to many different factors, but one of them was certainly thanks to the marketing skills of one man. In this case, it was a man who spent his entire life trying to build things, with the ultimate goal always being the same: making his state a home for economic prosperity for all. That man was Rudy Perpich, Minnesota’s 34th and 36th Governor.

If you know anything about Rudy Perpich, it’s probably his instrumental role in getting the Mall of America to get built in the first place. His charisma was an incredibly valuable asset throughout the entire process, giving the project a voice that no other person from the state had the opportunity to use. While he wouldn’t be in office to oversee his project’s final completion in 1992, there was no doubt in the eyes of most, even his political adversaries, that his role was indispensable.

But beyond just the symbolism of being the Governor responsible for the creation of America’s greatest shopping mall, there’s another underlying element to his role in this project. People who had lived through his long governorship knew that this wasn’t just some one-off job he did to satisfy Twin Cities business interests. Instead, this was yet another example of something he did throughout his entire tenure as Governor: He was a salesman for Minnesota and its people. This was a mission that he would never deviate from, even in the face of strong political opposition from his own party. He would work with anyone to sell his state, whether it be allies in his own party, businesses long opposed to his political rise, or even other world leaders. While he would experience perhaps the goofiest Greek-esque political downfall, his tenure as Governor would ultimately make him one of the most important people in Minnesota's political history.

In this article, I want to go over the long career of Rudy Perpich, from his start as a Hibbing school board member all the way up to his role as the chief executive of the North Star State. In doing so, I want to show not just his political triumphs and defeats, but also the many decisions he made, both on policy and rhetoric, that still affect Minnesotans today. At the very least, I hope my piece presents you all with a compelling story about one of Minnesota’s most domineering figures. With that all being said, let’s start at the very beginning of his life.

Rudy’s Political Upbringing

Before we get into the start of Rudy Perpich’s political career, we first need to go over the environment and family that he grew up in, as doing so will help us understand not just how he established his ideology and philosophy, but also how he operated the game of politics years down the line.

His father Anton Perpich, born in Croatia (then a part of Austria-Hungary) in 1899, spent his formative years living in the rural countryside assisting his parents on the family farm. The family was poor, under political subjugation, and was the victim of anti-Croatian racism by their Balkan neighbors. While he would try make the most of it, it was never an ideal situation, especially as the First World War was heating up. Eventually, he came to realize that he needed to make a dramatic change if he was to bring himself and his family a stable financial situation. The solution to this turned out to be the one many other Europeans took too: seek a better life in the United States of America.

Settling in the U.S. in the early 1920s, he would find himself in Carson Lake (a part of Hibbing today), a Northern Minnesota town that was seeing an economic boom thanks to the prospering iron ore mining industry. The influence of the industry was everywhere to see in the region, attracting thousands of European immigrants and eventually earning the nickname “Iron Range” for just how influential it was. The backgrounds of the people who immigrated to the region were highly varied, ranging from Finns and Swedes from Northern Europe to Italians and Croatians from Southern Europe. It was an economic gold mine, and people from all over the world were ready to take advantage of it.

This is the world that Rudy Perpich would be born into in 1928, being the first child of Anton and his American-Croatian wife Mary Vukelich. While Anton and Mary would do quite well for themselves throughout the Roaring 20s, their financial situation would grow much more sour as the Great Depression set in. The Iron Range was hit hard by the Depression, with over 70% of mining jobs being vanished seemingly overnight. This left the family in dire economic straits, with Anton seemingly always on a job search. Their house was small, Rudy and his siblings would all share a bedroom in their three-room house. Anton was almost always at work, usually not being able to be there for his children. They usually couldn’t get any Christmas presents for their children, with Anton even having to tell Rudy one year that Santa wasn’t going to make it, although he would later be saved when a friend of Anton would allow him to buy a gift at a discounted price.

As he grew older, Rudy’s political identity would slowly begin to blossom. While iron mining was a defining feature of the Iron Range, most miners had negative opinions of the companies themselves. The mining companies controlled practically everything in the region, even maintaining control of schools meant for those who weren’t the children of poor miners. Conditions were mediocre, the pay wasn’t adequate, and it seemed like the companies were hoarding all of the money for themselves.

Immigrants, who had long held progressive-leaning politics thanks to their upbringings, would find themselves in conflict with the mining companies they were working for. This resulted in the Iron Range becoming a hub for unionization and progressive politics. Over the course of the early 20th century, this trend began to become more and more apparent, with Progressive Era politicians like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson drawing a considerable amount of their statewide support from the region.

This would all culminate during the Great Depression in 1936 when incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt was running for re-election. Over the course of his first term, he had established himself as a president for the common man, with that political brand only growing more and more solidified as he signed more of his New Deal agenda into law. While this would anger many in the business community who backed him in 1932, it earned him considerable goodwill with labor unions and workers throughout the Iron Range. While many were skeptical of him in 1932, he became a heroic figure to them over the course of his presidency, and he became incredibly popular among Iron Range voters.

Following the political trend of the Iron Range, Anton and Mary Perpich were staunch Democrats. The two of them idolized Roosevelt, with each of them casting their first-ever vote in an election for him in 1936. This was the election that saw the Iron Range transform into a Democratic stronghold, becoming Roosevelt’s best region in the state by a wide margin, just four years after he barely won it in 1932. The two of them would raise their children with these values in mind, emphasizing the importance of education, helping those in need of assistance, and standing up for yourself in the face of injustice. This would influence not just the many battles that unions would get into with mining companies, but also in dealing with people of different backgrounds too. Anton, who remembered his experiences with discrimination in the Balkans, made it clear that there would be no discrimination of any kind allowed under his roof. Not only would he defend Croatian speakers like himself from discrimination, but he would even show support for an African-American basketball team near his area, which represented a minuscule demographic group that practically no one in the Iron Range had ever interacted with. In his mind, the negative action and attention needed to be placed on the mining companies, and that division based on social class would only result in the mining companies gaining more power.

For Rudy, this is where his political instincts would be born. Thanks to his upbringing, he knew what it was like to be poor, and all the trouble that came with it. He felt that he was uniquely positioned to understand the needs of those who were, in his view, unseen by the government and big business. Just like his parents, he valued education above all other issues, with him later describing it as the “passport out of poverty”. He understood that prejudice against those on the basis of religion, race, or ethnicity was counterproductive and not the ticket to making anyone’s life better. He valued hard work, but also valued helping those who can’t help themselves.

He was a Democrat. But more than that, he was a populist, one who wasn’t afraid to take on the system whom he had always felt at war with throughout his entire childhood. More than anything, that would define everything he did for decades to come at the local, state, and even national level.

From Hibbing to Congress

After briefly serving in the U.S. Army from 1946 to 1948, Rudy Perpich took his parent’s advice about education to heart, enrolling in Hibbing Junior College. While he would prove to be a successful basketball player and was even elected as the president of his sophomore class, he felt that he needed to be in a profession where he could be independent of a boss. After settling on dentistry, he would officially earn his degree in 1954, meaning he wouldn’t have to work in the mines like his father did.

He would set up an independent dentistry practice in Hibbing almost immediately, which would become a near-instant hit with residents, especially with immigrants. Thanks to his likable personality, he quickly became a well-known name in Hibbing, and in 1955, Rudy Perpich put that name to use in his first-ever run for office, the Hibbing School Board. While he was well-known, his Croatian and Catholic background was unheard of for an elected official in the city, leaving many voters uneasy. This resulted in him losing the race, but he was by no means finished here, as he would once again run for the position in 1956. This time, he would capitalize on a hot-button issue, the debate over whether or not female teachers should be paid the same as male teachers, and whether or not married women could be eligible to be hired as full-time teachers. Rudy Perpich, who had been raised to oppose discrimination, would argue on the side of the women, stating that if elected, he would help enact a policy that judged pay on the basis of experience and performance. This was the issue that ultimately pushed him over the top, earning him his first elected office.

As a school board member, Rudy Perpich would successfully make a place for himself as a young, fresh face ready to change the game. Not only did he fulfill his promise to the women who had voted for him over the equal pay issue, but he also forced the board to change its policy regarding gift-giving, something no previous school board member ever bothered to deal with. This made him extremely popular with Hibbing residents, and the acclaim he received in his position soon began to spread the word outside of Hibbing. As time went on, more and more people began to learn who he was, and there were hardly any skeptics to be found. People liked his energy, his passion, and his bold ideas. Obviously, he was going to be something greater.

The way Rudy Perpich went about this surprised everyone, however, when he decided in 1962 that he was going to primary his own DFL State Senator Elmer Peterson, an entrenched incumbent first elected to the State Senate in 1946.

No one, including his own friends, understood what Perpich was doing here. Peterson had the backing of the entire political establishment, including the Iron Range U.S. Congressman and local kingmaker John Blatnik. Incumbents with that kind of backing are not to be messed with, and anyone who does will see their political careers blacklisted and killed off well before it could ever even begin. Party loyalty was an important value, after all, you don’t want to be divided heading into any election. So why would Perpich go against such an important value?

Perpich, who had seen himself as a perpetual outsider since childhood, didn’t have the same interest in preserving party loyalty as many of his peers. While he was a staunch Democrat, he was also someone who considered it secondary to his political goals. In his mind, if there was a Democrat who didn’t subscribe to his values and help the community, they shouldn’t be immune to being challenged by their fellow party members.

This thought was foreign to many in the Iron Range. The region had established a tendency to stick with certain political dynasts, with Elmer Peterson being among them. For that reason, most people didn’t think Perpich had a prayer. Peterson had the legislative experience, the backing of the entire party apparatus, and was a respected statesman by both sides of the aisle. Perpich may have had the energy, but he was just a low-level 34-year-old school board member who frequently went against the party. It was a massive hill to climb, and most people didn’t think Perpich could pull it off.

Despite being dismissed by practically everyone in his personal and political life, Perpich would remain determined to defeat Peterson. Using his charisma to rally his many friends behind him in spite of their doubts, he would spread the word about his candidacy all across the district, using both himself and his enthusiastic supporters to boost him.

This proved to be very successful. As the campaign went on and Perpich continued to make his pitch, the mood began to shift rapidly. While most people in the district liked Peterson, they also felt that he had overstayed his welcome, having been in office for almost two decades by that point. His lead only began to get smaller and smaller, until the final nail in the coffin came when the Republican Party of Minnesota officially endorsed Peterson, seeing him as the lesser evil to Perpich. The Iron Range, where Democratic primaries had been the real election since the days of FDR, took this endorsement as a sign that Peterson was out of touch, voting him out by a margin of just 221 votes.

This narrow loss wouldn’t just end the political career of one of the DFL’s most respected elder statesmen. It would also be the beginning of Rudy Perpich’s march to political dominance in Minnesota, using his influence as a State Senator to become a statewide kingmaker in a way that made him many friends and enemies on both sides of the aisle. The Hibbing School Board was one thing, but now he was a State Senator, now able to create a presence in the heart of the State Capitol in St. Paul. He had the charisma, connections, and thanks to the district’s strong Democratic-lean, had essentially become representative-elect.

And he would take advantage of these traits immediately.

The Perpich-Keith Alliance

Around the same time Rudy Perpich was making his State Senate ascension, the DFL was gearing up to fight in one of the most competitive statewide battles in decades. After losing the Governor’s office in 1960 to Republican Elmer Andersen, the party was eager to take back power in St. Paul, especially as Andersen began to look more and more vulnerable. In order to accomplish this goal, the DFL would nominate the most electable candidate they could, the popular Lieutenant Governor Karl Rolvaag, to take on Andersen in the general election. While this approach was probably the safest one they could have taken if they wanted to defeat Andersen, it also carried a significant risk with it too: the Lieutenant Governor’s office was now an open contest.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the role of the Lieutenant Governor was largely ceremonial, doing little more than serving as a political calculation the main candidate made to broaden their overall appeal and or reinforce their best traits. While doing this was slightly different in 1962 thanks to the two offices being elected separately, the basic principle was still the same. Ideally, you wanted the two candidates to complement each other’s strengths, not deviate and expose their individual weaknesses. With that in mind, Rolvaag and the DFL had a choice to make: who would be their guy?

Once again, the DFL would play it safe, choosing State Senator Sandy Keith as their nominee, clearing the field for him in the process. Just like Rolvaag himself, he was a popular liberal from Southern Minnesota who had managed to win over voters who typically voted for Republicans. After this issue was settled, both Rolvaag and Keith would easily win their primaries, officially making them the statewide symbols of the DFL going into the general election.

At the surface level, this was the definition of a safe pick. It did little more than reinforce everything that made Rolvaag popular, right down to the regions the two men grew up in. It didn’t look like a bad pick, but it was obvious that the DFL was playing it as safely as they could. As the campaign started, most people thought they knew what to expect, and that Keith’s presence would make virtually no difference in the race.

As the campaign progressed, however, Keith’s political instincts would prove to be a valuable asset. Deeply involved with the liberal wing of the DFL, he had noticed the surge of enthusiasm and support for Rudy Perpich very early on, sitting by in shock as Perpich would defeat his own party’s long-time incumbent. Keith, a fellow liberal, saw this as a golden opportunity to help drive votes for him in the Iron Range, which was going to be crucial for any Democratic victory. Perpich would soon host him at his Hibbing office, hitting off with him almost instantly and happily agreeing to help Keith drive votes in the region. He would take Keith all across the region, showing him practically every important spot he needed to stop at in order to appeal to voters, from coffee shops, and restaurants, to even old-timer dances.

This worked out great for both men. For Keith, it was a time to show off his public speaking skills, an especially important asset to present in light of concerns over being seen as an out-of-touch elitist due to his wealthy Rochester upbringing. For Perpich, it was a time to perfect his skills with one-on-one conversations, something that Keith had personally struggled with. While Perpich and Keith had very different upbringings and backgrounds, the two of them complimented each other perfectly, paying dividends on Election Day as the Iron Range would bring both Keith and Rolvaag over the top in their incredibly tight races. In helping Keith win the Lieutenant Governorship, Perpich not only secured an ally at the top of DFL leadership, but he also showed skeptics that he could be a valuable asset himself, one who you would want to have on your good side.

However, while Perpich had proven himself to be an effective ally, some in the establishment still weren’t thrilled with his victory. Not only did he defeat a well-respected incumbent, but thanks to his reputation as an outsider who frequently went against the party, he was also seen as a potential threat to other entrenched incumbents. If he could take down someone as prestigious as Peterson, who knew what would happen if his rapidly growing base went beyond the Iron Range?

The Perpich Problem

After the 1962 election concluded, it was clear that the DFL was split on how to deal with Rudy Perpich’s rapidly growing influence. Those on the more conservative and moderate side were strongly opposed to him, seeing him as an inexperienced loon who could bring the party down in flames. This was the position taken by most of the DFL establishment, including John Blatnik, an adversary of Perpich who expressed concern about his rising influence on his home turf.

On the other hand, more liberal members like Sandy Keith saw his influence as a golden opportunity to keep the party alive in the modern era, viewing him as someone who had the ability to appeal to younger voters who didn’t have as much care for who the incumbent was. For newer DFL politicians, this was the favored viewpoint.

This problem would only grow bigger and bigger as Perpich became a more important figure throughout the 1960s. While the party would stay united in 1964 in the face of Barry Goldwater, the problem would explode into a full-on inner political battle in 1966, when it was announced that Sandy Keith would be primarying Karl Rolvaag for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination over electability concerns. Rudy Perpich, a long-time friend of Keith by this point, would once again assist Keith on the Iron Range, while also assisting his brother Tony in his own primary campaign against entrenched Gilbert incumbent Thomas Vukelich. This was the breaking point for many establishment skeptics, leading to them recruiting Elmer Peterson to take him down in a revenge campaign. After being dismissed in 1962, Rudy Perpich suddenly became the top target of the establishment, and no one was sure if he could take them on.

However, as the 1966 elections progressed, Rudy Perpich emerged out of it much stronger than before. While he wasn’t able to get Keith the statewide primary victory, he would be re-elected to his own seat by a significantly larger margin than he did in 1962, as well as see Tony Perpich defeat Thomas Vukelich, both major blows to the establishment. Not only that, but for the first time, Rudy Perpich and John Blatnik found themselves on the same side of a primary contest, both endorsing Keith in his unsuccessful primary bid. This would be the start of a cooling process between the two kingmakers, neutralizing Rudy Perpich’s biggest political threat in the process. This would have already been significant enough, and a sign that the pro-Perpich wing wasn’t going anywhere.

But it became even more clear in November, when Rolvaag lost his bid for re-election to Republican Harold LeVander, leaving the establishment embarrassed and discredited. While some had attempted to argue that Keith’s disloyalty caused the defeat, this wasn’t what resonated with those in the party. In their minds, Rudy Perpich and his fellow liberals had proven that they were the future of the party. They had the charisma, organizing, and policies needed to bring not just the party into the future, but the state as a whole too.

Of course, he still had enemies, but pretty much all of them were old dinosaurs who just got blamed for the 1966 loss. Rudy Perpich may have been risky, but he was also young, in tune with key DFL constituents, and had the charisma necessary to drive people to the polls. What’s not to love?

Rudy Goes Statewide

Heading into his second term, the 38-year-old Rudy Perpich had established considerable goodwill he never had before. For the first time, he had power within the party, a real presence that allowed his voice to mean something both within the party and Minnesota politics as a whole.

Over the course of his second term, he would never let this opportunity go to waste. As the 1968 elections were approaching, fury over the Vietnam War among the young Democratic base continued to grow stronger each day, with it all culminating in Minnesota’s own U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy announcing that he would be primarying incumbent Democratic president Lyndon Johnson. Rudy Perpich, an opponent of the war, would quickly endorse McCarthy’s campaign, which he would continue to stand by even after Minnesotan Vice President and DFL founder Hubert Humphrey entered the race. Rudy Perpich was deeply involved in the anti-war movement, so much so that many anti-war supporters wanted to recruit him to run in the U.S. House primary against John Blatnik. While Rudy Perpich would decline to take that opportunity, his influence would still bring in a new base of DFL voters, most of whom were younger, and more likely to support Rudy Perpich’s liberal team.

Beyond this, he’d also use his influence to take on the Republicans and big business directly. As property taxes began to slowly increase on Minnesotans over the course of several decades, it became more and more evident that several big corporations were paying virtually nothing, especially compared to what average citizens were paying. Nowhere was this problem more prevalent than in the Iron Range, which saw sharp increases in property taxes for miners while the companies paid nothing in property taxes.

To Rudy Perpich, this was a gross injustice, but it was also one that was easy to fix. When Minnesota’s property tax was implemented in 1941, the state government put a special five-cents-a-ton production tax on mining companies as an alternative for them, which at the time, served its role of generating a significant chunk of revenue while not displeasing the companies too much. But as years went on, most economists had agreed that by 1969, they had been paying far less than they would have under a normal property tax system.

With that in mind, the solution was simple: scrap the production tax and make mining companies pay the same property taxes as everyone else. Of course, this was opposed vigorously by the mining companies, who would make significant efforts to lobby politicians to oppose Perpich and his fellow liberals. Undeterred, Perpich called on those in the Iron Range to not pay their real estate taxes and create a massive tax strike throughout the entire region. When the day came, Perpich fulfilled his promise, organizing on the Capitol and demanding that the Republican Governor do something about this issue.

This effort would prove to be successful. After days of protest, the Republican Governor announced that while he didn’t endorse scrapping the production tax, he did support raising the threshold so the mining companies would have to pay normal rates for the foreseeable future. This was an acceptable compromise for Perpich, and in mid-1969, the legislature passed a bill that raised the tax to eleven and a half cents per ton, more than doubling the previous rate.

This positive attention became a big political win for Perpich, and for the very first time, sparked a real conversation about his potential on a statewide level. He was a rising star and had demonstrated he could get a big political win for his people, even in the face of Republican opposition. Who knew what he could do if given a statewide spotlight?

Rudy Perpich, a deeply ambitious man, would soon announce his intention to seek the DFL nomination for Lieutenant Governor, taking out a $20,000 loan for his campaign in the process. For the first few months, the process was tiring for both Rudy and his wife Lola, who kept having to commute from their Hibbing home all the way down to the Twin Cities every single day, taking several hours both ways. But this tedious time would soon come to an end as Rudy Perpich approached the next problem: the state convention.

While Rudy Perpich was a far less toxic politician in establishment circles than he was eight years prior, he still had significant work to do if he was going to receive the party endorsement. While he was successful in getting John Blatnik to stay neutral in the primary, he still needed to get key allies to support him.

Fortunately for him, he would have a considerable amount of time to build up that support. While Perpich was building up a base of supporters, the establishment struggled to find a reliable alternative. Wendell Anderson, the frontrunner for the gubernatorial nomination, alongside U.S. Senators Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey all requested David Graven, a University of Minnesota professor to be his running mate, spending a considerable amount of time to convince him. Ultimately, however, Graven would choose to decline this opportunity, and since Perpich had already secured several important DFL endorsements by that point, a fight against him was going to be extremely tough.

In theory, this is where the establishment could have chosen to take their stand, and if they did, it’s very possible they could have succeeded in stopping Perpich. But Wendell Anderson, who had just won the DFL endorsement for Governor, knew that this upcoming election was not going to be an easy one. Perhaps they could take down Perpich, but doing so would require a significant amount of blood, sweat, and tears that could jeopardize party unity ahead of the 1970 election. So, in order to avoid that, Anderson agreed to sign on with Perpich, making the two of them the DFL-endorsed candidates heading into November.

This campaign, which would be the last one where the Lieutenant Governor and Governor were elected separately, would prove to be an incredibly tough fight for Perpich. He had considerable goodwill with Iron Range voters and many in the DFL, but his name recognition was still quite low, allowing many of his biggest adversaries to define him. All across the state, many of Perpich’s biggest enemies would make advertisements and billboards in opposition to him, with some even telling people to vote for Wendell Anderson and Ben Boo, Perpich’s opponent. Many in the establishment wanted nothing to do with Perpich, even banning him from appearing on shows where Anderson and Humphrey would be appearing. Over the course of the election, it seemed like the outcome was already set: Anderson would win, and Perpich would lose, creating a split verdict for the first time since 1960.

But unfortunately for Perpich’s enemies, their attempt to frame the debate would backfire on them. While Perpich would significantly underperform the rest of the DFL ticket, he came out victorious when all was said and done, making him a top DFL official and the first-ever statewide official from the Iron Range. Not only that, but both of Rudy’s brothers would be coming to the Capitol with him too, with Tony being re-elected and George winning Rudy’s old seat.

Once again, Rudy Perpich had taken on the system, and just like every time before, he would come out of it victorious. Outside of his low-profile 1955 Hibbing School Board run, he had never been able to lose a race despite frequently being the target of establishment vigor. The establishment didn’t want to admit it, but it was clear: They couldn’t take him down. He was just too good of a politician, simple as that. They were just going to have to accept that. He’s part of the party now. He’s their lieutenant governor, after all.

Minnesota Minutes

Taking office as Minnesota’s 39th Lieutenant Governor on January 4th, 1971, Rudy Perpich had finally taken control of one of Minnesota’s sought-after statewide offices. Sure, it wasn’t a particularly special one: The Lieutenant Governor didn’t play a huge role in governing. But with someone as energetic as Rudy Perpich taking the wheel, the role that this otherwise unremarkable position would serve would be like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

Immediately upon taking office, Perpich would get to work using his newfound status to full benefit. Despite the wishes of many in Wendell Anderson’s inner circle, Perpich had effectively become the person responsible for presenting the administration’s message on several important issues, whether it be rising healthcare costs, dirty mines in the Iron Range, or opposition to conservative-written omnibus bills. While his role was typically positive, his less-than-elegant speaking ability sometimes worried those in Anderson’s inner circle, leading to a chilly relationship between Perpich and Anderson’s staffers throughout his entire tenure.

This increased presence allowed him to play a bigger role in inner-party politics as well. While ideology suggested that Perpich would have been more inclined to back South Dakota U.S. Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, he would instead stay loyal to his party’s creator Hubert Humphrey, despite his personal top choice being Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. While this did help out Humphrey considerably, the young forces who backed McGovern ultimately won out, forcing the DFL to put much of their priorities in its official platform, such as legalizing gay marriage and pardoning Vietnam War draft dodgers. Most of the DFL office holders would disavow this platform, a move that would serve them well as the McGovern ticket went down in a landslide defeat against incumbent president Richard Nixon. In retrospect, Perpich’s decision to stick with Humphrey instead of going by ideology would serve him incredibly well, as it meant that he wasn’t associated with McGovern’s massive defeat, keeping his own brand alive in the process.

Over the next few years, Perpich would begin to see his influence grow larger every day, with him effectively becoming a legislative liaison to Anderson. The governor, annoyed at Perpich’s high energy, would seek to pacify him by giving him several different assignments to lead, from planting trees, re-building dying infrastructure, and fixing billboards. While Perpich could tell why Anderson was doing this, he would happily accept it anyway, seeing it as an opportunity to continue building his statewide profile while pursuing something he felt was essential: revitalizing what he described as Greater Minnesota, the part of Minnesota outside the Twin Cities metro. This would be the first time he’d head up such a project, and it certainly won’t be the last we’ll see in this piece.

He would travel everywhere throughout the state, visiting places that no politician had visited in decades. He absolutely loved it, meeting new people whenever he could. While on the road, he would also become a name on local radio, asking local stations to play his “Minnesota Minutes” tapes, in which he would discuss his travels, the administration’s priorities, and his view on Capitol drama. He would send in these tapes constantly over the course of two years, instantly making him a household name in the process. Once unknown to those outside his Iron Range world, no one could forget who he was now. He was literally everywhere, you couldn’t miss him even if you wanted to. For the first time, practically everyone knew who Rudy Perpich was.

Rudy Perpich, aware of his newfound influence, would use much of it in 1974, when John Blatnik announced that he was going to retire, leaving an open primary contest for the first time since 1946. Blatnik and his allies would back Jim Oberstar, a Blatnik staffer who held more conservative views on issues like abortion and gun rights. Perpich would back his brother Tony, who held a liberal view on both issues. It was a showdown between two political dynasties, and it was anyone’s game.

Ultimately though, while Tony would secure the party endorsement, he ended up getting trounced by Oberstar. This was the first election cycle that occurred after the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, which saw abortion rights legalized all across the United States. The Iron Range was generally divided on abortion rights, but since it was an issue hardly anyone cared about prior to Roe, candidates’ position on it wasn’t relevant in the eyes of most voters. However, that all changed in 1974 when Tony’s pro-choice stance suddenly became a large liability as millions of dollars from anti-abortion poured in to oppose. While Rudy did what he could to fight back, he was unable to take them down, and Oberstar would reap the benefits. It was a significant defeat for the Perpich machine and a sign that it was more vulnerable than many thought.

However, Rudy Perpich wouldn’t have a lot of time to be upset about the end of his brother’s political career. Heading into 1976, he had a far more important thing to be getting prepared for. It was something he didn’t expect to be handed to him, nor was it something that his parents ever thought he or his brothers would ever be doing. But it was something that Rudy was eager to take on, even while acknowledging many of the consequences that came with it.

The Gray Goose Governor

By 1976, it was obvious to everyone in the state that Rudy Perpich wanted to become the Governor of Minnesota. He certainly didn’t hate his current position, but he was also acutely aware of the limitations it had. While he was a great salesman for the Minnesota Miracle and a strong leader on the issues handed to him, he was also in no position to delegate policy in his own right. While Perpich liked Anderson, he was never fond of having a boss. After all, why else would he pursue an independent dentistry career? He had always been his own man, and he was ready to lead.

Of course, actually doing that was a lot easier said than done. While he had become a household name, he had also been in office for over five years at that point. While the magic was still alive and well for many, some had begun to grow tired of him, especially since his party had been in control of the state since 1970. If he were to run for a term of his own in 1978, he very well could have lost solely on the basis of people being tired of him. Simply put, the path to a Perpich administration was going to be tough, and if he wasn’t able to get it done, he could have gone down in history as just another bureaucrat.

But as the year progressed, 1976 was beginning to look like the year where everything would change. As the DNC conventions started, Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor who had just won the Democratic nomination, announced that Walter Mondale would be joining him as the vice presidential candidate on the ticket. This meant that if they had won in November, Anderson would be left to pick a replacement for Mondale’s vacant U.S. Senate seat.

At first, this didn’t mean much to Rudy Perpich. He never held much interest in pursuing federal office beyond just the benefit of giving him a springboard to a statewide role. Since his passions were primarily in statewide affairs, and since his status as lieutenant governor meant that such a springboard was unnecessary, this vacant Senate seat didn’t mean much.

But Wendell Anderson, a deeply ambitious politician in his own right, saw this seat very differently from Perpich. To him, this was what he needed to begin a political star role of his own. More than just a job promotion, he viewed it as his ticket to being the worthy successor to Mondale’s legacy, the new DFL aire who was going to define statewide politics for decades to come. For Anderson, this would be the end of his service in statewide politics, and the beginning of a national rise.

Very soon after Anderson started seriously considering making this step, it began to be known to Rudy Perpich thanks to speculation from the press. He wanted to be Governor just as bad as Anderson wanted to be a U.S. Senator, and he saw Anderson’s plan as a win-win for both of them. To him, the plan was perfect. But there was a big issue: The two men had never talked about this issue before, and for many months, Perpich was oblivious to what he was going to do. While he would meet with the governor after the DNC convention, Anderson didn’t give him any definitive answers on his future, only saying that he was still considering it. This was a position that Anderson would stick to for months, something that irritated the anxiously waiting Perpich. Even after the Carter-Mondale ticket won the presidency, Anderson still didn’t give Perpich any signs. Rudy Perpich had concluded that it was over, telling his family on the morning of November 9th that he did not think that Anderson would go through with it, especially in light of polls showing the majority of Minnesotans disapproved of such a deal.

But just a few hours later, he would receive a call from Anderson’s Chief of Staff, who simply told Perpich that Anderson wanted to meet with him the very next morning. While he wasn’t told what to expect by the Governor, Perpich knew exactly what it was. He was excited, so excited that he could barely sleep that night. Finally, he could shape the state in the image that he wanted. He could be in a role where his salesmanship had the power to back it up. He could become the Mesabi Messiah, the first Governor to ever hail from the vast Iron Range.

The next morning, as Perpich was officially told by Anderson that he was going to be the next Governor, preparation to assume the job went underway immediately. Standing alongside his family on November 10th in a room full of reporters, Perpich declared it the “best day of his life”, and that he was ready to act immediately, effectively serving as the governor designate until Mondale resigned from the U.S. Senate.

For this brief period, he wasn’t able to get much done, as Anderson’s advisors were still keen on limiting his influence so as to prevent the future Governor from putting his foot in his mouth. But unlike before, in the long term, Perpich had the upper hand. Rather than spend his time frustrated by the limitations of his job, he would spend this time preparing a team to work alongside him, which even included his own brother George. He was so active that he would earn the reputation of a gray goose for his workaholic tendencies, which frequently involved him flying from his home in Hibbing back to the state capitol.

Finally, on December 29th, Perpich would officially be sworn into office as the Governor of Minnesota, the first from the Iron Range and the first of Eastern European descent. In his short inaugural speech, Perpich would make education his #1 issue, mentioning his initial inability to speak English as a kid as an example of how the education system helped him and in the process, created a world where someone like him could be Governor of Minnesota. The speech was well received, with its short nature being praised by critics who considered it an example of how the Governor wouldn’t waste time that would come at the expense of working for Minnesota. For Rudy Perpich, it was the best day of his life, and he had every reason to be excited.

Unfortunately, this would be the best day he’d get for a long, long time.

The Downfall of the Bocce King

When Perpich assumed the office, he came in during a time of uncertainty for many Minnesotans. The economy was shakey, voters had largely disapproved of Anderson’s politically motivated promotion, and Minnesota Republicans sensed an opportunity to flip the governorship back into their column, seeing Perpich as a weak opponent who they could easily defeat if they played their cards right. While most in the DFL viewed Perpich favorably, he would have to prove that he had the ability to lead them into the 1978 elections just under two years from when he was sworn in. With that in mind, how did Perpich’s first term go?

Initially, most people seemed to like the new governor. Knowing that most people had grown distrustful of their government in light of national scandals, Perpich would make his office and presence more common than any governor in decades. While every governor before him had held their meetings with cabinet privately, Perpich would open these meetings up with the press, arguing that he had nothing to hide from the public he served. While this annoyed some of his staffers, it fed into his image as a people’s governor, someone who clearly broke from Anderson and other DFL establishment politicians in a meaningful way. The governor would also keep up his active schedule. He was seemingly everywhere, sometimes not even informing his staff where he was at all times. It didn’t matter if you lived in the Twin Cities or Greater Minnesota, it was always easy to meet the new governor and ask him questions. Thanks to this, Perpich would remain consistently popular throughout his first year, and going into 1978, he looked like a solid favorite for re-election.

But over the course of his second year, his political brand looked weaker with each passing day. While the people approved of his transparency, this also led to the exposure of many internal political fights that would have otherwise been hidden. The DFL establishment, who had long been skeptical of Perpich, frequently expressed their frustration with his tenure over several different issues, whether it be with his fights with the Reverse Mining Company over pollution, his appointment of a feminist liberal judge named Rosalie Wahl to the state Supreme Court, and his more conservative views on issues like abortion rights and guns. Many of these internal fights had been made public, giving them the impression of a party that was tearing itself apart.

Adding onto this was the birth of one of Perpich’s most famous political traits: his goofiness. This came after it was revealed that he donated his entire bonus paycheck to support the sport of bocce, an Italian sport that most Minnesotans had never heard of. Republicans used this as proof of Perpich’s unseriousness, and while the nickname would come later, it would be the first instance of “Governor Goofy” that the public got to see.

Adding onto Minnesotans’ desire for change after decades of DFL dominance and the death of Hubert Humphrey, it was a situation that didn’t paint an especially rosy picture for Perpich. But it would made worse by two major problems: the GOP and DFL.

For the former, the Republicans would nominate Congressman Al Quie to run against him, a popular Southern Minnesota congressman who had a knack for campaigning. Perpich, who became far more interested in governing than campaigning during his time as Governor, had begun to look slow and out of it next to the energetic and active Quie, who was putting up billboards and signs all across the state. Without a doubt, the Republicans had more energy on their side, putting the incumbent in serious danger already.

As for the latter, this would be the issue that Perpich would later argue sealed his fate. As the general campaign was heating up for the two U.S. Senate seats, the DFL would come out of the primary process severely weakened. Wendell Anderson, once seen as a future DFL star, had grown increasingly unpopular thanks to his obvious ambition and various poor votes as a U.S. Senator. His opponent, Republican businessman Rudy Boschwitz, would tap into the disappointment many had about Anderson, running as a moderate Republican running in opposition to a self-interested politician. For most Minnesotans, this was more than enough, and Boschwitz began to take big leads over Anderson in the polls.

The other U.S. Senate seat would see a bitter primary fight between liberal Bob Fraser and conservative Bob Short, the latter of which eventually won out thanks to support from the Iron Range. Short, who was to the right of his Republican opponent David Durenberger on several issues, had virtually no appeal with the DFL’s sizable liberal coalition, effectively dooming his campaign altogether. Once again, a big fumble by the DFL.

While Perpich wouldn’t have the same kind of appeal issues that Anderson and Short had, their downfalls would prove to serve as an anchor on Perpich’s ship, consistently holding him back from gaining bipartisan support in the same fashion as he had hoped. The DFL brand, which had been the dominant party in the state for decades by that point, had become toxic seemingly overnight. While Perpich would do the best he could to prevent the toxicity from killing his campaign, it would ultimately prove to be a fruitless effort.

On Election Day 1978, the DFL would see itself completely swept out of power on almost every major level. Both of the U.S. Senate seats, which had been held by the party since 1958, would both be lost by landslide margins. While the DFL-held State Senate wasn’t up for re-election, the DFL would still see considerable losses in the State House, with the chamber eventually tying at 67-67, a crushing blow for the party. Finally, Perpich would lose his own campaign for a full term to Al Quie, his first loss since his first run for the Hibbing School Board 23 years earlier. For Perpich, it felt like the end of the world, even describing it as “falling off the edge of a cliff”. To most, it looked like his only legacy would be as a goofy salesman, a man who didn’t get a lot done despite his own wishes.

But just like his 1955 loss, Perpich wouldn’t take a defeat lying down. He wouldn’t allow his characteristics or the political environment to define him. He was ready to set his future on his own terms. But how did he do that?

The Colorful Comeback

After leaving office, Perpich would immediately get to work on starting a comeback effort. While he would spend most of the four-year period out of the public eye and work in Vienna, he was quite planning out how he was going to win a campaign, both in the primary and general election. After resigning from his job in April of 1982, he would return to Minnesota and announce his long-anticipated comeback bid, ready to execute his plan. But what exactly was his plan?

Firstly, he would make it clear that whoever the party endorsed was irrelevant, and that he would stay in the primary regardless. This instantly made him an outsider to the party establishment once again in the eyes of many Minnesotans, even more so after the party endorsed his main opponent, the State Attorney General and liberal DFLer Warren Spannaus. While this first decision helped distinguish Perpich from the reputation-recovering DFL, it carried the problem of voters not seeing him as the default choice, which had the potential to throw the election in favor of Spannaus. Perpich was not going to be able to rely on his image, he’d have to do the work necessary to win.

This is where his second strategy came in, a catchy slogan. In this case, it was a pretty simple one: “Jobs, Jobs Jobs”. On top of being memorable, buttons and campaign merch with this slogan were also very cheap to produce and pay for, only being sold for a single dollar. This made them easy to find and buy for anyone in the state, playing into Perpich’s image as someone whose top priority is helping all Minnesotans first and foremost.

As the campaign went on, no one could really tell who was going to win. Both sides would do whatever they could to win votes, with Rudy Perpich even taking the historic step of picking a woman, businesswoman Marlene Johnson, to be his running mate, the first in state history. As the campaign went on, it was clear that both of the candidates had clear bases, paths to win, and passionate supporters. As the primary day came, no one knew what to expect, and both candidates would spend their last minutes driving voters to the polls, with Rudy Perpich getting friends to play music in the Iron Range to go out and vote for one of their own.

Early on in the night, the result looked very poor for Perpich. The Twin Cities metro would come in first, where liberal DFLers would deliver Spannaus thousands of votes that looked impossible to overcome. In both Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, the biggest counties in the state, Perpich could barely even crack 30% of the vote. While the Perpich team didn’t expect to do well in the region, they never expected to be quite this bad. Very quickly, the campaign became demoralized, with blame going around on all ends.

But as the night went on, the fighting began to turn into celebration as the Twin Cities vote was complete, and Greater Minnesota votes had finally begun to be reported. These were ballots far more favorable to Perpich and got him very close to overtaking Spannaus. Just like it had done for John F. Kennedy in 1960, the Iron Range would prove to be the place that put Perpich over the top, officially taking the lead for the first time that night. Just a few hours after that, at around 4 in the morning, Perpich had won the primary, making him the official DFL candidate going into the general.

After this bitter campaign, Perpich would use much of the same strategies he employed against Spannaus against his Republican opponent Wheelock Whitney, a candidate who also beat back the endorsed candidate in his own party. Despite Whitney’s charisma, his campaign never proved to have the same steam as Al Quie. For one thing, the once fresh GOP had quickly grown stale to Minnesotans, as Al Quie made several budget mistakes so severe he was forced to drop out of the 1982 election altogether. This left Whitney badly damaged, especially up against a former governor many Minnesotans had fond memories of. On top of this, Whitney’s attacks on Perpich for his goofiness didn’t stick the landing as much either, as most Minnesotans had spent the last four years reminiscing on the days when the bocce goofball was the head of the state. Simply put, Perpich had his work cut out for him, especially as his party’s leader Mike Hatch made sure that the party remained united around him.

When Election Day came, the result was a stunning success for Rudy Perpich. While many other DFL candidates went down in defeat, Perpich would defeat Whitney in a landslide, earning 58.8% of the vote to Whitney’s 39.9%. His performance was a spectacular comeback, particularly in the Iron Range, where he would put up some of the best margins ever seen for a DFL candidate in history. While he was dismissed four years ago as a lame-duck goofball, no one could deny it now. Rudy Perpich was a real force to be reckoned with, having an appeal that not many other statewide politicians could match.

Rudy Goes Worldwide

Just like his inaugural speech in 1976, Perpich would immediately list education as his number #1 priority for essentially the same reasons he listed then. This time, however, he had learned from many of his past mistakes and was no longer seen as someone who could be easily beaten by the GOP or the liberal metro wing of the DFL.

Accompanying this newfound experience were several changes he made in governing. While he would still run a government far more transparent than governors before him, he would use private meetings for special purposes, both in order to keep internal fights from being exposed and to keep his advisors happy. While Minnesotans still liked transparency, it wasn’t on their minds nearly as much as it was in the post-Watergate 1970s period, so Perpich felt that openness to the extent he had it in his first term was unnecessary and self-defeating.

Additionally, Perpich would begin to use his office in a way that fulfilled his desire as a salesman for Minnesota. This involved working directly with businesses, often being right in the center of negotiation with them to create jobs in the state. While many were surprised that he would do this given his record of fighting big business, it made sense from a campaign perspective. After all, Perpich had won in a landslide on the promise of “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”, and one of the best ways to do that is to encourage companies to create them. While Perpich often felt uneasy about it, he considered it a necessary evil for achieving his goals.

Just as he had always done, however, this salesman role would also get him in fights with both parties and even other states. The most notable example of this came in 1983, when the Governor of South Dakota, Republican Bill Janklow, spent a considerable amount of time portraying Minnesota as a high-tax, anti-business state that couldn’t compare with South Dakota’s business-friendly climate. This deeply angered Perpich, who would later challenge the South Dakota Republican to a debate, which Janklow would accept. The debate, which happened on March 18th of 1983, mostly consisted of the two men trading insults back and forth, a bitter show that showed off Perpich’s willingness to get in the mud if it meant protecting Minnesota jobs.

While his role as a salesman often left Perpich exhausted from fights, it did serve in creating one of the most iconic traits about the Governor today: his missions abroad. Very early on in his governorship, Perpich had made it clear to Minnesotans that the global economy was going to play a key role in his handling of the state, and that he was willing to work whenever he could with them if it meant getting jobs to the state. This promise was kept very early on, when he would travel to Europe and get meetings with virtually every representative for each country, even making Minnesota the first state in the U.S. to open a trade office in Scandinavia.

This newfound experience, and the policy changes that came with it, made Perpich incredibly popular. In spite of Republican attempts to paint the new governor as an anti-business liberal, it would prove fruitless as Perpich consistently exceeded 70%+ approval ratings throughout his first two years in office. Despite being in politics for almost three decades by that point, most people saw him as new and fresh, a symbol of a new DFL free from much of its past troubles.

But while Perpich was very popular, this popularity didn’t put much of a dent in Republican support. Throughout his entire first term, the Republicans had remained a strong force in the state, with both their national and statewide incumbents being well-liked. While Perpich had established a strong brand, it wasn’t one that could carry his party to newfound success down-ballot.

This problem became evident in the 1984 election. While Walter Mondale would be able to hold onto his home state in the face of a bright red Reagan tsunami, his extremely minuscule victory margin of just 0.3% proved to be enough for Republicans to flip the State House, meaning that Perpich would be forced to negotiate with the GOP. In particular, he would have to negotiate with David Jennings, a long-time foe and deeply conservative politician who had promised his party that he would fight for tax breaks and cuts in government spending.

Rudy Loves Chopsticks

Heading into the 1985 session, both Perpich and Jennings knew that they would have a lot to argue about. The two men had been political rivals for decades, both climbing the political ladder in their own ways, until finally leading to the two men being in direct competition with each other over the future of the state. It felt like fate had put them there to fight, and the two were certainly ready to go at it.

But they had also shared commitments with their own voters that happened to put them on the same side of other issues too. In particular, both sides had made a promise to their voters to get tax cuts, a policy that had grown increasingly appetizing to both citizens and politicians. Minnesota had long been criticized by business interests and citizens as a high-tax state, and both candidates were ready to address it for political brownie points. Tax cuts were going to happen, the only question was who was going to get more out of it.

Initially, Jennings wanted to pair it with cuts to welfare and social services, seeing it as essential to funding the tax cuts. Perpich wanted no part of this, considering it a non-starter and pledging to veto it if it ever came to his desk. After this budget went down in defeat to the Governor, Perpich and the GOP would spend considerable time negotiating, before finally settling on a plan that saw wealthy loopholes close, tax rates go down on the middle class, and no cuts to social services. While both sides would celebrate their triumphs, it was obvious that Perpich had gotten the better hand in the exchange, saving thousands of Minnesotans from suffering to burden of social service cuts.

But besides the tax cut victory, Perpich’s next two years would prove to be far more tumultuous than his first two. When it came to education policy, he would go against many of his party’s preferred policies, instead choosing to adopt a school choice policy that earned support from the Republican legislature. While this did fulfill his promise of making significant changes to education policy, it was done in a way that angered many in his own party, as well as organizations that had backed him for his entire career. He would also be criticized for spending too much time trying to get support for a Megamall project (later known as the Mall of America), something he would have to postpone anyway in light of lackluster support from both the DFL and GOP. Finally, the strong economy that had brought him significant popularity in 1983 and 1984 began to slowly decline in the face of a major farm crisis that hit the Midwest in the mid-1980s. Perpich had spent years touting the strong economy as his doing and reaping the political benefits, and now that it was declining, he was reaping the political consequences of it too.

All of this made Perpich’s re-election effort look concerning. Not only was he at risk of losing to a Republican, but he was also at risk of losing the primary to a liberal DFLer. He was going to have to do something quickly in order to save his effort, otherwise, he would go down in defeat and pave the way for a conservative Republican to get into office, potentially reshaping the state in the process. So, how would Perpich turn it around?

Going in 1986, he would play the offensive very early on, running TV ads arguing that his plans and policy achievements fell in line with his goal of “Moving Minnesota Forward”, with him taking full credit for the tax cuts in the process. Republicans protested this, but since they didn’t get much out of it and didn’t hold the Governor’s salesman charisma, their attacks didn’t register. On top of this, he would also make peace with the DFL endorsement process, getting the party chair Ruth Esala to help secure the nomination for him. Both of these strategies had benefitted him massively, once again putting him back on the map as a strong candidate heading into 1986.

But it was by no means over at this point. The liberal wing of the DFL, long frustrated with the Governor’s new moderate bent and lack of focus on the Twin Cities metro, would run St. Paul Mayor George Latimer as a primary challenger. Once an ally of Perpich, he felt that the Governor had been disappointing, arguing that he didn’t go far enough in support of the party and the Twin Cities base.

While this was an appealing message to metro liberals, it didn’t extend much beyond that, especially as Latimer would frequently make attacks against much older Greater Minnesota DFLers, which offended them and caused them to fall in line with Perpich. On top of this, Latimer proved to be a terrible fundraiser, being significantly in debt while Perpich had a strong war chest. While Perpich would prove to be an effective campaigner in his own right, the failures of Latimer’s campaign would prove to be the deciding factor in the election, as Perpich defeated Latimer by just under 17 points, losing only three metro counties in the process.

Having successfully beaten back the liberal wing of his party, it was time to face off against the conservative Republicans. This time, they would nominate Cal Ludeman, who had a different approach to dealing with Perpich. While he would also take shots at Perpich’s goofiness, he would do so in a way that emphasized how it put the state economy in jeopardy. In particular, he spent a considerable amount of time attacking Perpich for his effort to build a chopstick factory in his home city of Hibbing, a project that didn’t create anywhere near as many jobs as the Governor expected. This would be mocked in Ludeman's ads, using Perpich’s goofy traits as an attack against his credibility.

However, most people didn’t care much about this. Most people had known Perpich was a goofy guy, anyone who was going to vote against him for it already did in 1978 and 1982. On top of this, Ludeman’s conservatism proved to be a turnoff to more moderate Republicans, many of whom didn’t even show up on Election Day. Combining this with the DFL being united around Perpich, it created a perfect storm for the Governor on Election Day, who would win re-election with 56.1% of the vote to Ludeman’s 43.1%. On top of this, the lack of GOP votes also allowed the DFL to be swept back into power, flipping the State House and all statewide offices besides the State Auditor’s office.

When all was said and done, it was a smashing success for the DFL and Perpich. Once entering 1986 in danger, they had left it with more political power than ever. There wasn’t even a Humphrey or Mondale that could have been said to bring Perpich over the line. This time, the success was his and his alone. For the first time, the Governor was not the outsider, but rather the center of the DFL, no longer reliant on a Humphrey or Mondale to win in the eyes of voters.

Rudy the Builder

Heading into his third term, Rudy Perpich had more political capital than ever. Sure, the election he had won had low turnout, but the people who actually voted gave him and his party a sweeping mandate. Who cares if not many people voted? They still had it, and it would be stupid not to use it. But what did the Governor decide to do with it?

Immediately after the 1987 session started, the Governor immediately got to work on passing his most notable legacy item today: the Greater Minnesota Corporation. Long frustrated with the lack of care that Greater Minnesota got, Perpich would seek to create an agency that didn’t just create short-term growth for the area but created long-term investment needed to keep the region up with the metro. Thanks to his project, billions of dollars were poured into research, new product development, assistance for farmers, and rural business grants. While much of his desired reforms to the program would go down in defeat years later, it was still Perpich’s proudest achievement by far, considering it the most significant piece of state legislation in decades.

Alongside this, Perpich’s reputation as a builder would be born here too. While he wouldn’t attend its opening due to perceived negative media attention, he would preside over the completion of the Minnesota World Trade Center (today known as the Wells Fargo place), as well as secure funding and support for the Mall of America, both massive parts of his legacy today. Over the course of his third term, almost every budget would include the construction of a new building project backed by the Governor himself, who viewed it as essential to building the image of Minnesota as a place open for business and residence. He was willing to build pretty much anything, whether it be history centers, Olympic Sports Facilities, new parks for communities, or even renovations of old state buildings. While some at the time criticized it as unnecessary, many of his buildings remain alive and prosperous today, leaving behind a legacy far easier to see than many governors before and after him.

All of this positive attention began to earn him speculation as a future presidential candidate for the 1988 election. While initially hesitant to abandon the state he loved and spent his entire career catering to, he slowly began to consider the idea, seeing himself in the same light as Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey, both Minnesotans who made a national splash in their own rights. Sure, he was a socially moderate Governor from Minnesota, but Jimmy Carter was also a socially moderate Governor, and that didn’t stop him.

But as this idea was being seriously discussed, many of his enemies in the local media began to lampoon the idea. Most Minnesotans wanted him to stick out his four-year term, liberal DFLers dismissed him over his anti-abortion and pro-gun views, and Perpich didn’t have the national organizing that would be necessary to run a campaign. While he thought he could make a good candidate, he decided to bow out of the contest, announcing in September of 1987 that he was not going to run, officially killing off any hope of a national Perpich profile.

While not many at the time noticed it, this was the first ominous sign for the future of Rudy Perpich’s political career. While his third term was transformative, it would also serve as the final peak of the wavey Perpich rollercoaster. After this, it would only go downhill as Minnesotans couldn’t get over one simple thing: They were growing sick of Rudy Perpich.

The Downfall of Governor Goofy

On January 16th, 1990, Newsweek posted an article about Perpich simply titled “Minnesota Governor’s Goofy”, going over his many eccentric traits and bizarre proposals to fix the state’s problems. While many in the state may have dismissed such an article in the past as another example of desperate GOP attacks, this time it began to resonate with voters. By the time 1990 came around, most voters had disapproved of the Governor, with him reaching an all-time low of just 36%. Conservatives didn’t like him for his big spending, liberals didn’t like him for his socially conservative positions, and moderates didn’t care for his goofiness.

Obviously, this wasn’t a great spot to be in, and no one knew that better than liberal DFLers. They had long been frustrated with Perpich, and with him well on track to be defeated next November, they saw it as their chance to field a credible challenger. This time, they would go with the former commissioner of commerce and Perpich ally Mike Hatch, who had grown increasingly concerned by Perpich’s poor standing in the polls and alleged abuse of power. This time, it looked like Perpich might finally be finished. After all, he had grown tired of campaigning, Hatch seemed to reflect the modern DFL better than he did by that point, and his approval rating kept going down. Surely, this time, Perpich would lose to the party, right?

Well, Perpich would once again prove his political talent, this time by tapping into a salient trait voters still liked: his work with foreign leaders. This time, it would be his invitation to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to visit Minnesota, which Gorbachev accepted, giving Perpich a massive boost in the polls and favorability in the convention. This successful endeavor proved to be enough to push him ahead in the primary, winning both the party endorsement and the primary election itself months later. For Perpich, it was yet another masterclass in political skill, showing that he was willing to do whatever it took to improve his political fortunes.

Meanwhile, the Republican side proved to be a bitter fight between the moderate and conservative wings of the party, this time being a fight between conservative businessman Jon Grunseth and moderate State Auditor Arne Carlson. While the two battled for months, Grunseth would eventually defeat Carlson, earning just under a majority of the vote. While he would make an effort to unite the battle as much as he could, his relatively unknown image and lack of charisma prevented him from getting the moderate wing behind him, giving Perpich the early advantage in the process.

For most of the general election, it looked like Perpich was in a good spot for re-election. While most liberal and moderate metro DFLers didn’t like him by this point, they still weren’t willing to sacrifice him to a conservative Republican like Grunseth. For his part, Perpich would use Grunseth’s lacking campaign to define him on his own terms, accusing him of being an absentee father who couldn’t be asked to pay his property taxes despite being wealthy. While Grunseth would attempt to strike back with ads including his own family members, it didn’t seem to make much of a dent in the Perpich machine, and it looked like Perpich was on track to cruise to a fourth term.

However, the race would be turned completely upside down on October 15th and 22nd, when accusations of sexual misconduct were made against Grunseth. While he would attempt to fight back against them, they were simply too damming to ignore (if you want to know the details, you can read about them here), and pressure mounted on him to step down, with Carlson even mounting a write-in effort of his own. Eventually, he would fold to this pressure, dropping out of the race on October 28th.

Technically, as a result of Grunseth stepping down, Carlson would be the default GOP nominee, as he came in second place in the primary, and state law designates that position as the next in line if the main guy drops out. But this also requires the party to approve the selection, and initially, many conservatives within the party were hesitant to act, considering Carlson’s liberal position on several different issues. But after some nudging towards Carlson from Rudy Boschwitz, the conservatives within the party decided to approve Carlson’s nomination, viewing it as the best choice to beat Perpich.

While the conservatives had made many bad calls during Perpich’s political career, this is one of the rare wins they would score. While Perpich was able to earn the reluctant support of metro liberals and moderates in the face of conservative Republicans, this was something he had a far harder time doing in the face of a metro moderate opponent, especially one that outflanked him on abortion rights, a key issue in the 1990 election. Seemingly overnight, many of the same voters who had swallowed their pride and were planning to vote for Perpich suddenly switched sides, including many top staffers on Mike Hatch’s campaign. While Perpich still had the support of his more conservative rural coalition, he couldn’t afford to bleed this much support in the metro. But as the days went on, this problem only got worse, and as Election Day came, Perpich knew that his political fortune had finally run out.

Indeed, on Election Day 1990, the result was a victory for metro voters. On one corner, they had successfully taken down conservative Republican U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz, replacing him with a left-liberal activist and college professor Paul Wellstone. On the other corner, they had finally taken Perpich down, with Arne Carlson winning 50.1% of the vote to Perpich’s 46.8%. This decline in support came almost entirely from the metro, which saw Perpich lose the biggest counties in the state by massive margins not seen since his 1982 primary bid. This time, the rural areas wouldn’t be enough to carry him thanks to weak numbers in Southern Minnesota.

After decades of being in power, voters had finally said to both Perpich and Boschwitz “Oh bye-bye to the Rudy’s”.

Conclusion

After this defeat, Perpich would not make a return to the political scene. While he had privately wished he could run for Governor in 1994, he also knew that his colon cancer was becoming harder and harder to beat, with it eventually consuming his life and leaving him to live out the rest of it in peace and quiet, a rarity for the active former Governor. After spending years battling with cancer, he passed away on September 21st, 1995 at the age 67, leaving behind his kids, his wife Lola, and his two brothers.

When analyzing his legacy and many achievements, I’ve found that there are a ton of lessons you can take away from it. From a political perspective, Perpich was both highly flawed and highly skilled. While he did a poor job at appealing to the different factions in a party, liberals or conservatives, he would do an excellent job at political showmanship, becoming one of the most personable politicians of the 20th century in the process and winning many friends on both sides of the aisle. From a policy perspective, his achievements are both obvious and subtle. While most people probably wouldn’t know what he did today, his interest in building, rural investment and education made Minnesota into the attractive zone for young workers that it is today, being one of the few Midwestern states not suffering from brain drain today. From a personal perspective, Perpich was a bizarre but caring person, seemingly willing to take even the weirdest choices all in pursuit of helping the state he loved.

More than anything, I think the main lesson is that you have the know where the people you are working with are. Understanding this is key to doing any kind of political work, and it can make or break whatever kind of project you are invested in. Rudy Perpich’s career shows off where this can go well and also how you can fail. When it worked, he created programs and infrastructure that still define the state today and had charisma that even allowed him to defeat long-term incumbents and propel him to presidential candidate speculation. When it failed, his political career went with it, even if he could fight off the inevitable for a few cycles.

That’s why Rudy Perpich is so interesting to me, not just because of his impact on Minnesota, but also because he is seemingly one of the very few politicians who was both bafflingly out of step on the game of politics and also a master operator fully in touch with the concerns of the North Star State. You don’t see that too often, so it’s good to take a long look at them every now and then.

Sources

“Remembering Rudy Perpich, the Governor Who Turned “Outstate” into “Greater Minnesota.”” Bemidji Pioneer, 6 Nov. 2022, www.bemidjipioneer.com/news/minnesota/remembering-rudy-perpich-the-governor-who-turned-outstate-into-greater-minnesota.

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Wilson, Betty. Rudy! The People’s Governor, 2005.

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“1990 Gubernatorial Race Rocked by Scandal.” MPR News, 21 Nov. 2017, www.mprnews.org/story/2017/11/21/history-1990-gubernatorial-race-rocked-by-scandal.

“Gorbachev Visit Was a Special Moment for Mpls. Family.” MPR News, 3 June 2015, www.mprnews.org/story/2015/06/03/watson.

Toure, Yemi. “Governor Goofy” Replies: Newsweek Called Him...” Los Angeles Times, 18 Jan. 1990, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-18-vw-133-story.html.

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“Remembering the Ballad of Rudy and Bill.” MPR News, 21 Jan. 2016, www.mprnews.org/story/2016/01/21/remembering-the-ballad-of-rudy-and-bill.

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And when you look at the election results, you’ll realize that it all came down to one region. In this case, it was the Midwest, a region that had served as the foundation of virtually every Democratic victory since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. But in light of growing distance from the Democratic Party over cultural issues and suffering the burden of industrial job losses to automation and free trade deals, they swung massively towards Donald Trump, who was stoking up fears of increasing immigration into the United States and promising to stop those aforementioned free trade deals. Not only did this flip the traditional bellwether state of Ohio, but it also brought over the traditionally Democratic-leaning states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Michigan into Trump’s camp, giving him the election in the process.

Not only did this serve the role of making Trump one of the most important figures in modern history, but it also served as a symbol of a potentially brand-new coalition. For decades, even if the states were competitive, they would consistently vote more Democratic than the rest of the nation, meaning that they would always be key to any Democratic win. But with Trump flipping these states red and Clinton improving on Democratic numbers with suburban voters in states like Texas, Arizona, and Georgia, it meant that for the first time in decades, these Midwestern states would be more Republican than the nation as a whole. After the election, it looked like the future coalition for both parties was being drawn. For Democrats, they would win off the back of voters in states with diverse communities, highly educated suburban areas, and quickly growing populations. For Republicans, their coalition was in states with predominately white populations, lower education levels on average, and states suffering from economic and population decline.

While this prospect was somewhat terrifying for Republicans in Sun Belt states, it painted a bright future for Midwestern Republicans. Not only did it have the possibility of solidifying the machines they built in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio throughout the 2010s, but it also had the opportunity of turning other traditionally Democratic states red, giving them a short-term advantage in elections going forward as Democrats struggled to jump the hurdle of flipping states like Texas and Georgia blue.

And out of all of these states, there was none that Trump wanted to flip more than the North Star State.

While Trump is well known for focusing on things that serve no political benefit, his obsession with flipping Minnesota red was not entirely unfounded. As the blue wall in the Midwest completely collapsed, Minnesota stood alongside the solidly blue state of Illinois as one of the only two states in the Midwest that voted for Hillary Clinton, allowing Minnesota to keep its status as the longest-running blue state in the country on the national level1. But while she did keep the state blue, her performance was still shockingly poor, only managing to carry the state by a 1.5% margin, the worst showing for a Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984.

But that fact alone doesn’t explain the full story of just how bad her showing was. While Democrats have done poorly in the state before, it usually occurred under the context of a national Republican wave. While Mondale did worse than Clinton when you strictly focused on numbers, it happened while the nation voted for Ronald Reagan by 18 points nationally. Minnesota, being the only state to vote for Mondale that year, would vote over 18 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole, solidifying its place as a Democratic stronghold. Clinton, who had won the popular vote nationwide by about 2 points, would end up becoming the first Democrat since 1952 to perform worse in Minnesota compared to the rest of the nation.

This fact instantly made Minnesota a target for Trump and the Republicans. If they were really on track to improve big time with white and low-educated voters, then Minnesota should come to them in no time. It was Midwestern, had a declining industrial center in the form of the Iron Range, and didn’t have a diverse population on the horizon. To many, the future of Minnesota was seemingly already set. It would soon join the ranks of Indiana and Ohio, becoming another symbol of Republican dominance in the Midwest.

Of course, when we fast forward to 2023, we all know this didn’t happen. Not only did Republicans fail to gain significant ground in Minnesota’s elected offices, but they have managed to fall off from their previously established influence, losing both the State House and State Senate, two bodies that they held in 2016. While they have made gains with voters in Greater Minnesota2, it has not resulted in a single statewide win. Their previous advantage in national trends is gone, as Joe Biden managed to get Minnesota to vote more Democratic than the nation once again in 2020. The state is hardly on anyone’s radar in 2024, especially as it concurs with Amy Klobuchar’s re-election campaign, an extremely popular Senator expected to win re-election by a massive margin. While commentary in 2016 suggested that Minnesota would have been a red state by now, they are no closer to actually pulling that off than they were then.

On the one hand, this is a remarkable success story for the DFL. While national trends may have suggested that the party was on track to fall to minority status, they have done everything in their power to stop this from happening. Understanding who and where the future Democratic base was, they have made a considerable effort to shift in a direction that appeals directly to them. This was shown off the best in 2022, when the DFL would take full advantage of the Dobbs effect to bring the party full control of the state, flipping the State Senate and holding onto all of their previously held offices. Not only have they played defense masterfully, but they have been able to turn the trajectory of the state around in the process, keeping it in the blue column for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, this is a massive failure for Republicans. After their strong showing in 2016, one may assume that they would use the opportunity to build real political infrastructure of their own in Minnesota, one that would be primed to take over once national trends began to set in. However, at every chance they had since 2016, they have completely fumbled the bag. Just like how 2022 showed off the political mastery of the DFL, 2022 also showed off the complete ineptitude of the Minnesota GOP. They had a red-leaning national environment, an unpopular Democratic president, and controversial DFL incumbents. All of these things that should have benefitted them meant nothing on Election Day, which saw Republicans kicked out of power completely for the first time since 2014. Once a truly terrifying prospect, the Minnesota GOP has turned into a total laughing stock, not even being able to get triple-digit numbers in its own bank account. In terms of incompetence, it’s hard to compete with these guys unless you live in Rocky Mountain High.

In this short piece, I want to go over why the Republicans have been struggling, where they need to improve, and why their current path as a party suggests that they are likely going to blow it again. In doing so, I want to show not only the incompetence of the Minnesota Republican Party but also how their ideology fundamentally clashes with electoral success in Minnesota.

How Did It Go Wrong?

After the 2016 election, the Republican Party had reasons to be optimistic about Minnesota. Sure, they didn’t win the state. But national trends suggested that they were well on track to become the dominant party in just a few years. This wasn’t just a fantasy that was born from the fact that they flipped other neighboring Midwestern states. Minnesota, just like those other states, saw the Republicans score massive gains in traditionally Democratic rural and industrial communities. Of the 28 counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2012, only 9 of them would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. All of the counties that Trump flipped were those aforementioned traditionally Democratic hubs, many of which hadn’t voted Republican in decades. This allowed Trump to come very close to flipping the state red and also allowing it to vote to the right of the nation in the process.

But while the gains were significant, these results also painted an early warning sign for Minnesota Republicans. While Clinton’s showing was incredibly weak, she managed to avoid total death by making improvements on Obama’s margin in one key part of the state: the Twin Cities metro. While Clinton’s weakness as a candidate and the higher population of these cities prevented many of them from swinging as hard as the rural areas did for Trump, her gains would be substantial enough that she would manage to hold onto the state.

This should have been a key concern for Republicans. Their gains in Greater Minnesota were good, but if they came at the expense of losing voters in the quickly growing Twin Cities, they end up in a worse position in the long run. They needed to find a way to strike a balance, appealing to traditional Democrats while not losing too much of their moderate Republican base in the suburbs. A tall order, but one they should have had a plan for if they were serious about winning the state. So, what did they decide to do?

As Donald Trump’s presidency spurred more partisan division and anti-Republican sentiment, the Minnesota GOP decided that instead of trying to walk the tightrope, they would fully embrace and go into the arms of the president and his movement. After all, he’s the one who got them this close! He should be in a prime position to bring the Republicans newfound success in the state. Who needs the Twin Cities? We’ll just take all the votes out of the rural areas and win that way, right?

Well, as we can see now, this strategy has been a total failure. For one thing, the party has been unable to get much more juice out of these rural communities. While some of them have shifted to the right, it has never been by anywhere near as much as 2016, with most of them looking the same on the map as they did then. While the DFL is not on track to win them back any time soon, the Republicans haven’t been able to tap much more energy from these places.

This fact is made even worse when you factor in their other problem: massive losses in the Twin Cities. As the party embraced Trump, suburban voters began to flee from the party at record speed, a trend seen all across the country, but something that hit Minnesota harder than most states. It began in 2018, which saw Republicans lose both the 2nd and 3rd congressional districts, each representing a significant chunk of the Twin Cities suburbs in their own rights. It went further in 2020 when Joe Biden put up the best performance for a presidential Democrat in the Twin Cities in history. The massive gains he’d make in the region, alongside smaller gains in the Duluth and Rochester areas, would propel him to a solid 7-point victory, a significant swing left from 2016 and putting the state back to being more Democratic than the nation once again. Finally, it all came to a head in 2022 when the suburbs would propel the DFL to win a statewide trifecta, which served as a backlash to Republicans for their views on abortion and small d-democratic principles.

These losses, more so than anything else, are the thing that is killing the Republicans in Minnesota. Even if they make massive gains in the rural areas, they cannot live while bleeding this much in the Twin Cities. They just can’t. So long as the DFL continues to gain in the suburbs, they will continue to dominate the state. Simple as that.

So, with that in mind, where do the Republicans go from here?

Where They Need to Improve, and Why The GOP (Probably) Won’t Listen

When looking at population changes throughout the state of Minnesota, it’s pretty obvious that the GOP strategy of focusing solely on driving up rural margins is not going to work. Even if they do gain substantially here (which they haven’t been able to do thus far), it would almost certainly be canceled out and destroyed completely by smaller swings for the DFL in the cities and suburbs. Simply put, they cannot afford to be getting under 30% in Hennepin and Ramsey County.

Fortunately for them, they do have something of a template to work off of. While their 2022 showing was atrocious, there was one contest that did show some promise. Granted, it was against a controversial incumbent in a red-leaning year. But at the very least, it showed that if they played their cards right at the right time, they could achieve statewide victory in the state for the first time since 2006. That race in question is the Attorney General contest, which saw Republican Jim Schultz come within just 0.9% of defeating incumbent Democrat Keith Ellison.

While Keith Ellison’s quest for a second term would ultimately be saved by gains in the suburbs of his own, they were nowhere near the same level as those put up by other DFL candidates like Tim Walz and Steve Simon. In fact, he would only manage to earn 68% in Hennepin County, allowing Schultz to cross the 30% threshold in one of the two primary Twin Cities counties. On top of this, Ellison’s showings in Greater Minnesota were some of the worst put up by a Democrat in generations, with Schultz even coming close to 80% of the vote in some of them. While it wasn’t a Republican win, it did have the effect of showing Republicans where they needed to go. If Schultz had done just a bit better in the suburbs, he would be the state Attorney General right now.

Of course, actually winning some of those suburban voters back is easier said than done. For the last seven years, the party has embraced a strategy of defacto Trump worship, which effectively serves as kryptonite for Republican hopes in the suburbs. Not only that, but much of the hard right extremism that is associated with the former president comes along for the ride too, whether it be on abortion rights, election denial, LGBTQ+ rights, or full-throated opposition to even the most reasonable Democratic bills imaginable. This has only made every problem for the Minnesota GOP worse, and if things continue down the road they’re currently on, you should expect even more Democratic gains in the Twin Cities metro. If Republicans are going to win, they need to fundamentally change the course of the ship.

But will they do this?

I doubt it. After all, one of the defining features of the modern Republican Party is that they believe that their movement and ideology is the one supported by the majority of Americans. Ever since Donald Trump won in 2016, that has been the core idea carrying him as leader of the Republican Party. That victory, and the feelings it established in the hearts of millions of conservative Republicans, are still alive and well today. Every time they win an election, it’s more proof that their ideas are beloved and popular. Every time they lose, it is stolen from them by the deep state that is terrified of the MAGA movement. In their mind, there is no need for moderation of any kind. They already have the people on their side. Why would you need to moderate if you are already winning?

Obviously, this mindset is insane. But it also serves the role of killing off Republican hopes in the land of 10,000 lakes. These suburbs, while very white, are also highly educated, secular, and moderate. As the Republicans embrace anti-LGBTQ+, anti-choice, and anti-democracy rhetoric, they are doing nothing but killing more and more of their base in these places. And since these places are the fastest growing in the state, it means there is no other place they can grow in to compensate. Sure, they may flip some Iron Range towns like Eveleth, Virginia, or Chisholm. But it won’t matter if they can’t even get 40% of the vote in Maple Grove, Woodbury, or Chanhassan. And with the GOP set to renominate Trump in 2024, I suspect this problem will only get even worse.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think the failure of the Minnesota GOP serves as a near-perfect example of the party’s failings on the national stage. After achieving the high of getting close to turning the heart of the Democratic Midwest red, the Minnesota GOP has done nothing but spend the last seven years endlessly chasing that same high. Instead of seeing it as an impressive but flawed result to build off of going forward, they decided that doubling down on the man who lost the state to Hillary Clinton would be the true path forward and that his result was basically already perfect.

Of course, this has done nothing but produce complete and utter failure for them. They still haven’t been able to win a single statewide office since 2006. They lost both the State House and State Senate. They have completely run out of money. They are a shell of their already weak former self. Despite having the backing of around 45% of the Minnesota voting population, they are one of the most irrelevant and weakest parties in the country. Simply put, their strategy has produced nothing but failure.

Despite all of that, they have not strayed away from Trump’s path. Not only is he set to win the Minnesota primary easily, but they are also set to nominate Royce White, a far-right lunatic who associates with Alex Jones and anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theories, to be their U.S. Senate candidate in 2024.

The message to take from that is clear: Minnesota Republicans, just like their friends on the national level, haven’t learned anything. They have massive leaks in the ship that need to be patched up, and there is no Minnesota Republican who is willing to fix any of them. It’s not because they don’t care: it’s because they don’t even think they exist. It doesn’t matter how many times they lose, it will always come back to doubling down on what they were already doing.

Perhaps they may break through one day. Maybe there’s a red wave so big and a DFL candidate so poor that they can finally end their losing streak and flip a statewide office. Maybe Trump will win the state in 2024 off the back of a weakened Joe Biden and increased third-party vote splitting. But make no mistake, the GOP had an opportunity to change the politics in the state for generations beyond the symbolism of flipping the state red. By failing to take the right lessons that were clear from day one, they didn’t just allow the DFL to keep its power. They effectively gave them the keys to the kingdom and allowed themselves to become irrelevant politically.

The DFL is a strong party in its own right, but they truly have no greater friend than the Minnesota Republicans. If you are a Democrat, you should be eternally grateful for their remarkable ability to fail time and time again.

I’m going to keep this article up for transparency’s sake, and because the final X factor could still play in if moderate Republicans start approaching Democrats after this. But speculation over an Emmer speakership is now void. Emmermentum is dead, I’m sorry to say.

My Analysis Prior to Emmer Dropping Out

Currently, the United States House of Representatives is stuck in political limbo. After Democrats and a small group of Republicans ousted incumbent Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy amid fights over keeping the government open, the party has completely failed to find a leader to replace him. First, they went with Steve Scalise, the second in line to McCarthy, and the one thought to be able to bring the MAGA wing and moderate wing together. But that effort went down in a whimper after it became clear that despite being very right-wing himself, Scalise would not be able to win their support. After that debacle, the caucus briefly succumbed to the MAGA crowd, nominating Jim Jordan to be their nominee. This time, they would go to the floor for a vote, which saw Jordan and the Republicans embarrass themselves three times, losing support from his own caucus each time in the process. After the third vote, Jordan was ousted, leading Republicans to search in vain for a new leader. But after all of this, who would seriously want to do this?

Well, it appears we have our answer, and it happens to be one of my fellow Minnesotans! Here we have Tom Emmer, the congressman representing Minnesota’s 6th congressional, which mostly consists of conservative Twin Cities exurbs and the St. Cloud area. First elected in 2014, he has been able to climb the ladder of Republican leadership, earning the role of head of the House Republican effort in 2020 and 2022, House Majority Whip under Kevin McCarthy, and as of right now, the current speakership nominee for the Republicans.

As of right now, it doesn’t look like he is in an especially good spot. Behind closed doors, he won about as many votes as both Scalise and Jordan. It also looks very likely that at least on the first vote, he will lose around 26 Republicans(!), most of whom are MAGA-aligned and plan to vote for Jim Jordan. On policy, he is woefully out of step with many of the party’s most passionate base, especially online. From supporting the Respect for Marriage Act, his strong support for the effort in Ukraine, or his vote to certify the 2020 election, he has not shown himself to be in step with the MAGA wing. He’s certainly still a partisan conservative, I don’t want any liberals who subscribe to my page to be fooled into thinking he’s some Arne Carlson-esque moderate. But he’s clearly much more on the establishment end of the spectrum than many in the caucus.

In theory, this should doom his bid. After all, Scalise was also establishment-aligned and was further to the right than Emmer, and he couldn’t bring the MAGA wing on board. While he’ll likely pick up some moderates who voted against Jordan, he would still have to win over the MAGA base of the conference in order to become Speaker. Because of this, the story is already written for many, going something like this: Emmer will go to the floor, lose around 25-30 Republicans, try to convince those behind closed doors to vote for him by offering concessions, fail to do so, and then go to the floor again and lose more votes, becoming an endless cycle until he drops out, forcing Republicans to go through the process of picking yet another leader. That’s just the nature of working with this current Republican caucus: They can’t agree on anything and don’t have a big interest in actually governing.

This story is the one I think is the most likely right now. Despite his many titles, there isn’t much in Emmer’s political career that indicates a whole lot of competence. His first big campaign to become Minnesota’s governor in 2010 should have been an easy fight. He had a red-wave environment on his side, the Republicans already held control of the Governor’s Mansion, he had an opponent who was previously regarded as one of the most incompetent U.S. Senators, and his party was on track to flip both the State House and State Senate. In theory, he should have been the one to lead Minnesota into a new era of conservative rule, becoming something akin to Scott Walker or Rick Synder in other neighboring Midwestern states. But despite those big advantages, Emmer would manage to blow it on election day, when he was defeated by a 0.4% margin, which helped Democrats flip the governorship from red to blue, being one of the few gains Democrats made anywhere in 2010. For his only show on the statewide level, it didn’t exactly paint much promise.

Four years later, he would make a return to politics, running for the 6th district after the retirement of incumbent congresswoman and utterly bizarre human being Michelle Bachmann. While he has been able to win in his seat consistently thanks to its strong Republican lean, none of his wins have been shockers. According to Split Ticket’s WAR model, which analyzes how well an incumbent would do compared to an average Democrat or Republican, Emmer has never been able to show off real political skill. In 2018, he did 2.7 points worse than an average Republican would have done. In 2020, he did 1.4 points better than average. Finally, in 2022, he did 0.4 points worse than average. In other words, no signs of strong political appeal. While his moderate image could paint the picture that he has some grip that other Republicans cannot tap into, his results just don’t show it. Sure, he may be better than Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert at appealing to voters, but that’s also not a difficult task to pull off. In the GOP, he’s a political moderate who looks like every other generic conservative Republican. That’s not a good position to be in.

Additionally, his role as head of the House Republican effort leaves a lot to be desired. While his 2020 showing was quite strong thanks to unanticipated Republican gains in the chamber, he hasn’t been close to recreating any kind of magic since then. Heading into 2022, most observers had concluded that the House was essentially gone for Democrats, meaning that no matter what happened, the House was practically a guaranteed flip. In retrospect, we know this wasn’t true. But for most of the cycle, Emmer and his Senate leadership colleague Rick Scott would take this perspective, putting very little effort into stopping Trump from nominating his hand-picked candidates. This resulted in a bunch of low-quality weirdos becoming the face of Republican efforts across several different swing districts. While the Republicans would ultimately still overcome this and flip the House in 2022, they did so by an extremely slim margin, coming far below their own expectations. And Tom Emmer was right in the center of it, receiving much of the blame for the party’s failure, and only barely managing to be elected as Majority Whip due to protest from the MAGA wing. While I can’t honestly say that Emmer is to blame for all of his party’s failings in 2022, he definitely sat on the sidelines and allowed them to eat each other alive. Not exactly a good sign for being a leader.

Finally, his role as Majority Whip has been mediocre at best. After barely managing to win the role in November of 2022, he had immediately been faced with a job he didn’t prepare for and didn’t assume he’d have to take: saving McCarthy’s speakership before it even began. While he was ultimately able to get McCarthy over the finish line in January, it happened after 15 rounds of voting and after McCarthy sold off a massive chunk of his power, something that would later come back to bite him. Throughout McCarthy’s tenure, Emmer has not demonstrated an ability to bring the party along. Whether it be on the 2023 debt ceiling bill, the recent fight over the yearly budget, or various other Republican efforts to work with the Biden administration, Emmer has failed massively to bring the caucus on board. All of these bills bleed Republican support upwards of nearly triple digits, forcing Democrats to serve the role of bailing out the country from falling off a fiscal cliff. All of this culminated in McCarthy’s ultimate removal, with Emmer once again failing to bring the caucus together to save the flailing Speaker. If he is supposed to be the guy to unite Republicans behind him, his whipping ability doesn’t show it at all.

All of those signs point to Emmer failing to become Speaker. If you ask me how I think his bid will go, I’m saying it’s likely to fail for the same reasons I gave above. This current caucus is just unworkable, unwilling to govern, and a product of decades of Republican messaging about government being the root of all evil. But that being said, there is still a question mark surrounding his bid that neither Scalise nor Jordan really had. While his speakership is on track to fail, this could serve as a shakeup to this ongoing game and end it once and for all.

This question mark is the Democrats.

Out of all of the candidates we have had for Speaker so far in October, Emmer is easily the most likely to be able to strike a deal with Democrats. While he is certainly very partisan, he also holds the distinction of sometimes taking moderate votes on various issues. This puts him apart from Scalise and Jordan, both of whom are almost entirely in lockstep with the Republican agenda. While it makes him look like a sellout RINO to many in the MAGA wing, it does have the potential to make him more approachable in the eyes of Democrats. In fact, Dean Phillips, a Minnesota DFL congressman representing the neighboring 3rd district, has already said that he would be willing to sit out of the speakership vote if Emmer committed to funding Ukraine and supporting the peaceful transition of power, both things Emmer is on the record as supporting.

Granted, this is just one person, and someone who isn’t exactly beloved by the party right now. But if it does represent a real feeling among some on the Democratic side, it gives Emmer a real opening to become Speaker off the backs of Democrats abstaining. While it’s probably more likely he’d go down in defeat than work with Democrats, it’s also true that the government is on track to shut down soon amid several different international crises. It’s a real possibility that desperation kicks in for Emmer and the Democrats, and by extension, form a deal to keep the government running. Do I think it will happen? No, Emmer would probably lose his seat if he did. But if things get really bad, it’s not impossible.

For this reason, I’m not ready to rule out an Emmer speakership just yet. It’s definitely unlikely, and if he resorts to doing the same partisan maneuvers that his three predecessors did (as I expect him to), he should just drop out now and not waste our time. But unlike his last three predecessors, he has an opportunity to pull off something truly interesting. If he plays his cards right amid this truly tumultuous time, we could end up with a Speaker Tom Emmer who is supplied off the back of establishment Republicans and various members of the Democratic caucus. It would be unprecedented, but in the face of unprecedented controversy both internationally and domestically, it may be the only choice left in the eyes of many in both parties.

Maybe, just maybe, Tom Emmer could be the true moderate unifier that no one asked for.

But Minnesota’s outsider streak isn’t just limited to who it chooses to elect for public office within the two-party framework. It also extends to the overperformance of third-party efforts. This fact in particular has had a massive historical impact on the politics of Minnesota. The most notable of these was the Farmer-Labor Party, a left-wing populist party that grew to dominate statewide politics throughout the late 1920s and 1930s. It became so much of a force that as the party was dying down, it entered into a merger agreement with the third-place state Democratic Party, leading to the creation of the DFL, which still stands as the official statewide Democratic Party affiliate to this very day. Beyond this, there are other notable third-party efforts in both the distant past and present, from the 19th-century agrarian Alliance Party to the 21st-century vote-splitting pro-Marijuana parties. For a large chunk of Minnesota’s political history, third parties have played a massive role, and it’s likely that one will do so again at some point in the future.

But of all the third-party efforts Minnesota has had so far, there is one that stands out as particularly interesting to me. At one point, it stood as a potential shakeup to a political game many had begun to assume was growing stagnant. Seemingly overnight, it looked like it had just turned the entire system upside down, representing the beginning of the end of the two-party system. That was the Independence Party of Minnesota, one of the more recent and most significant third-party efforts in state history.

If you have only started paying attention to statewide politics recently, you probably have no idea who these guys are. While they technically still exist, you could be entirely forgiven for throwing them in the same box as other lackluster third-party efforts. In the few races they even bother to still contest, they struggle to even get above 1% of the vote, consistently falling well behind not just the two major parties, but even the various other failed third-party efforts that run alongside them. There isn’t a single member of the party that holds any amount of name recognition. Even the party website cannot be asked to give their top leadership non-archived pages of their own.

For most third parties, none of this is shocking or surprising. Given our current first-past-the-post and electoral college system, the opportunity for any third party to make a real mark on any election is incredibly difficult. Much to the disappointment of many Americans who want a real third party, the way our current system is made naturally skews in favor of creating a two-party system. That’s why they almost never get off the ground: our current system just doesn’t make it especially feasible.

That being said, there are still some third parties that have managed to overcome this massive barrier and actually have a degree of major influence over politics in their own right. The Independence Party was one of these parties.

At one point, the Independence Party looked like it was on top of the world. First created in 1992, it very quickly began to emerge as a real power player in every election cycle throughout the rest of the 1990s. It all came together for them in the 1998 elections, which saw the party shock the world and win control of the Governor’s Mansion, beating back both of the major parties in the process. In a midterm election year mostly only known today as an unremarkable status quo affair, this shock result in the North Star State stood out more so than any other result in the country. In just one night, the Independence Party became the talk of the town, a potential sign that fundamental change was on the horizon for politics in the state. It’s something that most third parties only dream of having the opportunity to show off. That’s what makes the Independence Party stand out in comparison to the rest: it was actually a force of real political influence, and by extension, saw itself have a dramatic fall from grace that the Greens or Libertarians haven’t had yet.

In this article, I want to go over how all of it came to be, why exactly it was so appealing to Minnesotans, and analyze how all of it slowly began to fall apart, becoming little more than a distant memory for Gen X Minnesotans who moved to the Twin Cities suburbs in the 1990s. In order to do that, let’s start by taking a look at what was occurring in national politics.

The Foundation

As I mentioned previously, one of the most commonly known things about United States politics is that it is a defacto two-party system, with the Democratic and Republican parties being the only two realistically capable of holding a significant amount of power. Thanks to how elections are run, there just isn’t really an opportunity for third parties to get off the ground. More often than not, their only real role in elections is serving as a potential spoiler to one of the two major parties, a role that basically ensures that they will never get real support in any election. It’s a massive hill to climb, and for the vast majority of third-party runs, it’s one they never even get close to conquering.

But that being said, there are still some efforts free of the two-party system that do manage to have real influence. For one reason or another, they can get beyond the fears of being a vote splitter and actually manage to create a real, above-single-digit level of support for themselves. It doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it tends to spawn a movement alongside it, one that almost always shapes the way politics is done for years to come.

On the national stage, despite the electoral college system making it virtually impossible for them to win, there are a decent amount of times in history when this kind of movement has been spawned. Whether it be James Weaver’s Populist Party in 1892, Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party in 1912, or George Wallace’s American Independent run in 1968, there are quite a few examples of influential third-party or independent runs that actually somewhat managed to get off the ground. However, the most recent and one of the most interesting ones came in the early 1990s, the independent run by businessman Ross Perot.

This is where the story begins for our friends at the Independence Party. Inspired by his populist, independent, and outsider message, supporters of the Texan businessman’s campaign founded the party in 1992, fielding one of their top leaders, the president of Dayton Furniture Dean Barkley to run in Minnesota’s 6th congressional district as a test run. This later made it part of a two-way strategy for Perot supporters, who would also form a statewide branch of United We Stand America (UWSA) to help organize on behalf of the Perot movement. This went beyond just supporting the top guy: they wanted to give him the power necessary to govern.

While this was certainly a notably popular effort when compared to prior third-party runs, it was still questionable whether or not this would be successful. While Ross Perot’s numbers were surging in national polls, he also wasn’t technically affiliated with any political party at the time, meaning that riding his coattails successfully would be more challenging than as a Democrat or Republican, who would both have the ability to ride any existing presidential coattails with relative ease. Even if Ross Perot did win the presidency in November, it wasn’t entirely clear that the Independence Party would be able to join him in Washington D.C.

All things considered though, this wasn’t the worst problem you could have. Unlike other failed third parties, the foundation of the Independence Party was built on a popular movement that was clearly being observed on the national stage. While the Greens have never been able to field a candidate that gets above 5% of the vote, the guy that the Independence Party claimed as their ally was polling ahead of the Democrats and Republicans in national polls. Even if only half of his support trickled down to them, it would still represent a pretty massive constituency of voters that could wield real influence on the statewide level. At the very least, they were on track to be a strong third-place party, right?

Well, as the campaign progressed, even that was beginning to be put in doubt.

Death’s Door? Already?

While most people remember Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign for putting up a very solid independent performance when compared to other non-duopoly efforts, there is a part of the story that often goes under-discussed. While his share of the popular vote was certainly sizable, it was also a massive underperformance compared to what could have been. As I said before, Perot was once polling first place, even managing to near 40% of the vote in one poll. His final result ended up being nowhere near close to that, and it wasn’t even out of fear of vote splitting, the main thing that usually takes down surging outsider efforts. The reason was far more simple: his campaign turned into a complete and utter dumpster fire.

As Ross Perot began to assume the position of front-runner, his campaign came under an increased level of scrutiny by the media and opposing politicians. There were questions over his business dealings. There were attacks on his past support of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. There was even some mockery over his job as a paper boy. Once Perot became the frontrunner, there was an endless amount of questionable and embarrassing stories that came to light from the national press. For the first time, his seemingly clean campaign had some dirt thrown on it.

While most candidates prepare for this potential onslaught before they ever enter the ring, it became clear early on that Perot did not take this important step. Over the course of his status as a frontrunner, he would make an endless amount of strategic mistakes and rhetorical gaffes, which only saw his support decline further and further. Eventually, he was removed from his position as a frontrunner entirely, running well behind both of his main two opponents seemingly overnight. His advisors, long frustrated with Perot’s lack of interest in what they had to say, had finally had their breaking point upon seeing his declining poll numbers. They gave him three options: take their advice and run a real campaign, don’t take their advice and the advisors go, or drop out of the race entirely. In their last-ditch effort to save the campaign, they gave Perot an ultimatum, one that would determine the future of his effort. What did Perot decide to do?

Unexpectedly, he would go with the third option, announcing on Larry King Live that he was going to be dropping out of the presidential contest. While he would claim the reason was due to the Electoral College being a barrier, practically everyone knew that the real reason was that he realized the writing was on the wall. When thinking about the ultimatum, he quickly jumped to the conclusion that he was not going to be winning the race. Not only were his own numbers declining, but one of his main opponents, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, was surging around the exact same time. This cut deep into Perot’s numbers, and it soon became clear that even if he did run a perfect campaign going forward, it was going to be near impossible to recreate the magic in time for the election. Despite being on track to be on the ballot in all 50 states, he just didn’t see a path forward anymore.

This was terrible news for the Independence Party. What once looked like the start of a unique third option that could occupy a clear space in statewide politics now suddenly looked like it was on death’s door. Not only did they not have a national spokesman for their ideas anymore, they still didn’t even have a brand of their own either. While they certainly had a large pool of voters they could have pulled from, that came entirely off the back of Perot’s movement, not anything they had created independent of him. Having only existed for just a few months by that point, they were too new to the scene to truly have an established base of support purely on their own. They needed a launch point, a strong result that could have propelled them into something interesting. And with Perot no longer running on the top of the ticket, this vision of a strong third movement was on track to be nothing more than a fantasy.

Over the course of the next few months, the Independence Party was slowly fizzling away. Most media coverage during this time was spent covering Bill Clinton, a charismatic southern baby boomer and masterful politician who began to take massive leads in the polls over incumbent president George H.W. Bush. Despite being part of the two-party system himself, Clinton quickly took Perot’s mantle as the change candidate in the race, making him a very attractive option to many burnt Perot supporters. This only served to cut deeper and deeper into the Independence Party’s already waning appeal, as the Democrats looked like they were on track to ride Clinton’s coattail appeal into a massive majority in November. For a while, it looked like the future of the Independence Party was set: it was on track to be yet another failed third party.

But if there’s one thing you should know about elections, it’s that October is full of surprises.

Build, Destroy, Build

Going into October, not many people had really expected to race to shake up in any meaningful way. While the October surprise could still have had some impact, the chance that Bill Clinton’s double-digit lead was going to be jeopardized by this point was seemingly near impossible. Most of the things that were supposed to benefit Bush, such as the RNC convention bump, didn’t seem to do anything to dent Clinton’s massive lead. After living in the White House for 12 years, people were just tired of Republicans being in there, and with the economy going south and lacking charisma of his own, Bush didn’t inspire confidence.

This is where you may assume I’ll say that everything changed on October 1st, which is when Ross Perot announced to the world that his campaign was back on. I don’t blame you for thinking that, but this really wasn’t seen as that big of a deal. After all, he was out of the race for months at that point. His previous standing as a frontrunner was long gone by this point, and most polls indicated that if he were to re-enter, he would struggle to even poll above 10%. In the eyes of many, he had broken their trust and killed off a movement that was surging because he couldn’t handle himself. Even if they did know he re-entered the race, it was going to take a lot to get those people back on his side, especially in the face of Bill Clinton. In retrospect, the task of building up the support needed to win after all of that was virtually impossible.

To his credit, however, Perot would spend October trying as hard as he could to re-create the magic. Qualifying for all three of the presidential debates, Perot would participate in all three of them, giving him a national spotlight next to his main two opponents. While his debate performances weren’t absolutely spectacular, he did emerge as the winner in the first and third debates, which would help bring back some of his past appeal. This began to be reflected in the polls, which shot up to 20% in the aftermath of the debates. While his standing wouldn’t go beyond that thanks to some revelations about his new campaign using loyalty pledges, it did create something of a real base once again. He wasn’t going to win the presidency, but he was going to create a sizable movement.

For the Independence Party, this was nothing less than divine intervention. Once on track to join the slums of the New Alliance and Constitution Party, it once again had its top guy to ride off of. While Perot was not going to win the presidency, his strong performance meant that the Independence Party was successful at chipping off even a quarter of Perot’s support, it was finally going to be noticed by the DFL and Republicans. And with Minnesota’s outsider track record essentially ensuring that Perot would have a strong performance in the state, the party looked like it had a bright future.

The First Breakthrough

When Election Day 1992 finally came, the result was anti-climatic. After leading in the polls by massive margins for months, Clinton would win this race in a landslide, defeating Bush by a massive electoral college margin of 370-168. After 12 years of near uncontested Republican rule in the White House, Clinton had finally ended his party’s national losing streak, becoming the first Democrat to win the presidency since 1976. While this wasn’t particularly surprising, it was still a pretty big shakeup in national politics in its own right.

As all of that was happening, Perot’s numbers largely went ignored. While his 18.9% number was certainly a massive chunk of people, he also failed to win even a single electoral vote, the thing that matters more than anything else in winning the presidency. Compared to the high 30s numbers he was pulling in the summer, his final showing just looked weak. While future elections would make this performance stand out, for the time, it just wasn’t that shocking.

Despite hardly anyone noticing, however, this is where the seeds for the Independence Party truly began to grow.

Minnesota’s result in 1992, far more so than even the national result itself, was never in serious doubt. While Republicans swept the country throughout the 1980s, Minnesota was always loyal to the Democrats, even being the only state to vote blue in the 1984 Republican landslide. It was a deeply Democratic state, and Bill Clinton was never on track to lose the state at any point, even at the very beginning of the race when he was polling far behind Bush. This was reflected on Election Day, when Clinton defeated Bush by an 11.6-point margin, sweeping most counties in the state and every congressional district in the process. In terms of margin, it was yet another solid victory for Democrats in the North Star State, continuing their long-time tradition of domination on the presidential level.

However, one thing you will immediately notice is that despite winning the state by double digits, Clinton’s actual percentage of the vote was minuscule. While his victory was certainly still strong, his final percentage of the vote only amounted to just 43.5%, the lowest amount scored by a presidential Democratic nominee in the state since 1928. It was even lower for Bush, who would only score just 31.9% of the vote, the lowest amount for any presidential Republican nominee since 1936.

The reason for this is also something you will probably immediately notice: Minnesota’s outsider streak came through.

While Perot would get 18.9% of the vote nationally, he would score 24% of the vote in Minnesota, making it his best state in the Midwest by a wide margin and his 10th-best state in the nation overall. Most notably, some of his best counties in the state came from the Twin Cities suburbs. Whether they were Republican-leaning counties like Carver or Wright, or Democratic-leaning counties like Anoka or Washington, Perot would consistently exceed his statewide margin in all of these counties. While he would struggle in the urban parts of the Twin Cities and the traditionally Democratic Iron Range, his strong suburban support allowed him to end up with a 24% number. All in all, a very solid performance by the Texan businessman.

With all of that being said, how did the Independence Party do? Well, as I mentioned previously, they only actually ran in one race, the contest for Minnesota’s 6th congressional district. This was supposed to serve as a test run to show off Perot’s appeal, and in the process, build a party of their own off of that. It was a risky choice, but when the results had come in, it was clear that it had paid massive dividends.

Minnesota’s 6th district, which represented the western and eastern Twin Cities suburbs, proved to be the best launching point district the party could ask for. It was one of Perot’s best spots in the entire state, giving Dean Barkley far bigger coattails than he otherwise would have had. This was shown clearly in the final numbers, which saw Barkley acquire 16.1% of the vote, almost entirely off the back of Perot voters.

Despite being a brand-new party, despite Perot himself not even being affiliated with the party, and despite Dean Barkley being relatively unknown, they would manage to put up a very solid third place showing that instantly got them new attention from those in the political world. Unlike Perot’s showing, there was no conversation about underperforming compared to past expectations. Outside of Perot supporters, most people hadn’t even heard of these guys before the election. Many hardly even knew that they had connections to Perot and his movement at all. All they knew was that it was a new third party that had just put a massive overperformance not seen anywhere else in the state. This performance, while technically worse than Perot’s showing in the district, had served its purpose perfectly. Suddenly, people began to look at them as an entirely new force, more than just a symbol of Perot’s movement. Other than outright winning the race, there wasn’t a lot more the party could ask for.

But while this performance was solid, there was still a ton of work ahead of them. While their 16.1% number was notable, it also didn’t mean anything in regard to their official party status. In order to go beyond just riding the coattails of an independent presidential candidate, they needed to be regarded as a serious party in their own right, something that any third party is always going to struggle with. One of the ways to do this was to actually be regarded as such by the government of Minnesota, which required earning at least 5% of the vote in a statewide election. Not only would it give them an attention boost but it would also allow them to be treated to many of the same benefits that the DFL and Republicans had. While this wasn’t a guaranteed ticket to success, it was going to be an essential step to going forward.

So, there was now a new mission ahead of the 1994 elections: earning major party status.

Just Another Reform Party

With their new goal laid out, all that was left was to figure out what would be the easiest path to achieving it. Ideally, you would want to run in a race that doesn’t have another third party running already and also not against a popular incumbent. Simple enough, right?

Well, there was one problem with this, it didn’t look like such a path was open at first. Looking at the statewide races up for grabs in 1994, they all seemingly fell underneath one of those two categories. In the case of the U.S. Senate seat, Governorship, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, all of them featured incumbents well on track to win their races quite relatively easily, making an effort to build a strong third party showing that much more difficult. The other two contests, State Auditor and State Treasurer, suffered from the other problem I mentioned: there were already strong third-party candidates in the running for these seats under the growing Green Party. Ideally, you don’t want to be running against other third parties if you are trying to establish a coalition needed to get 5%. While it wasn’t impossible they could still get major party status in these races, the hill they would need to climb in order to do so would be pretty steep.

Fortunately, however, good news would come for the party, when it was announced that the incumbent U.S. Senator David Durenberger was going to retire. And with no other strong third-party candidate running in the race, it gave the Independence Party a perfect lane to fulfill their goal.

But in order to make sure this effort was ultimately successful, the Independence Party would once again nominate Dean Barkley as their main candidate, the most well-known member of the party, and the only one with an electoral record to speak about at all. This move was a smart play by the party, allowing them to play the role of outsiders to the system while also not coming off as unserious loons. While Minnesota’s friendlier attitude to third parties could have suggested that the party would get to 5% regardless of whoever they nominated, the party wasn’t going to take that supposedly destined event for granted. After all, this political environment was nothing like 1992. With no Perot running, this would be the first time that the party would have to rely on its own image. There was not going to be a top national figure to ride off of. They just had themselves. So how did they do?

When Election Day came in 1994, this cautious attitude would prove to serve them well. While the result of the Independence Party was overshadowed by the massive red wave that swept the country, this election would be the one where the party would see its official breakthrough, becoming a major party after earning more than 5% of the vote in the U.S. Senate contest. Not only was this a massive step forward in regard to recognition and funding, but it also put them a step ahead of the other third parties running in the state that year, all of which failed to get above 5% in the other statewide races. In that respect, the Independence Party stood alone, becoming the most popular third party in the state in the process.

That being said, remember when I told you that their cautious attitude in nominating Barkley served them well? That was because the final result did not see them cross the finish line with a lot of leftover stamina. While they still succeeded in beating the 5% benchmark, it was only done by earning 5.4% of the vote, just barely over the number required and far lower than Barkley’s 16.1% number in 1992. While they still pulled off an undoubtedly big achievement, they did it in the most underwhelming way imaginable. Sure, it made them a step ahead of the other third parties. But is that really such a big deal when those other parties were already getting in low single digits? How exactly does that paint a future of a strong, third force in statewide politics?

This problem would persist for the next four years as it struggled to find itself go any further than just barely scraping by as a major party. Heading into 1996, they would once again run Dean Barkley for the U.S. Senate, this time going up against incumbent DFL Senator Paul Wellstone. In theory, the 1996 election should have seen themselves break from this somewhat. Not only was Ross Perot running on the top of the ticket again, but he would be doing so as a fellow party member. Recognizing the difficulties that come from running as an independent, Ross Perot would create his own political party, the Reform Party, to compete with the Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 1996 election. The Independence Party immediately jumped on board with them, renaming themselves the Reform Party of Minnesota and making themselves an official statewide branch of the National Reform Party. While Perot wasn’t expected to poll nearly as high as he did in 1992, you would at least expect Barkley to have a better ability to ride off of his coattails. But did they actually pull that off?

Well, not really. Much like the election itself, the result in Minnesota was not a shocker. Bill Clinton would once again win the state, this time by a landslide margin of 16.1%, winning all but 11 counties in the state in the process. In comparison to his lackluster percentage of the vote in 1992, Clinton would manage to win the majority of the state in a three-way race, leaving both of his main opponents in the dust. Much like the nation itself, Minnesota was satisfied with the President, and living up to its Democratic tradition, elected them back in the White House.

Once again, however, Minnesota would live up to its outsider tradition too. Just like in 1992, Perot would manage to pull off a better performance in Minnesota compared to the rest of the nation, earning 11.8% of the vote and making it his seventh-best state in the nation. While the vote drop was stark compared to 1992, it still represented a sizable chunk of the vote, one that Barkley should have been able to ride off of with relative ease. But when the U.S. Senate results came in, Barkley only pulled 7.0% of the vote, yet another underwhelming performance that didn’t project a lot of energy. While it was a numerical improvement from 1994, it didn’t exactly paint the picture of a party that could really hold its own. More than anything, this election proved that they had become stagnant. After four years, they still held the exact same numbers as they did in 1992. They hadn’t shown any real growth of their own. They were just another Reform Party. And like the Reform Party itself, it was slowly beginning to be written off, becoming just another footnote in the history of failed third parties.

But just as it seemed like the Independence Party was dead, a meteor would hit the planet.

Jesse “The Messiah” Ventura

When looking back at uneventful and forgettable midterms in modern history, there probably isn’t a lot that can compete with 1998. Occurring during a time of economic boom and high marks for the Clinton administration, there wasn’t really a whole lot for people to complain about. While midterms usually resulted in big gains for the opposition party, the Republicans had already gained control of both chambers of Congress in 1994. Adding onto their unpopular impeachment effort against Bill Clinton, there wasn’t really much they could gain out of this election. Thanks to that, the 1998 elections go almost entirely under-discussed compared to their Republican Revolution 1994 brother.

Well, with one massive, massive exception.

If you know the result of literally any election in 1998, it’s probably in the North Star State. In just one night, the entire two-party system was flipped on its head, becoming a symbol of what a post-duopoly world could have looked like going forward. To Minnesotans, it looked like the beginning of a movement, one that had the capacity to compete with the two other parties like the old Farmer-Labor Party did.

And the Independence Party was right in the middle of it. But how?

Going into 1998, it didn’t look like anything new was on the horizon for Minnesota politics. While the retirement of incumbent governor Arne Carlson guaranteed that the state would at least have a new governor at the helm, neither the Democratic or Republican options looked like real shakeups to the game. For the Democrats, they decided to reach back into the mid-20th century, going with incumbent state Attorney General Skip Humphrey, son of the former Vice President himself. For Republicans, they decided to go with St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, a former Democrat and Paul Wellstone backer who had only been a Republican for just over a year. This made both parties’ strategies pretty obvious: ignore the enthusiastic base and play it as safely as possible.

As all of that was happening, the Independence Party was struggling to find its footing. After 1996, the party found itself in limbo, unable to build its base past what it already did in 1992. With Ross Perot slowly fizzling out of the national scene and Dean Barkley not willing to run another sacrificial campaign, it left the Independence Party with no real leader for their cause. It was possible that this could have been the death of the party altogether. After all, it was leaderless, looking increasingly unserious, and still didn’t really seem to have any committed ideology to hold up besides generic populism. They needed a messiah, and for a while, it looked like they weren’t going to get it.

But from an act of god, the party would soon find him. A man who could bring them back from impending death and give them the jolt of energy they needed. A man who could turn it into the third-party force they had dreamed of for six years. A man who had a bombastic brand he could bring over to the party. Yes, it’s the man himself. It’s Jesse Ventura.

This is probably the part most of you have been waiting for. I can’t say I blame you for that either. Even among a group of outsider politicians that come from the land of 10,000 lakes, he truly stands out among the pack. From being an underwater demolition team member, wrestler, sports commentator, actor, talk show host, mayor, and governor, he has a massive number of resume items he has collected over his many decades in public life. It’s very likely you’ve seen this man somewhere, especially if you are even a little bit interested in politics or big into WWE. From a trivia standpoint, it’s always fun to mention that Minnesota once elected a former wrestler as its governor.

But how exactly did he do that? How did this man go from being a wrestler to completely shattering Minnesota politics overnight?

After leaving the WWF in 1990, he would officially begin his political career, making a run for the mayorship of Brooklyn Park, a large suburb just outside of the Twin Cities. It was here where he showed early signs of real political skill, managing to topple his city’s long-time incumbent mayor by a landslide margin. While his low-profile office meant he couldn’t build up much of a political profile yet, it allowed him to point to some level of experience he had to prove he wasn’t entirely unserious, giving him an edge that many other outsider politicians don’t have.

After retiring as mayor in 1995, Ventura would slowly begin the framework to run for Governor of Minnesota. A fan of Ross Perot and his party, he would officially announce his candidacy for the Independence Party nomination. For the first time, it wasn’t Dean Barkley that would be the head of the ship. Initially, this led to virtually no one taking him seriously. Sure, he was a former mayor. But he was the mayor of a suburb that hardly anyone cared about. What made him think he was qualified to be the Governor of Minnesota? Shouldn’t he be managing a WWF match with a Bob Marley shirt on?

Ventura, undeterred by these dismissals, would invest a considerable amount of time and money into a strong grassroots campaign. Taking from the Wellstone playbook, he would campaign in a bus that toured the entire state, partaking in aggressive retail politics in the process. Just like Amy Klobuchar was doing in her small race, Ventura would also take heavy advantage of the internet, a portion of advertising that his two main rivals had not bothered to invest in. Finally, knowing how few TV ads he could afford to run, he would make sure to take full advantage of them. His most popular ad, simply titled “Action Figure”, would play right into his celebrity image as “The Body”, portraying him as a superhero-like figure dedicated to fighting special interests and two-party gridlock. While this could have made him look like an unserious person in another race, it would prove to be beneficial to him when his main two opponents were seen as boring, establishment options picked by the parties to simply beat the other.

In a world full of average simple men, Ventura had managed to stand out. After years of basic governors, the people of Minnesota wanted an outsider, and since the two main parties weren’t giving them one, many had begun flocking to Ventura. Over the course of the next few months, the polls would slowly see his numbers tick up further and further. First, he got out of single-digit hell. Then he began to poll into the low 20s. Then as the debates were starting, he pulled into the high 20s. After strong performances, he would pull into the low 30s, even managing to finally poll second to Coleman in some polls. Finally, as Election Day was just around the corner, he even managed to get within the margin of error. Over the course of just a few months, Ventura had gone from a complete political nobody to being a serious threat that neither Humphrey nor Coleman had ever expected. The possibility of a Ventura administration was no longer a cheap joke. He was well on track to get at least 2nd place, and depending on how the night went, even potentially manage to take the Governor’s Mansion itself.

At least, that’s what the polls were saying. It’s just polling. While it can be useful, it doesn’t actually determine how people are going to vote on Election Day. People may say they’ll vote for Ventura when asked in polls out of frustration for the DFL and Republicans, but when they actually go to vote, they’ll think about it logically and realize that any hope for “The Body” actually being in power is just wishful thinking. They’ll realize that all of this is just a charade, and vote in someone with real experience. Surely, they won’t go to the polls to elect a wrestler just because they are mad at the establishment, right?

Right?

“We Shocked the World!”

For the first few hours of Election Night 1998, the result was expectably stale. While the Republicans looked well on track to hold control of both chambers of Congress, they were also well on track to not make any gains in either chamber. The Democrats, who had spent months defending the popular Clinton administration from an unpopular impeachment, had successfully held their own and prevented another 1994-esque landslide against them. For the first few hours of the night, that looked like it was going to be the main story: an example of a party overreaching its hand and killing off its natural midterm advantage. While it was interesting, it wasn’t exactly a flashing headline either.

Then the polls in Minnesota closed.

The results would take a while to come in, and the numbers would be very close for most of the night. But people could tell what was going on from the very beginning. Just like it did 8 years prior, Minnesota would end up being the standout result in an otherwise unremarkable year. Despite being dismissed by practically everyone just three months prior, despite only spending less than half a million dollars, and despite running against two highly credible and qualified politicians, Jesse Ventura had managed to crash into the political world, winning the Governor’s office with 37% of the vote. As Ventura himself said during his victory speech, they had managed to “shock the world”, even comparing his victory to Muhammad Ali’s win over Sonny Liston in 1964.

For the Independence Party, this could not have been better news for them. Sure, he was their only success on the ballot that year: their other candidate efforts went down in flames. But they still had their own Governor! Once leaderless, the party finally had someone they could point to as their guy and by extension, build a real base of support off of his brand. Unlike almost every other Reform Party in the country, they no longer needed Ross Perot to stay afloat and scrap by. They could actually make something real, building a real force that the DFL and Republicans would have to take seriously. It was a tall order for Ventura, but so was winning the Governor’s office itself. He had already shown off an ability to conquer very steep political mountains. If anyone could do it, it should have been him. Surely, he can bring the party newfound success, right?

The Untold Disaster

Whenever people talk about Jesse Ventura, you’ll probably hear a mention of how he managed to become Governor of Minnesota in the late 1990s. If you know a little bit more, you may even know how he managed to win that campaign, shocking the world in the process. But even many of his biggest fans today probably don’t know a whole lot about one of his most important contributions to the world: his actual tenure as Governor of Minnesota.

This isn’t that surprising. You don’t usually hear much about it in local or national news, they typically tend to focus on how he actually managed to win that office in the first place. You don’t even tend to hear it from Ventura himself, instead just listing his four years as Governor as yet another item on his massive resume. His tenure is something that goes significantly under-discussed, especially when you consider the impact his administration had on the future of the Independence Party. That being when you analyze his four years, you come to one inescapable conclusion about it: his tenure was a total disaster.

When I say this, I want to make something clear: I’m not referring to his policies. As someone on the left, there are some things to appreciate about his tenure, from his investments into high-speed light rail, his early support for LGBTQ+ rights, and protecting the high levels of funding that public schools get in the state from Republican cuts. While I wouldn’t have voted for him, I don’t believe that his governorship could be considered anywhere near the worst, especially when you consider the difficulties of being a third-party governor in the face of uni-party opposition in the State Assembly.

What I am referring to are his actual skills at being an incumbent politician. Much like Ross Perot, he didn’t know how to handle himself with the press, frequently getting in fights with them whenever possible. The first notable example of this came just a few days after he was sworn in, when a reporter had jokingly asked him about his singing ability at a concert he had been starring at. Instead of going along with it or ignoring it, Ventura would respond negatively to it, immediately killing the honeymoon period the media had with him and giving an early sign of his poor relationship with them over his four-year tenure.

This bad relationship with the media also carried over to the legislature. With Democrats controlling the State Senate and Republicans controlling the State House, it was always going to be a challenge for the wrestler-turned-governor to get work done here. But Ventura did absolutely no help to himself in this regard either. While he was able to work with them somewhat early on, his relationship with them over the years only got worse and worse. Over time, it became clear that he had basically no allies in the legislature at all, and virtually all of his vetos would be overruled by the legislature. This was especially bad during the last few budget negotiations when Ventura got basically nothing done and was effectively forced to go along with whatever the other parties wanted.

Near the end, Ventura could pretty much only wave his middle finger at the legislature, with his only notable exercises during this time being when he moved out of the Governor’s Mansion and began to do his work at his home in Maple Grove, something that came right after the legislature voted to increase security. On top of this, he would also lift a middle finger specifically at Democrats, appointing Dean Barkley instead of a Democrat to the vacant U.S. Senate seat after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in late 2002, describing it as a response to what he saw as the politicization of a tragedy. While these both made him look petty, it was what he was limited to by this point. Despite being the governor of the state, he had basically no role in any legislative negotiation.

These problems would be bad enough. You don’t want to serve as a lame duck far before the actual lame duck period. But the icing on the cake would be the fundamental problem that ultimately killed Ventura’s governorship: He just looked unserious. Throughout his entire governorship, Ventura gave people in the state the image that he was more concerned about keeping up his personal brand and name in national politics than actually working on behalf of Minnesota. Whether it be hosting WWF games, hanging around with Donald Trump over his 2000 Reform Party run, or commentating over an XFL game, he looked like he was more interested in having fun than doing the hard work. While this eccentric celebrity image worked in his 1998 campaign, doing this while the governor of the state was an entirely different ballpark. People expected him to take his job seriously, but it didn’t look like he was.

This, more so than anything else I listed, was what killed his governorship altogether. While he entered office with a 73% approval rating, he would enter 2002 with a 43% approval rating, a massive drop that basically killed any hope of winning a second term. Deeply frustrated with the job and seeing the writing on the wall, Ventura decided to bow out of the 2002 campaign, leaving his party with no clear leader. Once a potential crusader for the death of the duopoly, “The Body” had been reduced to a sideshow, serving as a perpetual lame duck until someone more serious could be sworn in.

Obviously, all of this was terrible news for the Independence Party. The guy they had staked their entire party on turned out to be a total dumpster fire in the eyes of the public. After spending years trying to prove they could be a serious force, their perception would be slowly shattered as it became clear that Ventura didn’t really care much for his own job. While they were the fresh new kid on the block in 1998, by 2002 they had become the laughingstock of Minnesota politics.

You may think this would be the time for the party to look towards a national figure to get things in order, but even that wasn’t an option anymore. The Reform Party had never had a clearly defined ideology, it was mostly just a big tent that was only really united by generic populism, making it susceptible to being taken over by outside actors. While Perot and his centrist faction would hold the party together in 1996, it would soon begin to collapse as soon as he left, being taken over by Pat Buchanan, a far-right extremist, ahead of the 2000 election. This resulted in Ventura, alongside his friend Donald Trump, officially abandoning the Reform Party in 2000, bringing the statewide party with him and officially renaming it back to the “Independence Party”.

While this was the best call they could have made, it still put them in a terrible spot. While they technically didn’t need one, they no longer had a national figure to look up to, setting them back considerably in regards to being seen as serious actors. And since Ventura was unpopular, that meant that there was basically no figure they could look to. Despite holding the Governor’s office, the party was once again leaderless, with them well on track to be totally wiped out in 2002.

But if there’s anything we have learned about our friends over at the Independence Party, it’s that we should always expect something bizarre.

Tim “The Future” Penny

Heading into 2002, more so than ever before, the Independence Party had a serious issue in regard to who they would nominate. With Ventura bowing out of the race, and Dean Barkley not interested in re-entering electoral politics, the party looked like it was on track to nominate a complete rando, lacking any kind of experience or brand of its own. They could probably hold onto some support thanks to newfound party recognition, but it didn’t look like it was going to go any further. Tragically for them, it looked like the party was well on track to re-enter single-digit hell.

However, in a rare move for Ventura, he would get himself involved in the process, not wanting to see his party go up in flames immediately after he left. He did this by hand-picking a successor himself, going with former moderate Democratic Congressman Tim Penny, a friend and ally for Ventura’s cause. While the governor would make bad political call after bad political call throughout his tenure, this decision stood out as one of the very few good ones he made. In picking Penny, a soft-spoken moderate with congressional experience, he allowed the party to rebuild some image of seriousness that he had tarnished over the last four years.

On top of this, Penny would be able to run against competition that could make him stand out. His main opponents, Republican State House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty and Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe, both spend most of the campaign running in the arms of their bases, assuming that getting at least 35% would be more than enough to get over the finish line. While neither were radicals by any sense, they also didn’t make that much of an effort to play for moderate voters, giving Penny a clear lane to run in.

Penny, aware that many didn’t take the party seriously, would seek to find the right balance between being an outsider and flexing some of his experience as a congressman. In doing so, he would mostly avoid mentioning or campaigning with Ventura, instead focusing on his record as someone who fought and believed in balanced budgets, civil liberties, gun rights, and other principles of the Independence Party. Despite running with the same party as the incumbent governor, Penny had built an image of his own as “the future”, the one who would take Minnesota into the 21st century.

For most of the campaign, this approach worked out quite well. Most polls had the race tight, with Penny running close to even with both Moe and Pawlenty just a month before the election. For the Independence Party, it was a remarkable sign of recovery. Despite their governor being seen as a failure by most in the state, it looked like they had been able to separate themselves enough from him to not suffer from his failings, while also not straying too far away from what they stood for either. Maybe, perhaps, despite everything, they really could hang on and end the duopoly for good.

However, the last month of the campaign would see this dream dashed. As Election Day came closer and closer, and in light of Ventura’s response to Paul Wellstone’s tragic death, more and more people began to fall prey to strategic voting. While Penny was well-liked, he didn’t have anywhere near the same level of star power or enthusiasm that Ventura did, making his voting base more susceptible to switching sides. Moderate Democrats and Republicans, previously more inclined to vote for Penny, would begin to assess that his campaign was doomed and quickly abandoned him in droves for their own party’s nominee. While they may have preferred Penny’s vision, they hated their biggest rival party much more, which would ultimately be the thing that guided them at the polls. Simply put, while Ventura could beat back strategic voting through his bombastic personality and celebrity image, Penny had no such strength.

Throughout the final month of the campaign, the Independence Party was awestruck. They had no idea what was going on. After months of being solid contenders, why did everyone suddenly start strategically voting? What happened to voting your values? What happened to wanting a third choice? Didn’t Minnesota want a serious outsider?

As the results were coming in, the party could do nothing but ponder over these many questions. While both the Democrats and Republicans would make gains in terms of vote percentage, the Independence Party would see itself collapse, earning only 16.2% of the vote, down a staggering 20.8 points from their 1998 showing.

Sure, they still had a base, and it made up a sizable chunk of the electorate. And sure, they could still play at least a minor role in the politics of the state. But after everything they had achieved in 1998, it felt like a total failure. They weren’t supposed to be the low double-digit third party that people only voted for out of necessity or protest. They were supposed to be the ones that single-handedly took down the duopoly, giving people an example of what a three-party system could look like. But as the results came in, it was clear that this grand vision was fading away. Not even an experienced congressman could save them. While not many noticed at the time, it’s clear in retrospect that 2002 was the nail in the coffin, and it would only go downhill from here.

The Protest Party

Heading into the mid-2000s, the party was more demoralized than ever. While they had technically been in worse spots prior to this, none of them occurred after being in a position to change the rules of the game. Any hope of making serious, sweeping changes to the political system had been completely squandered. They had built no party infrastructure, no precinct-level organizations, no local investment, nothing. While their name recognition and moderate brand meant that they still had a base larger than most third parties, that wasn’t what they were made for. They were nothing more than a protest party for moderates upset with their nominee, essentially guaranteeing they would never have a big win again.

Over the course of the next decade, this role would only serve to be more and more firmly established. The most obvious example of this was in 2006, taking place in the Minneapolis-based 5th congressional district. With the longtime incumbent Democratic Congressman Martin Olav Sabo deciding to retire in early 2006, the Democrats would nominate a progressive firebrand, a state representative named Keith Ellison. This angered many moderate Democrats in the district, who felt unrepresented by Ellison. Since these people did not wish to vote for the Republicans, they would flock over to Independence Party nominee Tammy Lee as a protest vote, with Sabo himself donating to her candidacy. While Ellison would still win the race easily thanks to the district’s strong Democratic lean, the protest vote would amount to 21.0% for Tammy Lee, nearly beating out the Republican numbers in the process. While this was undoubtedly a big number for the Independence Party, it also wasn’t built on anything they actually did. They were just in the right place at the right time, it didn’t exactly project much confidence.

This is a story that would see itself repeated time and time again over the next few years. There’s Dean Barkley's 15.2% showing as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2008. There’s Tom Horner’s 11.9% showing as a gubernatorial candidate in 2010. There’s Bob Anderson’s 10% showing as a congressional candidate for Minnesota’s 6th district in 2008. Really, I could keep going on and on, but I think you get the point. More than anything, the Independence Party was a protest vote for moderates, essentially just a name they could sign onto when the other two parties weren’t giving them what they wanted. While this basically guaranteed they’d never be in power again, it at least allowed them to keep their status as a major party. Sure, it was demoralizing, but at least it couldn’t get any worse.

But if there’s anything we have also learned about our friends at the Independence Party, it’s that you should never underestimate the ability for things to get worse for them.

The 2014 Reckoning

Heading into the 2010s, it looked like the Independence Party was on track to continue its status as a distant but clearly defined third-place party. While their impact on state politics was close to nothing thanks to having practically no infrastructure, at least they could still reliably get at least above 5% of the vote. Hell, if they managed to serve as a spoiler, it could even force one of the parties to moderate for votes, theoretically allowing some of their ideals to come into play. While their future was by no means bright, it didn’t look like it was going to change much either.

But as the 2014 elections approached, the party’s lack of organization and clear leadership had finally seemed to catch up to them. First, while their previous statewide candidates held at least some name recognition and endorsements, their nominee for governor, Hannah Nicollet, was a complete nobody, unable to even clear the threshold needed to get public funding support. Secondly, their preferred U.S. Senate candidate would go down in flames to Steve Carlson, a hard-right Tea Partier the party was forced to disavow, falling victim even further to claims of unseriousness. Most importantly, however, both of them were going up against very popular DFL incumbents, ones who happened to have a strong appeal with moderate voters who were typically more inclined to vote for the Independence Party.

All of this combined into an election cycle seen as the final death knell for the party. Almost all of their past top figures didn’t bother to campaign for Nicollet, with some even endorsing the DFL or Republican nominees in these races. There was no energy, no organizing, no enthusiasm, no experience, not even any protest voting. There was no base left, nowhere to go from here. After holding major party status for two decades, they were well on track to lose it all in just one night.

As the Election Day results rolled in, it became clear that the party was finished. While the Secretary of State nominee would manage to get close to 5%, no one else came anywhere near the mark, relegating back to minor party status for the first time since 1994. After years of relying on protest votes and ignoring organizing, they had finally realized what many others had before: they had to build a foundation beyond just the people themselves. This is something the party ignored for twenty years, and after years of defying political gravity, it was finally over.

Just Another Third Party

As I said at the beginning of this piece, if you have only started focusing on Minnesota politics recently, you probably have no idea who these guys are. That’s because if you look at any recent election result in Minnesota, you’ll notice that the Independence Party name means basically nothing. If they even bother to run a candidate, they usually struggle to poll above 1% of the vote, falling far behind even the one-issue marijuana legalization parties that serve as nothing more than pro-GOP vote splitters. Even Jesse Ventura, a long-time hater of the two-party system, cannot be asked to support them anymore. At this point, there is nothing that distinguishes them from the Greens, Libertarians, or Socialist Workers parties.

But when you actually take a look at their history, you’ll learn more than just the fact that they were once a lot more than just another third party. You’ll also learn a valuable lesson in politics and campaigning: you have to do more than just suck up to a single man. If you want to be a successful party and movement, you have to actually build the infrastructure necessary to still hang on even if your popular figurehead leaves the game. Otherwise, you will fizzle away into nothing, relegating yourself to the dustbin of history.

The Independence Party didn’t fail because people didn’t want a third party. It didn’t fail because of its ideology, its ideas were shared by a large chunk of the population. It failed because it didn’t try to win. Sure, they would sometimes nominate big names for statewide office, but they would never go any further. Even at the height of their power, they never made an effort to contest every election they could, never made an effort to work on the local and precinct level, and never made a significant effort to properly weed out extremism. Most importantly, however, they never made any effort to change the game away from being a duopoly. In doing so, they squandered an opportunity to make real change, setting back the third-party movement in the state for decades.

While I don’t personally mind this development as a DFL voter, I do think it’s important to take the lesson at heart when it comes to political activism and work. You just have to put in the effort. Never waste an opportunity when given one, and never just assume that popular people will carry you all the way. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a spot just like the one the Independence Party finds itself in, pure limbo and irrelevancy.

Or, as I would put it, just another third party.

Thanks to this, practically all of our politicians get overlooked too. To Minnesotans, Amy Klobuchar is an extremely effective U.S. Senator who has managed to win big every time she’s been on the ballot. Tim Walz is the governor who has overseen and signed onto a massive left-liberal project in Minnesota. Melissa Hortman is the State House Speaker who has used her position to push through progressive policy and get support for it from her entire caucus. But to most people outside of the state, these names mean nothing. If they even know them at all, they probably only know the roles that they serve. At most, they know a few unflattering stories that have received national attention and nothing more. When you represent a state as forgettable as Minnesota, this tends to be the consequence of it.

However, even among a list of forgettable politicians, there is one that stands out even among those. A politician who hasn’t managed to break through even among a class of people who most Americans never think about. That politician is Tina Smith, the current junior U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

Even if you are a political junkie, you probably haven’t heard anything about her. Despite being in the U.S. Senate for over half a decade, she has not received a whole lot of real coverage or interest. I don’t blame people for this, because when analyzing her biggest highlights in national politics, they always tend to be overshadowed by someone else. Her role as U.S. Senator from Minnesota is overshadowed by her more popular senior colleague Amy Klobuchar. Her role as a statewide officeholder in Minnesota broadly is also overshadowed by Tim Walz and Keith Ellison. Even her own 2018 swearing-in was overshadowed by Doug Jones, the Democrat who managed to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama just a few weeks prior. In most aspects of her career, there’s always someone else taking more of the spotlight, with Tina Smith always sitting quietly on the sidelines of the show people are watching.

This is deeply unfortunate because when you take a look at her career and positions, she is significantly more than just another Democratic Senate caucus member. While her career isn’t perfect, she stands out as one of the best in the Democratic Senate caucus right now. While she doesn’t have the same electoral prowess as many of her co-partisans, she makes up for it by being a consistent ally for important progressive causes while also maintaining a degree of influence within her party. Alongside others like Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, she holds an important spot within the party as someone who has made real strides to take the progressive wing seriously. In doing so, much like other great politicians in Minnesota’s past, she has helped move the Democratic Party closer to a position of a forward-looking, progressive party that isn’t afraid to make real, transformative change in this country.

While some people have begun to take notice of her strong record in recent months in light of some very funny tweets she has made, it still isn’t anywhere near where I think it should be. A record that she has should earn her a lot more interest and stardom, but as of now, it’s just not there yet.

That’s where this piece comes in. While I am under no illusions about my small level of political influence, I would still like to use that minimal amount to spread the word about a politician who deserves quite a lot more attention from us on the left. In achieving that goal, I will go over her statewide political career thus far, from her work as Lieutenant Governor to her ongoing tenure as a U.S. Senator. By the end, you should hopefully come away with the same conclusion I was able to arrive at: she is truly underrated. With that all being said, let’s start at the beginning.

The Creation of the Velvet Hammer

Before we get to the launch point of Tina Smith’s statewide political career, we first need to set the stage for how she was allowed to rise to the role of Lieutenant Governor in the first place.

First moving to Minneapolis in 1984, the long-time Democrat quickly developed an interest in political activism and campaign work. Throughout the 1990s, she would quickly find herself rising in the ranks of DFL political consultants, with her working on virtually any campaign she could during this period. Eventually, all of this work landed her a favorable connection to one of the most famous DFL political dynasties: the Mondale family. This valuable alliance got her a spot as the campaign manager of both Ted Mondale’s 1998 gubernatorial campaign and Walter Mondale’s sudden 2002 Senate campaign.

While neither of these efforts would prove to be successful, it did give Tina Smith a considerable amount of goodwill within the DFL, ultimately landing her a spot as the Vice President of the Minnesota Planned Parenthood branch. Her campaign work would prove to benefit her significantly in this role, successfully managing to develop real experience in regard to messaging and rhetoric, a very strong asset to have for any political figure.

This was observed by the then-Mayor of Minneapolis R.T. Rybak, who would appoint her as his new Chief of Staff in 2006, bringing her a government job for the first time in her career. This is where her nickname, “the Velvet Hammer” would be born. A name given to her by the mayor himself, it represented her ability to negotiate clear solutions in the face of a significant divide, while also seemingly not causing any rancor. While she was certainly a notable force in the party before, this is where her strength behind the scenes would be truly established. After this, she would go on to manage one more campaign, the 2010 gubernatorial campaign of Rybak himself. While his effort would go on to fail, her work as Rybak’s Chief of Staff was simply too good for many in the DFL to ignore.

One of these people was former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, the nominee for governor who had just managed to defeat his primary opponent by a slim margin and was now thrown into an extremely tough general election race. In this kind of setting, Dayton was looking for any help he could get, and Tina Smith very quickly emerged as someone who would be a strong asset to him. After the two hit off extremely well in a meeting together, Dayton would add Smith to his campaign team, making her one of the highest-ranking members of it in the process. This proved to be excellent timing for Smith, as, despite the massive red wave that was sweeping the country in 2010, Dayton would manage to flip the governorship from red to blue, making it one of the very few gains Democrats made anywhere in the country that year.

Thanks to her work, Dayton would immediately appoint her as his new Chief of Staff upon taking office. Just like her prior stint as Rybak’s Chief of Staff, her time as Dayton’s Chief of Staff would be a remarkable success, allowing her to surpass practically everyone in Dayton’s inner circle of influence. Whenever a quarrel had to be settled, Smith was often the first person Dayton would delegate the responsibility to. Whether it be disputes with corporations or members of the legislature, Smith was almost always in the center of it, being able to solve whatever problem was occurring with relative ease. Simply put, she was an incredible asset to Dayton, and in return for her work, he would offer her a promotion, asking her to become his Lieutenant Governor ahead of his 2014 re-election campaign.

While this upgrade was initially seen as weak, even by Smith herself, she would manage to turn this mediocre promotion into a massive boost to her political career. She would fundamentally reshape the role of the office she was taking up, and in the process, turn the job into a political spring to jump into a career of her own. But how exactly did that happen?

Mondale-Smith Thought

First, it’s important to establish this fact: prior to Smith taking office, the job of Lieutenant Governor was a pretty lame one. While the role could be useful in establishing a strong political image heading into a tough election, the actual role it played in the everyday function of governing was minimal at best. Those who were picked for this job usually represented a part of the state that the main candidate had difficulty appealing to, meaning that it was almost always someone who already held elected office. Whether it be important governors like Orville Freeman or Rudy Perpich, or unimportant ones like C. Elmer Anderson or Al Quie, the lieutenant governor’s role was almost always the same, boring, politically motivated position.

For his first term, Dayton had kept up with this long-standing tradition. In an effort to appeal to parts of Minnesota outside of his home in Minneapolis, he would select State Senator Yvonne Prettner Solon to be his running mate. She had represented the traditionally Democratic Iron Range, a part of the state that would be key to any Democratic primary victory. This political play would be very successful, with the Dayton-Solon ticket going on to win both the primary and general elections. But at the end of the day, that was all Solon was really good for, as throughout Dayton’s first term, the two hardly ever even had a relationship at all. Her role was extremely low profile, even when compared to other low-profile Minnesota Lieutenant Governors. While most in this role were fine with this, Solon would find it disappointing, eventually resulting in her announcing that she would step down as Lieutenant Governor after the 2014 elections.

This left Dayton with a new question heading into his 2014 campaign, who would be his new lieutenant governor? If he wanted to, he could have continued on with the tradition of picking a politically safe option, something he’d be justified in doing as a Democrat running in an Obama-era midterm. But as Tina Smith proved to be an incredibly valuable member of his team, he would instead buck orthodoxy, deciding to offer her the spot as his running mate.

On top of seeing it as a weak promotion, it also deeply confused Tina Smith. After all, a key factor when picking a lieutenant governor is having someone with a clear record of electoral success. Why would he want someone who had no electoral history? At first, it seemed like a considerable risk, and one that she was initially hesitant to accept.

But as she thought more about it, the more she was able to connect the dots. While picking her could have proven to be somewhat risky, the chance of it being fatal, even if it did go poorly, was far lower than four years prior. Compared to his near-fatal 2010 standing, Dayton was in a far stronger position to win his election in 2014. He was the incumbent, had consistently positive approval ratings, and was not on track to face any particularly threatening Republican challengers. While her being picked could have prevented Dayton from gaining a point or two, the sacrifice was ultimately worth it if it meant that she got to stay in the Dayton administration, this time with the benefit of having a far more public image.

But she still wasn’t quite on board yet. After all, it was only the Lieutenant Governorship, an underwhelming figurehead role that did little to inspire any real confidence. While it could give her a public image to an extent she had never had before, it could come at the expense of her work behind the scenes. This was brand new territory for her, and in trying to seek advice on how to move forward, she would look to her long-time political mentor Walter Mondale on what to do.

For those who are not aware, Walter Mondale was the man who shaped the office of the Vice Presidency into the way we think about and look at it today. Just like the role of Minnesota Lieutenant Governor, the role of the Vice Presidency pre-Mondale was little more than a political figurehead, serving as little more than a campaign political calculation. But when the Carter-Mondale ticket won in 1976, Mondale sought to change this, making it very clear to the president-elect that he wanted to serve as a top advisor and be in the know about whatever was happening. While past Vice Presidents were sometimes entirely disconnected from what their boss was doing, Carter and Mondale would have a full relationship, keeping up a near 24/7 level of contact with each other. While this departure from the norm was massive, it would catch on, serving as the model for the Vice Presidency to this very day.

The former Vice President, well aware of Smith’s negotiating skills, sought to bring her on board with this line of thinking. Using his own experience as Vice President as an example, he would argue that in order for her to be both a good politician and legislator, she needed to make clear to Dayton that she wanted to be in a clear position of influence within the administration. This was a line of reasoning that Smith would quickly jump on board with. Not only did it give her the full confidence she needed to accept the job, but in accepting Mondale’s line of reasoning, she would also be in a position to reshape the Lieutenant Governorship in a way no other person had done before.

For the first time, she would be on the ballot as a politician. Fortunately for her, this election wasn’t shaping up to be that difficult of a fight. While the first Dayton campaign was an ultra-competitive horserace, the second campaign was far more pre-determined, with Dayton leading in every poll throughout the campaign, often by double digits. While his final margin wasn’t quite that large, he was still ultimately re-elected by a very solid 5.6-point margin, even as Democratic efforts throughout the rest of the country were going down in flames in the face of yet another red wave. Thanks to this victory, Tina Smith was now the official statewide number two, and for the first time, she was holding a clearly visible public role in the state of Minnesota.

As Lieutenant Governor, she would continue her work, now with the benefit of having cameras and reporters to watch her wherever she goes. Her once invisible Velvet Hammer was now on full display, and people were finally taking notice of her strengths as a legislative worker and negotiator. In contrast with her low-profile predecessor, Smith would appear practically everywhere with the governor, even appearing right alongside him in negotiations with the Republican State Legislature, something that almost never occurred prior.

Not only did this succeed in building her own profile, but it also helped make it a popular one. Dayton had always been a popular governor, it’s why he managed to win in 2014 despite a red wave hitting the country. But his second term would see his popularity peak, hitting a high of 62% in the spring of 2017. Smith, who had aligned herself closely with him in her capacity as Lieutenant Governor, would see much of this popularity trickle down to her as well. This newfound strength led some to call for her to run for Governor in 2018, as Dayton had announced prior to this that he was planning on retiring. If she wanted to take it, she likely could have emerged out of it as a clear frontrunner to take the job, as not only would she have a strong shot of winning the primary, but the general election too.

However, much to the shock of many in the press and the party, she announced that she was not going to be running. This meant that once Dayton’s term was over, unless someone else was going to pick her for Lieutenant Governor, this would have been the end of her political career. It would have been a pretty disappointing end, as it was pretty clear that she was quickly becoming a rising star within the DFL. Was she just waiting for when the time was right to make a run for statewide office in her own right? Or was she really just done with the government, satisfied with her achievements?

It wouldn’t actually take that long to figure out the answer to this question. While some thought it may take years to figure this out, it would actually only take a few months. The once seemingly dead-political career of Tina Smith would see its engine kicked right back into operation. But it wasn’t because Dayton decided to retire early, as some had anticipated in light of his recent health woes. It was for something practically no one had anticipated.

How The Velvet Hammer Took the Wellstone Mantle

After the presidential election of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, there were an endless amount of candidates floated as potential options to go up against him in the 2020 election. The bench was absolutely massive, filled with names from all different sections and wings of the party. There were moderate figures listed like Joe Biden and Tim Kaine. There were progressive figures listed like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. There were even some potential rising stars listed, like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. When looking at any 2020 election speculation article, there was always a massive variety of candidates listed, each appealing to their own lanes in one way or another.

However, there were occasionally some very interesting ones thrown in there too. One that may not have necessarily associated with any particular camp, but still had a very clear appeal that could have stood as something fascinating in a race against someone as bombastic as Donald Trump. And of all of these choices, Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken was the one who stood out the most.

First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008 by a shockingly small margin of 312 votes, Al Franken had established a unique political brand for himself unlike anything seen elsewhere in the country. A comedian and progressive, he stood out as among the most charismatic Senators in the entire country, giving him a clear fanbase within the party. He would also prove to be a solid legislator in his own right, giving him positive marks from those in the more moderate camp of voters who could have been turned off by his partisan comedy. This made him a very formidable electoral force, as was proven in his 2014 re-election, where he would defeat his Republican opponent by over double digits. While a red wave was occurring throughout the rest of the country, Al Franken would be untouched, outperforming the partisan baseline by 12 points, an incredibly solid overperformance. That kind of electoral record and personality, especially in the face of someone like Trump, made Franken a real consideration by many, and it’s very possible that he could have been an incredibly strong candidate in 2020.

However, this status within the Democratic Party would soon come to an abrupt end. In late 2017, amid the rise of the #MeToo movement, allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Franken. What was once just one woman coming out soon turned into several others coming out too, all describing their own experiences with inappropriate behavior by Franken. Upon this revelation being dropped, several Democratic Senators had called on him to resign. This eventually reached Democratic U.S. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, who would be the one to get Franken to resign his seat under threat of committee assignments being removed. Suddenly, there was going to be an open Senate seat.

This suddenly left the retiring Governor Dayton with a new task on his hands: who to pick as the replacement. Those on the more progressive wing of the party rallied for Keith Ellison, the then Minneapolis-based U.S. Congressman who had long been an ally of their causes ever since he became a politician. Those on the more moderate wing generally got behind Tim Walz, the then U.S. Congressman based out of Southern Minnesota, a part of the state that was trending rightward after Trump won the district in 2016.

To Dayton however, the choice was obvious from the start. Likely not wanting to see her political career go to waste, he had decided incredibly early on that he was going to appoint Tina Smith to this position. While this likely wasn’t the pick that everyone necessarily begged for, it was clearly the most obvious choice for the job. She had just spent the last few years proving that she could be an incredibly effective negotiator and legislator. It only made sense that he would send her to the political body that deals with that exact kind of policymaking.

While Tina Smith wasn’t really looking all that hard for a role in national politics, she would happily take it on when presented with the opportunity. After all, what exactly was the harm? She had the ability to work on behalf of the entire state, something that as a former organizer, is impossible to pass up. It helped even more that the Senate seat she was taking was once held by Paul Wellstone, someone else who rose through the ranks of the DFL through his progressive organizing and negotiating skills. It was a good fit, and at the start of 2018, she would officially be sworn into office as the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

The Back-to-Back Tina Smith Campaign Operation

Upon being sworn into the U.S. Senate, you would think that this would be the time for Tina Smith to truly establish herself within the ranks of the chamber. In theory, this would be the time when she builds an understanding of how policy-making gets done in Washington and establishes connections with other U.S. Senators. But thanks to the nature of how she got her new role, she wouldn’t really have an opportunity to do this for a while.

While she did still manage to find time to learn the basics of her role, her first three years as a U.S. Senator would be spent having to deal with running campaigns and all the time-consuming activities that come with that. She just didn’t have the ability to distinguish herself during this time, something that did serious damage to her visibility during her first few years as a U.S. Senator. In essence, she just served as another party-line vote, and with the White House being controlled by Donald Trump, any real opportunity she may have had to influence policy in her own way on the national level just didn’t exist yet.

But in regards to running campaigns, the one thing she was able to do in full capacity, she would end up doing a pretty good job. Her first election came just ten months after she was officially sworn in, the special election to fill the rest of Franken’s term. While just the blue wave alone would have probably been more than enough to carry her in retrospect, in light of strong Republican results in the state in 2016, Smith would not take this race for granted. Using her past skills as a progressive organizer, she would significantly outraise her Republican opponent, taking full advantage of the grassroots edge that Democrats had going into 2018. This proved to be the decisive factor in the election, which saw Tina Smith ride the blue wave with ease, defeating her Republican opponent Karin Housley by around 10 and a half points. For her first-ever statewide campaign, this was a pretty solid start.

While she would have a few months to cool off from the campaign season, she would quickly have to re-enter the arena, this time running to win a full term of her own in 2020. This election would prove to be much more of a test of her campaign strength. While her victory in 2018 was solid, it also occurred in the context of her party seeing massive success throughout the rest of the country. While she never went below the blue wave, she didn’t rise above it either. And with Trump developing an obsession with the state after his near-upset victory in the state four years prior, that meant that this Senate contest was going to be hotly contested.

Just like in 2018, Smith would use her experience as an organizer to full effect, once again taking full advantage of the edge that Democrats had in grassroots fundraising. This time, however, Republicans would also develop their own war chest, with Trump and the Republicans making a significantly larger effort in the state than they ever did in 2018. On top of this, Republicans had made a real effort to push the two pro-marijuana legalization third parties, a vote-splitting tactic that would primarily come at the expense of Smith. While she was certainly still the favorite, this election was shaping up to be a decent amount closer than her relatively easy 2018 win.

When all was said and done, the result would be somewhat difficult to interpret. At face value, it was a somewhat disappointing result for Smith. While Biden would carry Minnesota by a 7.1-point margin, Smith would win re-election to her seat by a margin of 5.2 points, underperforming the top of the ticket by just under two points. While this certainly wasn’t a catastrophic showing by any means, it would represent an underwhelming result, one that doesn’t exactly present something of a unique political brand.

When you look a bit deeper though, analyzing her performance becomes a bit more difficult to do. As evidenced by the final result, the Republican effort to push vote-splitting third parties proved to be somewhat successful, with the two parties combined earning 7.7% of the vote. While it didn’t result in them winning the race, it did likely take a significant chunk out of Smith’s final total, suggesting that perhaps if the parties didn’t exist, she could have done quite a bit better in regards to the final margin. While one could see this as proof that she is quite a bit stronger than her margin shows, one could also see it as a failure to convince third-party voters to come to your side, a sign of political weakness that partially explains her slight underperformance in the final margin.

Regardless of how you view her strength as a candidate on the ballot, however, one thing was clear: she was finally out of campaign hell. For at least four more years, she would be able to establish her role in the U.S. Senate without having to worry about the looming campaign that was just months away. At least for now, she was finally free. Even better, a Democrat would finally be in the White House, meaning that she could have finally had real influence on the policies of the country.

This newfound influence is where, for the first time, Tina Smith would truly stand out among the pack.

“Tina, I didn’t know you talked like that”

Prior to the Biden administration, Tina Smith was not in a position to flex her more progressive positions nationally. As she was always stuck in campaign mode, she would play up an image of herself as a bipartisan, consensus-focused moderate who was willing to work with both parties to get things done. For the DFL, this was absolutely nothing new, this has been their campaign playbook for decades now. But in the case of Smith, it did have the unfortunate side effect of seeing her more progressive positions sidelined. But with her no longer in campaign mode, she could finally be in a position to act in a progressive manner, mixed with a bit of pragmatism and occasional profanity. This period of her career is where she truly began to shine bright, even if not many others noticed it.

After the Democratic trifecta was sworn in, Smith immediately got to work on the issue of climate change, something that had been a focal point of both her 2018 and 2020 campaigns. She knew full well that it was not only important from a policy perspective but also in keeping progressives invested in any capacity with the party. However, she also knew that this was certainly not going to be an easy fight by any stretch of the imagination. While the Democrats did control a trifecta, that trifecta ran through the support of West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a man who represented a deeply Republican state that was heavily reliant on coal and other fossil fuels. Getting practically anything done on this issue was going to have to require him jumping on board. Not exactly the most ideal situation, to say the least.

Despite this, Smith would remain undeterred, making a very important point that if Democrats were going to hold power, they needed to actually do something with it if they wanted to win voters going forward. She would remain committed to the project throughout the entire trifecta, frequently keeping in contact with climate activists and advocacy groups. While she wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to grab the mic, she wasn’t afraid to be brash when things looked to be going south.

The most notable example of this was in July of 2022 when it appeared that Manchin was not going to be supporting any form of climate change combating measures in the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature reconciliation bill of Biden’s presidency. She immediately hit back, simply tweeting out “This is bullshit” in response to the news, and alongside fellow Democratic U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, declared that if there were no climate provisions in this bill, there was no deal.

While this initially seemed like a risky play, Smith and Heinrich would later prove their worth in doing this. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer played the role of the behind-the-scenes negotiator, the actions of the two senators would serve the purpose of holding Schumer and Manchin’s feet to the fire, making sure that the bill was still a meaningful step forward in regard to climate change. It’s worth noting that part of the reason this strategy ended up working out is that both of them were in the right position to pull this off. While they were both unapologetic in their support of this movement, they had also established connections within the U.S. Senate among their colleagues, with Manchin being among them. While the attitude was harsh, they had enough predetermined goodwill that it made Manchin feel real pressure to act on something he was otherwise uninterested in doing, something he made clear when he told her, “Tina, I didn’t know you talked like that”.

Once again, Smith had held her reputation as a Velvet Hammer: standing her ground in a firm way while not causing any bad blood with her fellow co-workers. Thanks to that, the Inflation Reduction Act would be among the most transformative pieces of legislation in regard to climate change in U.S. history. While it didn’t go far enough, the fact that anything was even able to get done with a 50-50 U.S. Senate that ran through a blue dog coal baron at all was a remarkable success story. This is the biggest achievement thus far during Smith’s U.S. Senate career, and the political skill she showed off during the fight makes her one of the most promising rising progressive members alone.

However, beyond just the issue of climate change, Smith has shown herself to be an unapologetic ally of other progressive causes too. In comparison with her far more cautious senior colleague Amy Klobuchar, Smith has been far more outspoken.

Going back to her roots as a Planned Parenthood leadership figure, she has been a passionate advocate of abortion rights far before the Dobbs decision ever came out. Months before the ruling ever came to pass, she was already declaring her support for eliminating the filibuster to protect Roe v. Wade, and even jumping on board with the idea of packing the U.S. Supreme Court, something most other Democratic U.S. Senators were highly reluctant to back. When the Dobbs decision did officially take effect in the summer of 2022, Smith would become a leader on the pro-choice side, both making it a clear campaign issue heading into the 2022 midterms and being on the forefront of the fight on the U.S. Senate floor as well. More so than many other politicians in the country, she understood the Dobbs effect and sought to make sure the DFL took full advantage of it in her state’s elections that year. And in case that wasn’t enough, the profanity would come back into play. Twice!

Look pretty much anywhere you want, and you’ll see Smith playing the progressive side of the debate confidently. Whether it be LGBTQ+ rights, fights over the debt ceiling last May, child care, single-payer healthcare, or even issues like the pardoning of Leonard Peltier, it’s hard to find an issue where she’s not truly solid. She would even come to the defense of John Fetterman in light of him revealing his struggle with depression, describing her own personal story with the issue and how it affected her, making her one of the rare politicians open about their experiences with mental health issues. When it comes to policy and rhetoric, there aren’t a lot of better members in the U.S. Senate you could really ask for.

You may think all of this would result in her having bad relations with those on the opposite of the aisle, but thanks to her political talent, she has managed to keep up pretty solid relations with the other side too. While she can’t appeal to everyone, she has openly positive of her colleagues on the other side of the table, including many in her home state’s delegation. One of these guys is Brad Finstad, the Republican U.S. Congressman representing Southern Minnesota. Together, Smith and Finstad have teamed up in recent weeks to address the local issues of farmers, introducing a bill that deals with many of the growing concerns in the local industry in the last few years. While her local politics is not quite as strong as the statewide icon that is Amy Klobuchar, it still represents an ability to be both solid on national progressive concerns while also serving the needs of local constituents at the same time.

All in all, when analyzing her U.S. Senate tenure, there’s very little to be critical of so far. When playing as a fierce advocate is the best move, she has done it with ease. When playing as a pragmatic negotiator is the best move, she has pulled it off with no issue. While she may not be the first one to take the spotlight in front of national reporters, she’s not afraid to fight when the time is needed. She is a highly skilled politician and one that Minnesota is very lucky to have.

Final Thoughts

As we have gone over her record, we have seen that Tina Smith has demonstrated an ability to not only be one of the best progressive advocates in the entire U.S. Senate but also be one of the best when it comes to the basics of politics.

Ever since she began her career in government, she has been an indispensable asset to any team that adds her, whether it be R.T. Rybak, Mark Dayton, or Planned Parenthood. Thankfully, at least when it comes to power within the party, this is something that has been observed by Senate Democrats. Ahead of 2024, the DSCC, the organization responsible for electing Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, has given Tina Smith the position of Vice Chair, as well as Chair of the DSCC’s Woman Senate Network, the part of the organization responsible for seeing Democratic women elected. While Democratic chances of holding the U.S. Senate in 2024 are very narrow thanks to a highly unfavorable map, I have a lot of faith that Tina Smith will do a good job in her new role, and I’m glad to see the Democratic caucus give her more responsibility for her efforts.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, however, she still remains largely unseen by much of the party and public. While some of her advocacy has caught the interest of the occasional article in recent months, there really isn’t a lot more than that. Now that you have read this piece in full, hopefully, you came to the same conclusion that I did: she’s a hidden gem of a politician. Just like Paul Wellstone decades before her, she has managed to maintain a status as a fantastic progressive organizer, a skilled legislator, and a tough but good-faith negotiator. While she may not be as willing to become a superstar within the party, she will happily take on a fight, no matter how tough it may seem, both transforming nationwide and statewide politics in the process.

In recent months, many have begun to look more into Minnesota in light of sweeping policy changes hitting the state after the DFL unexpectedly won a state trifecta in the 2022 midterms. It’s truly something to behold, and in light of other states going backward in time on major cultural issues, Minnesota is proving to be a sign of real hope. You certainly cannot credit one person alone for all of this, this has been the project in waiting for the DFL for years now.

But as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison points out, if there is one person who should get more credit than they currently do for all of this, it’s Tina Smith. These changes did not come by accident: they were the product of years of political activism and advocacy in demand for real, transformative legislation. And during this time, Tina Smith was one of the ones who laid down the foundation for what we saw in 2023. Using her connections to government and activists, she would help craft legislation and bills designed to pass the moment the DFL took power again, guaranteeing that no matter what happened, the next session would be game-changing.

While it takes a few years for them to get that kind of power again, it would prove to live up to the hype. A paid family and sick leave program was established. Minnesota became a refuge for trans people. Non-compete agreements were banned. Abortion rights were enshrined in the state constitution. Marijuana was legalized. School lunches were made free of cost for all public schools. The state made a commitment to carbon-free electricity production by 2040. Conversion therapy was outlawed. Red flag laws were established. Tax rebates up to $1,000 were provided to the middle class.

Quite frankly, I could really go on forever, but I think you get the point. It was absolutely massive, and the DFL deserves all of the praise it has gotten for this. But one thing is also clear: this is the product of Tina Smith’s life work. While some may be convinced to write her off as yet another pandering politician, this recent legislative session has proven that she is willing to do whatever it takes to make real progress. Far from being just another Democratic politician, her appeal and message are real, and I hope the left will begin to take a more serious look at her. She is an undeniable asset, and while she likely won’t take any run for higher office any time soon, she could serve as a truly powerful figure for progressive causes going forward.

She is “The Velvet Hammer”, after all.

However, the 1990 midterms, the only midterm to occur under his presidency, is not one of these notable things. Despite midterms typically resulting in the blowout of the president’s party, the opposition Democrats were not in a prime position to make major gains. Being out of power in the White House for ten years by that point, the party had already made many of its big gains in the 1982 and 1986 midterm elections, meaning that there wasn’t really a lot more ground they could cover in that regard. On top of this, the president himself was quite popular, with Gallup polls the day before the 1990 election giving him a solid 58% approval rating. Simply put, this just wasn’t going to be an especially big win for the Democrats. They were likely going to hold onto their already established power, but it wasn’t going to be a blue wave either.

And on election day 1990, that is exactly what happened. While they maintained their strong majorities in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, they would struggle to make any substantial gains, only having a net gain of seven in the House and a net gain of one in the Senate. While the Democrats were definitely happy that Bush’s high marks didn’t cause losses within their own ranks, they were still disappointed they weren’t able to make a bigger mark on this election. For that reason, the 1990 midterm elections often go under-discussed. There just aren’t a lot of notable things that happened here.

Well, with at least one exception.

Despite most other states having unremarkable status quo affairs, Minnesota would see itself do some of the most bizarre ticket splitting imaginable. In one corner, the state of Minnesota would be the only gain Democrats would make in the U.S. Senate, which saw Democratic candidate Paul Wellstone defeat the Republican incumbent Rudy Boschwitz. And in the other corner, Republicans would successfully flip the governorship from blue to red, with Republican Arne Carlson defeating the incumbent DFL governor Rudy Perpich.

Initially, it can be confusing as to why these facts are really all that bizarre. Plenty of other states in the 1990 election would also ticket split, from states as big as Texas to as small as Wyoming. Ticket splitting was pretty normal thirty years ago, as the impacts of political polarization were far weaker in the 1990s than they are today. While a Democrat winning Wyoming in any capacity in 2023 would cause a national media explosion, back in 1990, it was just yet another race on the map. So, what made Minnesota any different?

Well, when you take a closer look, it’s immediately clear as to why this election is one of the more interesting ones in Minnesota’s long history. This is because none of what ended up happening on Election Day 1990 was ever supposed to happen. In no world was a Carlton College professor supposed to take down an established Republican incumbent. In no world was Arne Carlson ever supposed to be the nominee to take down the defining symbol of the rural DFL. And most importantly, in no world were these two elections ever supposed to happen together.

So in this article, I want to go over this truly odd result and how it happened. And to do that, let’s start at the beginning.

How the Incumbents Came To Be

Before we get into the challengers in this election, let’s set the stage as to who the incumbents are in this equation, as both of their profiles will be key to understanding how the 1990 results ultimately came to be. In order to do that, we need to establish the political environment that allowed these incumbents to rise to their positions.

Ever since the DFL was created in a 1944 merger, the party had been the dominating force in statewide politics. Whether it be the U.S. Senate and House seats, the statewide offices, or the state legislature, the DFL was consistently beating out the Republicans time and time again in these battles for control. While they would occasionally lose an office or two, their overall dominant position in the state was never questioned.

This dominant position was thanks to many factors, but one of them was undoubtedly due to the leadership figures in the party. Whether it be Hubert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, or Walter Mondale, all of these men played a part in making the DFL the powerhouse it was on both the statewide and national levels. They were incredibly talented politicians who knew how to get results, and their prominence in the state was one of the reasons why the DFL dominated for so long.

However, the influence these leaders would yield over the state would soon come to an end. Orville Freeman, the Secretary of Agriculture under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, would see his political career come to an end in 1969 when Richard Nixon was sworn into office. Hubert Humphrey, one of the men responsible for the creation of the DFL, would sadly pass away in early 1978. Finally, while Walter Mondale was elected the Vice President to Jimmy Carter, his president’s administration grew to be incredibly unpopular, practically destroying Mondale’s ability to have influence over statewide politics. In just the span of a few years, the DFL had lost many of its best and most effective leaders, and only time would tell when that would catch up to them.

While this was all happening, the DFL had embroiled itself in a number of other controversies as well. The most notable one was how they chose to deal with Mondale’s open U.S. Senate seat after he resigned to become Vice President. Rather than leave the job of Senator up to someone else, the incumbent DFL governor Wendell Anderson decided to make a deal with his lieutenant governor Rudy Perpich, where he would resign as governor, and in return, Perpich would make him the new U.S. Senator. This move was incredibly controversial. It made him look like a ladder climber, someone who was just trying to follow in the footsteps of the famous Mondale. It looked desperate, and voters responded to both Anderson and Perpich very negatively.

This is where the 1978 elections come in. For most states, this was a disappointing, albeit not absolutely devastating year for Democrats. While the Democrats would lose considerable influence, it wasn’t usually enough to knock them out of power entirely. In most states, they maintained whatever influence they held previously, as the truly bad times to come wouldn’t occur until two years later.

But there were some states where the Democrats got absolutely annihilated too. Minnesota was one of them.

The 1978 elections are infamous in the history of the DFL for just how utterly disastrous they were. After decades of being the dominant party, it had looked like the empire completely came apart in one night. In the three most important statewide races, the DFL would completely strike out in all of them, losing both the U.S. Senate seats and the governorship to Republicans.

This election, later dubbed “The Minnesota Massacre”, would be where our first 1990 incumbent would be politically established. That incumbent is Rudy Boschwitz, a Plymouth businessman who managed to rise to the GOP plate and defeat Anderson by a solid 16-point margin, the second-largest victory of any Republican in the state that year. He would do this by campaigning as a liberal Republican, appealing directly to liberal DFLers who were dissatisfied with their party’s many woes but also didn’t want to vote for conservative Republicans. It was a brilliant strategy, and it helped him win over practically every county in the state at the same time.

Upon entering office, however, he would not act as the liberal Republican that he campaigned on. While he was by no means the most conservative Senator in the chamber, he was also no liberal either, making himself an ally of the Reagan administration very early on and was practically in lockstep with his party whenever it needed him. Essentially, he was just another Republican Senator, and the liberals who voted for him were pretty annoyed. To everyone else though, it didn’t really strike them as that big of a deal, as in every other respect, Boschwitz was decent enough at being a Senator. This worked out well for Boschwitz in his 1984 campaign, where he would solidly win re-election by 17 points despite Minnesota being the only state to not vote for Ronald Reagan in the concurrent presidential election. The senior Senator had successfully established himself as a potent force in Minnesota politics, and only time would tell when they could take him out.

While Boschwitz was serving out his Senate term, his state’s politics would begin to shift from the GOP blowout of 1978. Unlike Boschwitz, the GOP candidate who won the governorship in 1978 would not prove to have the same level of political competence. That man was Al Quie, and his governorship would prove to be something of a downward spiral from the GOP peak.

After grappling with various budget issues over his tenure, the governor suffered from consistently low approval ratings throughout his tenure. It would only slip further and further as his governorship went on, eventually resulting in him not running for re-election in 1982. Despite not running for re-election, his poor performance as governor would spark the rise of our next 1990 incumbent. In this case, it was someone most in the state had already written off four years earlier. But in this new political climate, Minnesota had seen him in a way they never had before. It was the lieutenant governor who gave Anderson the U.S. Senate seat just four years prior. Yes, that’s right, it’s former DFL governor Rudy Perpich.

While he was technically the governor of the state before, his political brand would not be properly established until he won a full term of his own in 1982. That political brand was a truly odd one, to say the least. Dubbed “Governor Goofy” by many of his critics, Perpich was known by many in the state for some of his truly bizarre proposals to fix the state’s problems. Whether it be donating a good chunk of his money to the sport of bocce, his strange insistence on building a chopstick factory in the northern part of the state, or even selling the governor’s mansion itself, there was no shortage of unconventional ideas to come out of his mouth.

Despite his goofy reputation, however, Perpich did still have a political brand in the state that extended beyond his critic’s image. Born in the Northern Iron Range, Perpich had always seen himself as a symbol of what he called “Greater Minnesota”, the part of the state not consisting of the populous Twin Cities metro. This was everywhere in his political advocacy, where he would attach himself directly to his Iron Range roots and promise to be a governor for not just the metro, but for Greater Minnesota too.

In the face of dissatisfaction over Republican governance, Perpich would come out of it victorious, winning his 1982 comeback bid by just under 19 points, an incredibly solid performance that would put it as one of the better DFL performances that year. He would pull this off by putting up absolutely insane margins in the state’s rural communities, particularly the Iron Range, where he would put some of the best numbers ever seen for a DFL candidate in history. In winning over his way, he didn’t just win control of the governor’s mansion in St. Paul. He had also established his own unique coalition, and it worked to his benefit all throughout the 1980s.

As governor, Perpich would continue with his political project, bringing large investments into Minnesota in every corner. Perhaps most notable was his efforts to create the famous Mall of America in Bloomington, and inviting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for a state visit in 1990. Both of these events stand as the biggest symbols of his legacy today, and whenever he’s brought up in retrospect, those two things are likely going to be the first things mentioned. But he had several other projects beyond that, with the Greater Minnesota Corp in particular being a direct service to his rural base, making it easier for them to establish economic stability. While he certainly did not ignore the metro, his focus was very clearly on Greater Minnesota.

Throughout the 1980s, both Perpich and Boschwitz had become established politicians in the state. While both men were quite different from each other, they both shared the ability to get people to support and turn out for them. After both of them completed their first term, they would both win re-election solidly, giving them a clear mandate to serve out their second term.

For both of them, however, their re-elections would serve as their peak. After their big wins, both of them began to get cozier in their positions, not making nearly as much of an effort to appeal to a group beyond their already established base. After all, it didn’t look like they needed to. They had already won solidly twice. Surely they wouldn’t need to do more than that. They could just coast on their already established incumbency image to win their own full third terms, right?

The Challengers That Weren’t Supposed To Be

Despite the two men starting to become more complacent, it initially looked like neither of them would have to try all that hard to win a third term. While Perpich’s image as a goofy governor was fully established by this point, it didn’t look like many credible challengers were going to step up to the plate. The Republican candidate he was likely going to face off against, Jon Grunseth, was a relatively unknown businessman who didn’t have the ability to inspire any real opposition to Perpich. While many in the metro were growing tired of Perpich, Grunseth was simply too much of a party-line Republican for them. As such, Perpich’s path to re-election looked solid.

Boschwitz was also in a similar situation. He was a well-funded, well-established incumbent who developed a solid base of support in Minnesota in his own right, even managing to win over support from people who consistently voted for Perpich. While he was not invincible, the chance that Democrats would realistically be able to take him down was certainly still low. He was the incumbent, and in a midterm environment expected to be positive for the Republicans, that was likely going to be more than enough to carry him over the finish line. Just like Perpich, he was well on track to win re-election.

However, as 1990 progressed, this position of strength suddenly began to decline rapidly. Metro liberals and moderates, long frustrated with Perpich’s heavy focus on rural parts of the state, would mount a strong primary challenge to him in 1990, bringing him down to just 55% of the vote against his metro opponent Mike Hatch, a former ally of the governor who got 42% of the vote off the backs of the Twin Cities metro. This left the governor weakened badly in the metro, meaning that if the Republicans played their cards right, metro anger could end up bringing him down.

At the same time, Boschwitz was quickly beginning to look weaker and weaker. Confident of his re-election, he effectively put his campaign on autopilot, assuming that incumbency on its own would benefit him enough. He would continue to do this after his main opponent was officially nominated to be his main DFL challenger, assuming it would be yet another sacrificial lamb the DFL put up to say they had a challenger to him. Unfortunately for him, his new opponent was going to be nothing like his past two rivals. He was a real force, and he knew exactly where to hit the incumbent. That man was Paul Wellstone, a Carlton College professor and left-liberal activist from Northfield.

Initially, Paul Wellstone was a candidate absolutely no one took seriously. Not only was he going up against an established Republican incumbent, not only was he at a massive cash disadvantage, but he was also a self-described “proud liberal” during a time when the Democrats were running away from the word at record speed. In absolutely no world should he have ever been even remotely competitive. He should have lost to Boschwitz by double digits, just as every other challenger did, right?

Well, the difference between Wellstone and those past challengers is that Wellstone was an absolutely brilliant campaigner and strategist. Knowing full well that Boschwitz wasn’t taking him even remotely seriously, he sought to capitalize on that fully, playing right into Minnesotan’s growing frustrations that Boschwitz wasn’t taking his job seriously. Nowhere was this better shown off than in his most famous ad, where Wellstone would make a comedic video where he would try to get Boschwitz to debate him, but to no avail. It was an absolutely perfect ad. Not only was it funny, but it also portrayed Wellstone as a grassroots, anti-establishment fighter for all of Minnesota who was going up against an establishment politician who thought that votes should just be handed to him. For this political environment, it worked like a charm, and Wellstone very quickly began to gain on Boschwitz.

Suddenly, it looked like Perpich and Boschwitz may be in real trouble. Once thought to be solidly in the lead, they were now looking at the possibility that their races may be far more competitive than they thought. While they initially planned to be cozy, they quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. They had to at least try to win.

Unfortunately for both of the Rudy’s, even when they did that, just about everything would go wrong for them.

The Rise of the Metro Coalition

While Boschwitz was beginning to struggle more and more, it still looked like Perpich was in a strong position for re-election. Sure, he was damaged after his primary fight. But his Republican opponent Jon Grunseth was also not particularly threatening, failing to really establish a profile of his own, and was well on track to be another challenger that Perpich pushed aside. Even if metro voters weren’t thrilled with his excessive rural focus, most of them still weren’t willing to elect a conservative Republican in his place.

However, everything would completely change in October. While I won’t go into detail about Jon Grunseth’s sexual misconduct (you can read more about it here if you are interested), it was incredibly damming and disgusting, and it immediately prompted him to drop out of the race entirely on October 28th, leaving Perpich with no Republican opponent.

Suddenly, just a week before the election, a new dynamic had crashed its way into the scene: Who would be the Republican replacement? More conservative figures in the party wanted to nominate Cal Ludeman, the Republican nominee for governor against Perpich in 1986. More moderate figures wanted to nominate Arne Carlson, the State Treasurer who placed second in the 1990 GOP gubernatorial primary. This was a hot topic of debate and one that they would have to settle quickly.

This put Boschwitz in a difficult spot. Over the course of his campaign against Wellstone, he would make several different campaign fumbles, with the most notable one being when he tried to paint Paul Wellstone as a fake Jew. Statements like this would backfire harshly on Boschwitz, and it soon became clear that he was in serious danger of losing his race. He needed to do something quickly to turn this race around, and his endorsement for the new GOP gubernatorial nominee would have to play a role in doing that. So, what did he decide to do?

Rather than embrace his conservative base, he would go right into the arms of the moderate wing, giving a full endorsement to Arne Carlson. This proved to be the endorsement that put Carlson over the edge, officially making him the new challenger to Perpich. Just like in 1978, Boschwitz was making a play for moderate voters who may have been turned off by the DFL in recent years and could have potentially been turned off by Wellstone’s liberalism.

Unfortunately for him, this political play didn’t work at all. Moderate DFLers, who had previously been more receptive to voting for him in 1978, knew exactly who he was now. He was not going to be suddenly turned into a liberal Republican who led by consensus. He was going to remain a down-the-line party Republican who didn’t really care enough to talk to his own constituents. While Wellstone may have been a staunch liberal, he was a liberal willing to listen and talk to them about their concerns. He was a new, fresh option in the face of a boring incumbent who didn’t look like he cared. Ultimately, all this move did was anger conservative Republicans who wanted Boschwitz to take a harder stand for Ludeman. In an effort to win over new voters, he completely failed, and in the process, made turnout among his core base weaker than it otherwise could have been.

As all of this was happening, Rudy Perpich had also just suddenly been thrown into a race where he was at a considerable disadvantage. Just like Paul Wellstone, Arne Carlson knew exactly where to hit Perpich where it hurt. In this case, he would attack him for not caring enough about the Twin Cities metro, positioning himself as the liberal Republican candidate of the disaffected moderate metro voter. For Carlson, it worked like a charm. These voters, previously willing to give Perpich a pass in the face of more conservative opposition, were quickly ditching the long-time incumbent in the face of a liberal Republican. While Perpich still had a rural, ancestral DFL base, that was quickly becoming the only thing he had. Simply put, he needed at least some metro support to win, and he wasn’t getting it.

As Election Day came, both Boschwitz and Perpich had been reduced from their positions as strong favorites to straight-up underdogs. Once truly established incumbents, the two men of separate parties were now on track to lose to insurgent opposition. It was a truly shocking turnaround, and there was almost nothing like it anywhere else in the country.

The Ultimate Ticket Split

Despite being from different parties, both Paul Wellstone and Arne Carlson would ultimately prevail from the same coalition of people: disaffected Twin Cities metro voters.

On the one hand, these metro voters were not satisfied with Boschwitz. Feeling ignored by him and not willing to fall for his liberal Republican schtick again, they would fall right in line with Paul Wellstone, the perfect candidate to point out Boschwitz's many failings. On the other hand, Perpich’s lack of focus on the cities had finally caught up to him, as frustrated metro voters went strongly behind Arne Carlson, a man who represented himself as one of their own in a struggle to be seen by the state government again.

What ultimately came of this was a truly bizarre split coalition. Rural areas, who were highly skeptical of Wellstone’s liberalism and receptive to Perpich’s support of the region, saw themselves ticket split for Boschwitz and Perpich, both of whom put up solid margins of their own in these rural counties. Meanwhile, urban areas, who had felt ignored by Perpich and Boschwitz at once, also saw themselves ticket split, this time for Wellstone and Carlson. Ultimately, that metro coalition would be the one that prevailed, and with it, Minnesota had just experienced something of a major shakeup in representation.

Out was Perpich and Boschwitz, and in was Carlson and Wellstone.

Conclusion

There are many things one can take away from this piece. One could see that this could have been an inflection point in the history of the DFL, with the party beginning to focus on the urban and suburban communities of Minnesota, as that’s where they saw the future. Another could see this piece as an example of why you need to try in elections and never assume people are just gonna vote for you by default. Finally, one could see this as a success story for both Paul Wellstone and Arne Carlson, both of whom managed to strike at how the people were feeling at a perfect time.

Ultimately though, I think the fact that there are so many messages you can take away from this result is what makes it truly interesting. It’s an absolutely fascinating time in Minnesota when a group of disaffected voters in the Twin Cities metro decided they were tired of their politicians taking too much focus away from them. In doing so, they elected both a progressive liberal DFLer and a moderate pro-business Republican. It’s a truly confusing result at first, but upon further analysis, it’s fairly easy to connect the dots.

That’s what makes the 1990 Minnesota ticket split so interesting to me: it’s one of the strangest cases of it, but it’s also easy to understand. That’s not something you see all that often.

That isn’t to say, however, that there is absolutely nothing to cover. Special elections, which have been occurring all throughout this year, have shown themselves to have an incredibly strong Democratic lean, sparking debates on whether or not this could potentially pertain to 2024 results. Similarly strong results have been shown for Democrats in off-year statewide elections as well, such as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, or the Ohio Issue 1 vote in August, both of which showed potentially promising signs for the Democrats in 2024. And while the 1st place winner of the GOP primary has essentially already been decided, it’s still interesting to watch the battle for 2nd place, as it could have a significant influence on who Trump will choose to be his VP nominee.

However, the most interesting contests to me personally are the ones that not many would expect to be interesting at face value. This is because these states should not be remotely competitive at any level. They are all deeply Republican states in the South that have not voted for any Democrat on the presidential level since the 1990s. However, thanks to unique circumstances, all of these states have at least something interesting to analyze. These contests are the gubernatorial races in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

Whether it be current leadership, past performances, or analysis of crossover appeal, all of these otherwise uninteresting states have something interesting about them this year. I want to make something clear: It’s truly shocking this is happening at all in the year 2023. In theory, polarization should have caught up to all of these states a long time ago, especially since all of them are racially polarized states in the South. But they are, and that fact alone is intriguing enough to me.

So, in this article, I wanna go over why each of these states’ gubernatorial contests is interesting, and at the end, give a rating for how competitive the state is currently looking as of now. To be clear, all of these are subject to change depending on what happens between now and November 7th, 2023. This is simply an analysis of the way things are heading right now.

Louisiana: The Pelican State

Before we move on to the truly interesting contests, let’s get the most boring contest out of the way first. That contest is Louisiana, and out of all the states in the running this cycle, it’s by far the most likely to vote the way it usually does on a national level.

This election is the only gubernatorial race that is going to be an open contest, since the sitting Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, is term-limited. This is something that is making the Democrats deeply bitter, as he is very likely the only man who would even be remotely capable of winning this deep red state.

First elected in 2015 against a scandal-plagued opponent, Edwards has been extraordinarily skilled at keeping his profile alive amid a highly polarized Trump-era political world. Despite leading a state that voted for Trump by almost 20 points, he maintained a consistently positive approval rating and even managed to win re-election in 2019 despite being targeted directly by the president himself, and despite running alongside other Republicans who won big in the other statewide races on the ballot that year. This positive approval rating carries over to today, where he is consistently been able to remain above water despite his party’s president Joe Biden being deeply unpopular in the state. If he were able to run, he would be an incredibly strong contender for re-election, and Republicans could have been shut out of the governor’s office in Baton Rouge for another four years.

But he can’t run, so this is almost certainly a Republican flip in the fall. There is simply no Democrat running in the race right now that can replicate Edwards’ strong appeal. The most likely nominee for the Democrats, former State Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, is a competent enough candidate in his own right, but it just won’t be enough. Polling has already indicated that while he would make it to the second round after the jungle primary in October, he would likely lose badly to Jeff Landry, the sitting Attorney General and likely Republican nominee for Governor. While Landry is not completely free of his own issues, he is running in an open contest as a Republican in Louisiana. Unless something goes horribly wrong, he shouldn’t have any difficulty winning this race.

It’s a shame because while Louisiana has been happy to elect Edwards for the last two cycles, they seem keen to elect by far his biggest foe in Jeff Landry. But that’s just how red Louisiana is, and unless something drastically changes in the next two months, this race should be an easy Republican pickup.

Louisiana Rating: Solid Republican.

Mississippi: The Magnolia State

Of the three contests discussed in this article, this one is perhaps the most shocking to me. Louisiana being uncompetitive as a result of an open contest makes total sense. Kentucky having a Democratic governor at all is shocking, but Democrats being favored in a state with an incumbent and a ton of ancestral Democrats also makes a good amount of sense.

However, this one is truly something else. In absolutely no world should Mississippi be competitive in any way. On top of being deeply Republican, it is perhaps the most racially polarized state in the country, meaning that despite having the largest percentage of African Americans of any state in the U.S., it still votes strongly Republican due to near-unanimous support from white Mississippians. For every reason imaginable, in a normal year, this should be off the table for any potential Democratic victory. However, thanks to various different circumstances, Mississippi has the chance, while small, to produce something genuinely interesting and notable.

The main reason for this is clear: the sitting Republican Governor Tate Reeves doesn’t want to quit.

Ever since he entered politics, he has been one of the most incompetent and truly repulsive politicians in the entire country. Reading up on his record as a politician will only serve to make you sick to your stomach. Whether it be his complicity in a welfare fraud scheme, his disgusting neglect of the water crisis in Jackson, his refusal to accept free Medicaid expansion money, or using his office to give his cronies power over law enforcement in Jackson (and only Jackson), there is simply so much to attack him on. Mississippians seem to agree, and his approval ratings in the state have been consistently poor, with most people agreeing that a new governor would be ideal.

Democrats, disgusted by Reeves’ actions and undoubtedly aware of his mediocre standing, are not planning on making it easy for him to win a second term. This mindset led them to nominate someone who is perhaps the most interesting candidate running this year, especially on the Democratic side. That man is Northern Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, a conservative Democrat and second cousin of the King of Rock and Roll.

First elected to his position in 2007, Presley serves as one of the last symbols of the traditional, blue-dog Democratic Party that used to defy political gravity in the Deep South after the national party lost its grip over southern whites. As those kinds of Democrats began to be wiped out throughout the 2010s, he stood as one of the last ones who held firm, winning re-election by 21 points in 2015 despite Republicans winning every other statewide office besides Attorney General. He would do this by keeping his races heavily localized, bringing up his effective service to the public, as well as occasionally highlighting some of his more conservative positions on issues like abortion and gun rights. It was a truly impressive record and one that stood to present something promising to Mississippi Democrats.

Fast forward to 2023, and you can see that the way he is campaigning is similar to how he ran as a public service commissioner. Despite Tate Reeves’ attempts to bring national issues into this race, Presley won’t budge, instead focusing on things like Mississippi hospital closures, the need to expand Medicaid, and putting anti-corruption at the forefront of his campaign. In that final effort, he has gone after Tate Reeves with incredible ferocity, something that has seemingly united Democrats strongly behind him, essentially all but declaring him their nominee far ahead of time. If you are a Democrat, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Presley. In terms of candidate quality, there aren’t a lot of better nominees the party could ask for.

So, what are the issues here? Why is such a highly qualified Democratic nominee still not favored to beat a controversial Republican incumbent?

Well, for one thing, polarization. The last time Presley was on the ballot against a Republican was almost eight years ago. Since then, the rise of Trump and his political brand has made appealing to a large chunk of voters on the other side quite a bit more difficult. This is especially true in the South, with locally elected Democratic politicians slowly losing more and more influence to Republicans every single year. They may still put up very solid last election overperformances, but the Republican lean in these areas is often just too strong to overcome.

This is where things get rather difficult for Presley. While his past wins are impressive, there really aren’t a lot of recent elections to judge him on electorally. His last election in 2019, and the only one that occurred post-Trump, was uncontested by Republicans entirely. Perhaps this is a sign that he does have some special appeal if Republicans couldn’t find anyone to run against him, but it does make it a lot harder to judge Presley’s strength in the post-Trump political era.

As for what we do have, it doesn’t paint an especially rosy picture for Democrats. While Reeves’ lead in the polls is unremarkable, it is similar to the leads he put up in his successful run for Governor in 2019. And given how similar Presley is to Jim Hood, the Democratic nominee running against Reeves in 2019, it seems quite likely that this race is currently going down that direction.

That being said, thanks to this race being between Reeves and Presley, this race could still be something of an upset. The chance is quite small, and given how polarized the state is, you should still expect Reeves to be re-elected in the fall. But this election will certainly be closer than it should be, and that is entirely because of the two men running.

Mississippi Rating: Likely Republican.

Kentucky: The Bluegrass State

Finally, we land in Kentucky, the only race out of these three where I would consider the Democrats the favorites to win. While this one is a bit less shocking than the potentially competitive result we may see out of Mississippi, this one is a bit less so, although it is certainly still surprising in its own right.

Even more so than Mississippi and Louisiana, Kentucky is a deeply Republican state. All of the statewide elected offices are held by Republicans. Both chambers of the legislature are controlled by Republican supermajorities. Donald Trump won this state twice, both times by over 25 points. And just last year, for the first time in history, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in voter registration, a milestone that more than anything, is deeply symbolic of the fall of the Democratic Party in the state they once dominated. No matter where you look, Republicans are the dominant party in the state by a mile.

Except for one place in Frankfort.

Despite being a deeply red state, the commonwealth of Kentucky still houses a Democratic governor at the mansion in Frankfort. That governor in question is Andy Beshear, the son of former governor Steve Beshear, and the only reason Democrats are competitive in the state this year.

Ever since he entered statewide politics, it’s truly shocking not just how Andy Beshear has been able to stay alive in Kentucky politics throughout his party’s collapse, but also just how close he’s been avoiding his own political collapse. In his first run for Attorney General in 2015, he defeated his Republican opponent by an incredibly small margin of 0.22%, winning by just 2,190 votes over him. In his first-ever contest, despite his famous last name, he would barely scrape by, yet another symbol of how much the Democrats had been falling off in the state.

Just a year later, this would only seem to get worse. In the presidential race, Donald Trump, who seemingly became the face of the entire GOP effort overnight, would win the state of Kentucky by nearly 30 points, the largest margin for any Republican in the state in American history. This was propelled by absolutely insane margins he put up in traditionally Democratic areas, especially in the Appalachian East. It even looked like it had the potential to help out other Kentucky Republicans too, like in the 2016 Kentucky Senate race, which saw incumbent Senator Rand Paul defeat his Democratic opponent solidly and put up his own improvements in traditionally Democratic areas just like Trump did, albeit not to the same extent. The fact that someone like Trump, who seemingly dominated politics wherever he went, was able to get himself a stranglehold over the state in one night was a deeply terrifying prospect for the Kentucky Democratic Party.

However, going into the next gubernatorial contest in 2019, there was a major saving grace for the Democrats. The one thing that made this race even remotely competitive at all. That was the incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin.

A hopelessly incompetent governor, he is the only reason Andy Beshear still holds any influence in the state at all today. His terrible performance as governor wasn’t just something observed by Democrats. It wasn’t even just observed by independents. It was observed by the state’s quickly growing Republican electorate, leading to him having jaw-droppingly bad approval ratings in this deep red state, often having the lowest approval rating of any governor in the entire nation. It is for that reason, on top of the genuine strength of Beshear’s own image, that the Democrats managed to flip the state governorship in 2019, albeit by an extremely narrow 0.4% margin, once again symbolic of just how Republican the state is.

But now that we’ve had four years of Beshear, how exactly is he doing? Fortunately for Democrats, he has done quite well. While he isn’t able to do a lot due to Republican resistance in the legislature, he has managed to successfully present himself as a competent executive who knows how to manage the business of government. This was most notably shown off during his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a deeply divisive issue that could have completely destroyed his political career. Instead, he came out of it very strong, and ever since then, he has been consistently ranked as one of the most popular governors in the entire country. Democrats should be incredibly grateful that he decided to run for re-election.

Even despite this, it was still going to be a race that was hotly contested. While Beshear is certainly very popular, it’s still a deeply Republican state. Republicans are definitely still going to target it, after all, the more governors they have the better. Several candidates were always going to jump in, eager for their chance to take down the last remaining figurehead of the Kentucky Democratic Party. So, who did the Republicans go with?

Their answer to take down Beshear is the state’s Attorney General, Daniel Cameron.

Ever since the 37-year-old became Kentucky’s Attorney General in 2019, he has always been floated as a potential rising star within the party and has consistently been a thorn in the side of Beshear for his entire governorship. And since he had already proven himself as a successful statewide candidate, he was always being floated as a potential challenger to the governor. This was a challenge he decided to take on, announcing his candidacy with the backing of Donald Trump, essentially guaranteeing his ascension to the GOP nomination.

However, ever since he won the GOP nomination, problems surrounding the candidate’s quality have begun to emerge. Mainly, his attacks against Beshear really don’t seem to be sticking. One prominent attack has been against Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 150, which would have put restrictions on transgender healthcare for the youth, and another one of his prominent attacks is going after his COVID policies, accusing him of locking down the state in a way other blue state governors did.

Neither of these are good attacks. As many others have pointed out, trans issues have not shown themselves to be relevant in the eyes of voters, including in Kentucky in 2019, which saw the Bevin campaign employ trans panic as a last-ditch effort to save their flailing governor. No matter how much they try, Republicans haven’t been able to get any juice out of fearmongering about trans people, and it’s highly unlikely that it would somehow work this time after already failing several times previously. As for the COVID message, this one is just flat-out baffling. The COVID-19 pandemic, and Beshear’s handling of it, was the very beginning of his high marks in the state and is the main reason why he is even favored to win today. The fact that Cameron would think this is a good line of attack against him is unbelievably stupid, especially since COVID has practically receded from the national spotlight since 2022.

Simply put, Cameron just hasn’t run a good campaign thus far. That’s not just my opinion though, that’s the opinion of voters in Kentucky. Ever since polling started on the race, Beshear has consistently held solid leads over Cameron, with some polls even showing the governor ahead by as much as double digits. While I don’t think he’ll ultimately win by that much, I think it’s a testament to both the strength of Beshear, as well as the failure of Cameron, that this race is pretty solidly in the Democrats’ favor.

However, it is important to remember that while Beshear is the favorite, it could still change. After all, it’s two months out, and it is still a heavily Republican state that not many national GOP candidates have really shown up yet. While I don’t think they can save Cameron thanks to traditional Democrats likely showing up for Beshear, there is something of a possibility that polarization could put him over the edge. It’s always going to be a challenge to win in a Trump+25 state, even if you are a popular Democratic incumbent. But if anyone can do it, it is definitely Andy Beshear.

Kentucky Rating: Lean Democratic

Final Thoughts

Ever since Donald Trump was sworn in as president on January 20th, 2017, Democrats have made absolutely staggering gains all across the country. Whether it be national bodies, statewide bodies, or local bodies, they have crawled back a significant amount of influence they had previously lost during the Obama years, and are now set in a position in which they can truly exercise their political influence in a way they haven’t been able to in well over a decade.

However, despite these undeniably sweeping gains, the GOP has still always been able to maintain a majority of statewide governorships. While Democrats have certainly made huge gains in this respect as well, they have still come just short of winning more offices than their Republican counterparts, with them currently holding 24 out of 50 statewide governorships. Unfortunately for them, there aren’t going to be many opportunities for a while to get this majority back, and one of the reasons was supposed to be 2023. Going into it, it was supposed to be a foregone conclusion that Democrats would lose one seat at best, and potentially lose two at worst. This would help expand the GOP governorship majority, and make it that much harder for the Democrats to win over more of them for years to come.

However, the calculation has changed quite a bit in that regard. Thanks to strong Democratic candidates and weak Republican opposition, losing two Democratic seats looks less and less likely every day Cameron fumbles his campaign. While losing one seat is still the most likely outcome, we now have to contend with the fact that thanks to Reeves’ criminal incompetence and Presley’s strong campaign, Democrats have a chance, however small, to walk out of 2023 with a net loss of zero.

If you ask me, I still don’t think the Democrats can pull it off. They’ll almost certainly lose Louisiana and Mississippi is just far too polarized. But unlike last year, the chance is there and is now part of the conversation.

That is a complete and utter disaster for the Republican Party.

For those analyzing state politics at the time, it truly was a sight to behold to see this young lawyer become such a powerhouse overnight. For the DFL, it showed promise for a future politician who had the capability of holding office for as long as she wanted with little to no Republican resistance. For the Republicans, it was a terrifying prospect, one that had the potential to lock them out of holding power in a very important office for potentially decades. No matter which way you looked at it, the 38-year-old Amy Klobuchar was clearly expected to be going places.

However, immediately after she had won her first election campaign, a new element came into effect for Amy Klobuchar. It was one that would impact any future run she may have made in the future going forward after this. One that could make or break any future aspirations she or the DFL may have in her political career.

Her job performance.

Her victory in 1998 meant that for the first time, Amy Klobuchar was now put in a significant place of power within the government. This job was not going to be one where slacking could be overlooked for lack of interest or constituency. She would be the chief prosecutor for the largest county in Minnesota, overseeing not just one of the largest cities in the entire Midwest, but also the rapidly growing suburbs surrounding it. Since she was now in a position of influence, almost anything that went wrong over her tenure, particularly related to crime, would be pinned on her.

It was a tall order and it put her in a spotlight lit by the entire state. Thus, seeing how she did in office is crucial to understanding her future. If she was good at her job, it would make her potential electoral future that much more inevitable. If she failed, it could doom a rising star into being nothing more than a once hyped has-been, who when push came to shove, really didn’t know what she was doing in government.

So, how did she do?

1999-2006: Building Up Experience At The Right Time

If you have heard anything about Amy Klobuchar’s tenure as Hennepin County Attorney in recent years, most of it tends to be a critical reanalysis of her tenure in that position.

Between the period when she left her position in 2007, to when she was running for president in 2020, a lot had changed in regard to how the public viewed law enforcement and its relationship to race. White people, many of them previously unaware of the mistrust many minority groups had of law enforcement, began to discover that reality as movements like Black Lives Matter began to crop up in response to various instances of black people being unjustly killed by police officers. These events, along with various other factors, changed how many looked at law enforcement policies that were previously assumed to be standard.

Amy Klobuchar, herself a prosecutor, and someone who ran as a tough-on-crime politician in 1998, would soon be put under this same level of scrutiny as she was seeking to become president years later. Fortunately for her critics, there was certainly stuff to go after, much of it laid out in the Star Tribune article I linked two paragraphs above.

The most notable example brought up when criticizing her tenure as County Attorney was her highly flawed prosecution of Myon Burrell in 2002, which an AP report in 2020 showed had several inconsistencies. But there were also several instances of police shootings that occurred under her tenure, such as the 2001 killing of Efrain Pompa De Paz, the 2002 killing of Christoper Burns that sparked protests outside of her office, or the 2006 shooting of Dominic Felder, just to name a few.

For the record, I think criticism of her handling of these cases under her tenure is correct and perfectly valid, something that even Amy Klobuchar herself would admit in regard to the first case.

The principal problem in all of these cases was that Amy Klobuchar did not take it incumbent to take charging officers into her own hands. Rather, as most other county attorneys did at the time, she would leave it up to grand jurors to decide if they wanted to go forward with charges against police officers. This would create a system that was far too favorable to police in cases of misconduct, often allowing them to get off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

One could defend her on the grounds that she herself was absent from those cases, meaning that her true feelings in each case are impossible to determine. That is technically true, you couldn’t have known exactly what Amy Klobuchar thought in these cases. It’s very possible that if she was in charge of the prosecutions, they might have ended up differently.

But even still, that hardly leaves her clear of the blame, considering that she could have, at any time, taken charge of the situation, and made her opinion known on these issues. But she didn’t. It symbolized a lack of leadership and initiative on her part, something that is essential to have if you wish to be in any position of power. She didn’t have it in these moments, and it leaves a stain on her legacy as a public servant in the state of Minnesota.

So, with those concerning issues surrounding her tenure, why didn’t it stop her career in its tracks? Why didn’t these have a bigger impact on her electoral chances when she ran for statewide office?

Well, as I’ve said earlier, most of these criticisms of her tenure as County Attorney are relatively new. That isn’t to say there weren’t any critics, but most of it was hardly ever known to most who lived in Hennepin County or Minnesota for very long. Most of it came down to localized protests outside of her office that got little more than some local media interest for a few minutes, which almost always resulted in those watching the news that day forgetting about it entirely. It wasn’t the kind of controversy that really sparked serious questions about her ability as a political force.

This was for one key reason, that being that focusing on issues of police brutality was not something that received anywhere near as much attention as it does now. Her tenure was during, and just coming off of, the 1990s, which saw a wave of politicians tripping over themselves in an effort to show voters how much they were willing to stomp down on crime amid a rising percentage of it occurring during the decade. This was a local, state, and national issue, with various different policies being implemented left and right that were supposed to address this issue.

We know now in retrospect that a lot of them would be massive failures, only serving to disproportionally harm minority groups even further while not addressing anything in regard to why the crimes were actually occurring in the first place. But at the time, people were looking for anything that made themselves feel safer, and conversations about systemic inequality were pushed to the sidelines, especially since the internet was nowhere near as robust at spreading information as it is now. In essence, Amy Klobuchar’s failings in some of these cases were overlooked as a consequence of good timing. Had her tenure as County Attorney started in the 2010s or 2020s, it likely would have resulted in far more scrutiny than it otherwise would have. But she ran in the 1990s and 2000s, so her failings in the role wouldn’t be highlighted that much.

While there is certainly much to criticize, I also don’t want to paint it as though her tenure was nothing more than a failed product of its time. She did have some real success in her role, and those successes were part of the reason why she remained a star in Minnesota and the DFL itself. While she would refrain from taking action in police misconduct cases, she would be far more liberal in her role in other cases, taking action against various different kinds of criminals that no one would realistically defend, something that played very well into her image as a competent attorney to bipartisan audiences. This would also come alongside a decrease in overall crime in the city, which while difficult to give Amy Klobuchar full credit for, certainly didn’t hurt her in the face of voters either.

All of this support would culminate in her receiving an “Attorney of the Year” award from the Minnesota Lawyer in 2001. While this wasn’t that big of a deal on its own, it did reflect the high favorability that Amy Klobuchar had established in her role as County Attorney. All of the factors I listed above allowed her to become one of the most popular officeholders in the entire state of Minnesota. Not only was her image with DFL voters just as strong as ever, but her intact bipartisan image gave her a special appeal with independents and moderate Republicans. This appeal would go far beyond the better-than-expected numbers she’d pull in 1998. It was a kind of appeal that actually allowed her to win over some of these ruby-red suburbs in a way that no DFL candidate had done in decades. In her capacity as County Attorney, Amy Klobuchar had seemingly been able to crack the code, and going forward, she would never look back.

2004-2006: Amy Goes Statewide

After her undeniable political success in the role of County Attorney, it was only a matter of time before she would take the plunge into statewide politics. As her tenure went on, this inevitability only seemed to be confirmed more and more, with the Republicans not even bothering to front a candidate against her in 2002, leaving her uncontested in a year when other DFL candidates were struggling to win the county by more than a single point.

After winning re-election in 2002, she would spend the rest of her second term building up good fortune within her party for an eventual statewide bid. She would do this by volunteering as a surrogate for John Kerry’s 2004 campaign operation in Minnesota. This was an important job to hold, as Minnesota was going to be hotly contested in the 2004 election. After coming within less than 2 and a half points of winning the state in 2000, the Bush campaign saw an opportunity to pick off a blue wall state and make Kerry’s chances of winning the presidency that much harder, and also serve as a potential fallback option if their efforts in other swing states failed. Realistically, this was a state that the Kerry campaign needed to win if they had any hope of winning the White House. Fortunately, the DFL and Amy Klobuchar recognized this early on, and while Kerry would ultimately lose to Bush in the national election, Minnesota would vote for Kerry by around 3 and a half points, a shift towards the left while most other states moved to the right. This was a solid achievement by Amy Klobuchar, and it would give her credibility in regard to her ability to run a statewide campaign.

After this success, she had two more years left in her second term, which happened to line up perfectly with the upcoming 2006 midterms. When looking at the offices she could take a run at, on top of the increasing likelihood of this election being a blue wave, it was obvious that this year would be a great chance for her to make a run at statewide politics. The only question remaining would be what statewide office she’d run for.

Initially, she wanted to run for Attorney General, which was going to be left open after the incumbent Mike Hatch announced his intention to run for governor. This did make some amount of sense, a promotion from a county prosecutor to a statewide prosecutor is pretty straightforward. Combined with it also being an open race, she would almost certainly be favored to win in the general election.

However, there were also clear problems with this approach, most of them relating to the DFL primary. It had been known for a while that Mike Hatch, a longtime statewide office runner, was going to want to take on the incumbent Republican governor Tim Pawlenty. This resulted in a flux of DFL candidates also preparing to run for the Attorney General seat. These ranged from Mike Hatch’s deputy Lori Swanson, DFL House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL State Senator Steve Kelley, and former U.S. House Representative Bill Luther. All of these were highly credible candidates within the party and were essentially guaranteed to give Klobuchar a significant run for her money. While her history thus far has indicated her smashing electoral success against Republicans, she had yet to ever deal with a tough primary field. While it’s very possible she would have been able to pull it off, it was also a big risk. If it had failed, it could have been a serious political setback, one that she may not have been able to recover from.

She would soon come to this realization thanks to some advice from her mentor Walter Mondale, and she would bow out of this contest. But if she wasn’t going to run for Attorney General, where else could she go?

While she could take a run at the Governor, Secretary of State, or Auditor races, these carried the same problem of highly credible DFL primary challenges, but to an even larger extent. The gubernatorial race would obviously be out of the question, as Mike Hatch was already basically picked to be the nominee for the party far ahead of time. The other two contests, while not quite as bad from a primary standpoint, still had highly credible DFL nominees gearing up to run, meaning that Klobuchar would still have significant difficulty creating a lane for herself in those races too.

This situation began to look pretty bleak. At first, it looked like Klobuchar had only two paths forward for her future career. The first path was simply just waiting it out for a potentially better time to run and stick to her job as County Attorney in the meantime. The second was ignoring Mondale’s advice and going all in on the Attorney General contest, a risky play to say the least. Neither of these was particularly appetizing and had the potential to flame out any potential interest in a statewide Klobuchar run. For an aspiring politician, this really isn’t a great spot to be in.

However, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t brought up one particular statewide race. That race is the U.S. Senate seat, the only statewide race in 2006 that was originally supposed to be contested by a DFL incumbent. I waited to mention this one because initially, it wasn’t even close to being anywhere on the table for a statewide Klobuchar bid. While the incumbent Mark Dayton wasn’t particularly popular, to say the least, he was also only in his first term and still liked enough among the ranks of the DFL that virtually no one within the party would ever consider primarying him. If he had chosen to run for a second term, like most expected him to, he was a lock to win the primary.

Shockingly, however, none of this would come to pass. Dayton, doubtful of his own ability to win re-election in light of his controversies and lackluster funds, announced in February of 2005 that he was not going to be running for re-election. While none of them would ever admit it, this was great news for the DFL, who no longer had to be saddled with dealing with bailing out a controversial incumbent.

But it was even better news for Amy Klobuchar, who now had a very clear lane to run statewide. The most credible candidates in the DFL ranks had already been planning to run for the other statewide offices, allowing Klobuchar to occupy the DFL primary as the only truly credible candidate running. And with her only other potentially tough challenges opting out of the contest, it looked like Amy Klobuchar had finally established her statewide lane.

As expected, she would easily win the primary, earning the official DFL endorsement, and defeating her closest opponent by just under 85 points. Just like in her 1998 run, she had easily stepped up to the DFL plate. But unlike that run, this one was not going to be anywhere near as difficult. This time, virtually everything was going in Klobuchar’s favor in this election.

On top of retaining all of her green flags from 1998, it was also a far more favorable environment for her to run in. In comparison to the anti-establishment, anti-DFL environment she was running in 1998, 2006 was expected to be a solid blue wave for the party, thanks to the increasing unpopularity of President Bush over his poor handling of Hurricane Katrina and complete failure in Iraq. The latter issue, which was once said to be one of the things that put Republicans over the top in 2004, suddenly became a massive liability to them. It was an undeniable disaster, and it not only tanked Bush’s previously consistently positive approval rating, but it also made Republicans who voted for the war (aka, virtually all of them) look absolutely terrible. At best, Republicans looked incompetent and complacent after over a decade of congressional rule, meaning that their losing would be something of a wake-up call. At worst, they had outright lied about the reasons why we went into Iraq, making it so their defeat was nothing less than a moral imperative. Either way, you look at it, a blue wave was essentially inevitable once this became the popular view of Bush and his party.

This on its own would be enough to put Amy Klobuchar over the top. It’s a blue-leaning state in a heavily blue year in an open seat. That should be enough to make her the favorite by default, and given her political strength already, there really wasn’t anyone the Republicans could realistically nominate that could beat her. But just in case Republicans thought they were making it too hard for her, they would make her victory that much more inevitable on primary day.

With Amy Klobuchar running in this contest and knowing her history of massive success at the ballot box, not many Republicans were all that keen on having their high-value candidates take her on. The two most notable examples of this, former U.S. Senator Rod Grams and U.S. Representative Gil Gutknecht, were both discouraged by the Minnesota GOP to run in the Senate contest, instead relegating them to run for U.S. House seats. With their most high-quality candidates basically forced out of the contest by the party, it basically ensured that GOP primary voters were going to get nothing better than pure mediocrity for their Senate nominee. And no candidate represents mediocrity better than the actual nominee himself, U.S. Representative Mark Kennedy.

Aside from his last name (no relation), there is literally nothing remarkable, interesting, or impressive about this Watertown-based representative. During his six years in the U.S. House, he served as nothing more than a down-the-line party vote, going right along with whatever Republican leadership told him to. This played quite well for him during the high points of Bush’s presidency, so much so that he would plaster photos of himself with the president all over his congressional website. While it was certainly risky in the event of Bush’s star fading, it did make a lot of sense when you consider something else: his electoral record.

Unlike many other Minnesota congressmen like Jim Ramstad or Collin Peterson, Mark Kennedy did not possess some unique appeal in his district that allowed him to overperform expectations. In fact, he would actually do quite a bit worse than other Republicans in his district, making him a frequent target of attack by the DFL every time he was on the ballot. Nowhere was this more evident than in his final U.S. House bid in 2004, just two years prior to his Senate run. Despite Bush winning the district by 15 points, Kennedy would only win by 8 points over his DFL opponent. Despite heavily attaching himself to the president, he would still manage to lose thousands of voters in his district who voted for Bush on the same ballot.

Obviously, this doesn’t project a lot of promise. Even in a pro-GOP environment where Bush still had a solid approval rating, Kennedy would completely fail at establishing even an average performance of his own. His electoral record was undeniably weak and even worse, they were all occurring in neutral or good years for the GOP. If he couldn’t pull off a good performance in those circumstances, it was clear that he was very likely to falter completely in a blue-wave environment like 2006. This was made even worse by the fact that this blue wave was caused by the man he sucked up to for six years becoming electoral poison, meaning that he was now saddled with the image of being nothing more than a pro-Bush sycophant. Simply put, all of the things that made Bush unpopular made Kennedy unpopular as well.

If you’re Amy Klobuchar, you couldn’t have asked for a better contest if you tried. Running in an open seat in a blue-leaning state is one thing. Running in a blue wave year is another. But running against a pro-Bush underperforming backbencher? It was absolutely perfect. You really could not have asked for an easier election.

Realistically, after the Republicans went with Kennedy, she really didn’t have to do anything at all. She probably could have sat in her basement for the entire campaign season, and still come out victorious by a solid margin. That’s how bad it looked for Republicans in this contest. For all intents and purposes, Amy Klobuchar was Senator-elect months before the actual election day.

But if there’s one important thing you should know about Amy Klobuchar’s campaigns thus far, it’s the fact that she takes absolutely nothing for granted. Even in her uncontested 2002 re-election campaign, she would still go all in, putting up thousands of yard signs and participating in tons of political parades. If she put in that much effort in a race where she literally couldn’t lose, there was practically no chance that she would punt on a statewide bid, no matter how much the scale was tilted in her favor. And when push came to shove, she would go all in on her 2006 Senate campaign, just as she had always done up to this point.

But how exactly would she campaign? How would this moderate-appealing Democrat run successfully in a year where the people were demanding strong opposition to Republican rule in Washington?

If she wanted to, she could have taken the role as a partisan Democrat firebrand, running on strong opposition to Bush and his very clear failings, while also pointing to her own credibility on those issues. Klobuchar, an opponent of the Iraq War from the start, would be in a strong position to run a campaign like this, especially against a partisan Republican like Kennedy.

But there was a problem with this approach, that being that it was risking hurting her established image as a bipartisan moderate. For a long time, Klobuchar had been able to attain special appeal among suburban Republicans that virtually no other DFL candidate had in Minnesota. If she were to run as a partisan Democrat, it would certainly be successful. But it may also hurt her unique appeal with thousands of Bush voters in the state, which could come back to bite her in a less favorable year. Simply put, it wasn’t the most ideal approach if you wished to have appeal beyond the party base.

That problem is where the other potential path came in: she could go all in on that image. Similar to her advocacy for hospital stay time reform, she could run a campaign that emphasized her work on popular issues and concerns of voters. This would be a combination of having an anti-corruption message on national issues, while also emphasizing her work on addressing the concerns of her constituents on a local level as County Attorney. This path was far more likely to win over the support of more voters in her state, and would likely keep her image intact.

However, it ran into the same problem that her 1998 strategy had: alienation of the more progressive DFL base. Most people on the party’s left were not all that interested in seeing Democrats emphasize their work with Republicans. After six years of defacto Republican trifecta rule in Washington, Democrats were gearing up to finally stop Bush and his agenda right in its tracks. There wasn’t a lot of demand for a consensus candidate like Klobuchar. While she would still easily win their votes in the face of Kennedy, it could potentially harm her ability to have national ambitions, something that would almost certainly enter her mind upon becoming a U.S. Senator. So, from a career perspective, going this route would also be somewhat of a risk.

Ultimately, when push came to shove, the latter approach was the one she would take. She would run a campaign that was heavily localized, focusing almost entirely on issues that pertained to Minnesota, and Minnesota alone. When she did bring up Washington itself, she would only do so to mention her other popular stances, like opposition to subsidies for big oil companies, and the need for campaign finance reform. When analyzing her 2006 campaign, this is evident everywhere you look.

The first place were the ads her campaign ran. Almost all of them would emphasize her role as County Attorney, always making sure to frame her work in the most bipartisan, least objectionable way possible. Nowhere is this more evident than her first ad known as “My Job”, where she would mention her work to put a Democratic judge found stealing the funds of a mentally disabled woman behind bars. This would be used as proof that despite shared party affiliation, she would not play favorites when it came to protecting Minnesotans and listening to their concerns. Every ad after this would follow this same formula. One ad focused on her work to put away threatening criminals as a prosecutor while also touting endorsements from Minnesota police. Another focused on her work to get extended hospital stay time all the way back in 1995, emphasizing her ability to get real change passed in the State Assembly. Ads like this played extremely well, only giving further credibility to her image as a consensus moderate who knew how to get things done.

The second place she would show off her campaign strategy was how she dealt with her opponent. Realistically, if she wanted to, she didn’t have to engage Kennedy much at all. His many downfalls as a candidate largely spoke for themselves, and debating him wouldn’t really change the dynamics of the race. But in order to come off as available to her constituents, Klobuchar would debate Kennedy. But she wouldn’t just do it once. She would do it a staggering eight times, far more than she ever needed to, even in debates including Independence candidate Robert Fitzgerald. While it was almost certainly unnecessary, it did play well for her. Even if she wouldn’t do all that amazing in the debates, it gave people the impression that she was open and accessible, something that was going to be essential if she was going to run a local issues-based campaign. It also didn’t hurt that she kept tying Kennedy to Bush in these debates, just to bring the point home further. Once again, a very smart play by the Klobuchar campaign.

The final place this would be emphasized would be the various locations she would visit throughout her campaign. While Amy Klobuchar had cemented her credibility among voters in the cities and suburbs of the Twin Cities, she had yet to run a campaign up to this point where she would have to make an appeal to Greater Minnesota voters. Some of these places would be easy to appeal to, such as the solidly Democratic Iron Range where she already had family roots. Others would be more difficult however, such as traditionally Republican exurbs outside of Hennepin County, many of which were places that Kennedy had represented for six years up to that point. If she was going to win big, she would have to make an effort in these places as well. So, what did she do?

Well, just like her 1998 campaign for Hennepin County Attorney, she would go into the lion’s den. Throughout the campaign season, she would travel throughout the entire state, making an effort to visit as many counties as possible. Rural places would be where Amy Klobuchar would stray away from her suburban roots, instead attaching herself to her grandfather’s history as an iron miner in the rural north. Many of these places she would visit had not seen any political candidate, much less a statewide candidate, come to their turf in decades. This gave it a sense of novelty, and once again, it played into her image that she was looking out for all Minnesotans above all else. As for the traditionally Republican exurbs, she would run heavily on her track record as a prosecutor and appeal directly to their local concerns, which played over very well for the same reasons that it did with Hennepin County suburban Republicans in 1998. Both of these efforts would prove to be very successful. For the first time in decades, it looked like a DFL candidate was finally going to be competitive in deeply Republican exurbs, while also managing to hold onto and bring in a whole new base of rural voters into her coalition that had not voted DFL since the days of Rudy Perpich.

All of these factors combined created a race that was hardly ever even close to competitive. While other DFL candidates were stuck in horserace contests, Klobuchar would consistently lead Kennedy by massive margins in virtually every poll, and as the campaign went on, these leads would only continue to grow larger and larger. In August, she was up by 8. In September, she was up by 10. In October, she was up by 17. By the beginning of November, and just a few days before election day, she was leading by 22 points. The race was all but over, with Republicans basically giving up on Kennedy as early as September, where they would invest their funds into protecting other vulnerable GOP incumbents.

And as the results of election day finally came, their decision to give up on Kennedy was completely vindicated.

Overall, 2006 was a good year for the DFL. While losing the gubernatorial race was disappointing, they would do quite well in virtually every other contest that year. Not only did they maintain all of their previously held statewide offices, but they also managed to flip the Secretary of State office, the State House, and Minnesota’s 1st congressional district. While there was definitely a better result possible, the result was certainly a positive development for the party.

In terms of who was the star of the DFL that night, however, there was absolutely no contest. While other DFL candidates would win by an average of 6.8 points overall, Klobuchar would win in a landslide, defeating Kennedy by over 20 points.

The extent of her victory was incredibly shocking. She excelled practically everywhere in the state. Whether it be the cities, the suburbs, or the rurals, she would put numbers in these places not seen since a “Humphrey” or “Perpich” was on the ballot. Of the 79 counties she had won, 47 of them would be counties that also voted for Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor on the same ballot. Even in counties like Carver, an ancestrally Republican exurban county where Pawlenty got 63% of the vote, Klobuchar would come within 6 points of winning the county, the closest any Democrat had come to winning the county in decades.

This incredibly strong showing gave separate messages to both parties. For the DFL, it was a dream come true. They had found themselves a politician who could keep the Republicans completely out of power in an important office for as long as she wanted to run. For the Minnesota GOP, it was a total disaster. Her strong result meant that unless they ran an absolutely perfect candidate in the perfect year, the chance they’d be able to defeat her was minuscule at best. Either way, the message was clear: Amy Klobuchar was not going anywhere.

Now, the 46-year-old Senator-elect had a new objective that she needed to achieve. Up to this point, she has been able to prove her worth as an incredibly effective campaigner, and also a strong prosecutor when she wanted to be. But for the first time in a decade, she would be involved in the process of passing legislation. The last time she was involved in such a process, she was acting as a frustrated outsider, often using media spectacle to get politicians on her side. This time, however, she was entering the belly of the beast, and it would be her job to build connections within the U.S. Senate if she wished to be an effective politician.

When looking back on the period of time when her first term took place (2007-2013), this was going to be a more difficult task than she probably expected. This period of time would be most notable with the election of Barack Obama, a rising star who had assisted her on the Senate campaign trail. His election would spark a new era of partisan division, with Republicans dead set on stopping anything he wanted to do the second he entered office. Republicans would be fired up for the first time in years, spawning the rise of the Tea Party movement formed in opposition to Obama’s signature legislative priorities: the 2009 Stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act. Both of these would become massive political liabilities for the Democrats going into the 2010 midterms, which would see Democrats of all ideological stripes wiped out all across the country.

Amy Klobuchar’s strong appeal going forward suddenly looked to be in doubt. In a time of growing polarization, and in a position where she would have to take votes on highly controversial issues, would she really be able to maintain her image? Would she really be able to go all through her first term keeping up support with Republicans who were growing increasingly anxious to get her party’s president out of office? It certainly seemed like a very difficult task.

But as we have already learned in this piece, she doesn’t take anything for granted, regardless of how good or bad the situation looks at first. When it looked impossible for her to lose in 2002 and 2006, she still gave it her all and came out of it stronger than ever. When it looked impossible for her to win in 1998, once again, she gave it her all and came out in a brand new position of influence. This new battle of maintaining her brand was going to be very tough, tougher than it had ever been before. But it was one that Klobuchar, now a U.S. Senator, was ready to fight against.

On the one hand, the incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden’s approval rating is quite low, most Americans don’t want him to run, and his handling of the economy, which is said to be one of, if not the most important issues ahead of 2024, has been one of his weak spots throughout his entire presidency. On the other hand, his likely Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, not only has lower approval ratings than Biden does, but he seemingly always manages to find a way to get in absurd amounts of legal trouble, all leading up to the recent case in Florida, where it’s revealed that he knowingly held onto secret documents, likely for no other reason than bragging rights. Truly, the choice of a lifetime, and one that will almost certainly be highly competitive. While I personally believe the race is currently favored towards Biden, I also want to make it clear that it is by no means guaranteed, and faith in my prediction is subject to change depending on what happens between now and the election on November 5th, 2024.

But there is one chamber where predictions are not nearly as divided. A chamber, entirely due to how they are elected, is more likely than not a flip for the Republican Party next year. That chamber is the U.S. Senate, and the map is comically bad for the Democratic Party. In order to hold the U.S. Senate, assuming Biden is re-elected president, the Democrats can only afford to lose one seat, and with the map they have, even that task is easier said than done. On top of defending their seats in red states like West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana, they also have to defend their seats in toss-up seats like Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. This is all on top of the fact that they have practically no opportunity for offense, with their best bet being in the state of Texas, which Trump won by 5.5 points in 2020, and has been the state consistently disappointing the dreams of liberals everywhere who want the state to flip blue.

To be clear, these states I listed are by no means guaranteed Republican wins. Of all the states I mentioned, the only one that’s almost a sure gain for the Republicans is West Virginia, which is one of the most Republican states in the country. Outside of that, Democrats benefit from a wide range of factors in these states, whether it be strong incumbents, terrible Republican candidates on the horizon like in 2022, and a Trump nomination certain to drive Democrats to the polls. But with all of these states likely being either decent Trump wins or very narrow tossups, the Democrats will unquestionably have to put time and resources into making sure these seats stay blue.

However, when looking at most statewide predictions, there is one state that despite voting for Biden by less than double digits, is not even considered in the running for flipping next cycle. A state where as of now, the Republicans are hardly even making an effort. A state where Senate Democrats will almost certainly not have to spend time playing on defense. A state that is home to one of the strongest electoral overperformers in recent memory.

That state is Minnesota, and that overperformer in question is none other than the senior senator, Amy Klobuchar.

Ever since she first ran for statewide office in 2006, she has consistently been able to put up some massive victories compared to other Democratic candidates and the national environment as a whole. The amount of support she has been able to garner statewide in Minnesota consistently continues to shock, and it’s the main reason why Minnesota Republicans aren’t even looking to try to court a strong candidate against her in 2024, especially as they have other problems to tend to. Even if Trump or some other GOP candidate manages to somehow win Minnesota in 2024, it’s essentially a foregone conclusion that Klobuchar will still be re-elected alongside that.

To outsiders, this can be understandably confusing. At face value, Amy Klobuchar does not appear to be any different from any other Senate Democrat. Virtually all of her votes and beliefs go right alongside the views of the Biden White House, and she has consistently been one of the strongest backers of the President ever since she endorsed him just before Super Tuesday in 2020. In fact, like many other Senate Democrats that year, she even had her own presidential bid, which to many, put her in the same box as other Senators running that year as well, such as Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren, just to name a few. When looking at it, it can be difficult to connect the dots as to why this seemingly standard team player has managed to put up overperformances that dwarf pretty much every other Democratic statewide candidate.

But once you look a little bit deeper and analyze her entire political career, her rise into becoming an electoral juggernaut is easy to understand. Her rise to being one of the most successful figures in Minnesota politics did not come by accident. It came as the result of her mastering the art of politics in a way that not many politicians have been able to match. Her folksy personality, while not appealing to a nationwide audience, has been able to score her a considerable fanbase in Minnesota. Her aggressive work ethic has allowed her to be among the most productive members of the U.S. Senate. Her policy messaging, while alienating some on her party’s left, has allowed her to come off as a moderate who can get things done, giving her strong appeal to independents and moderate Republicans. All of this combines into a politician who is incredibly strong, one who Republicans have been crushed by again and again. And so long as she continues to stay involved in statewide politics, it’s almost certainly going to be staying that way.

But how did that all get started? How did this Hennepin County Attorney manage to propel herself into becoming an electoral messiah? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

1995: Amy and Abigail

Whenever analyzing a politician, one thing you’ll usually see is a story they like to talk about when advocating for a policy change. This is done for the purpose of establishing emotional appeal to complex issues, one that others may not have as much incentive to care about if they have not been personally affected by it.

One of the most notable examples of this is former congresswoman Gabby Giffords and current U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, both serving the state of Arizona. Both of them are staunch advocates of gun control, and when they campaign on behalf of that issue, they’ll sometimes mention the story of when Giffords was shot in the head and nearly killed in 2011. It’s a strong message to those who do not have a personal connection to the tragedy that is gun violence, and it creates a demand to do something.

Something particularly notable about those two, however, is that the story mentioned changed not just the lives of the two forever, but also their political careers. In the case of Giffords, it would be the end of her political career, as she would need to take years to recover from the brain damage she suffered. In the case of Kelly, it would be one of the reasons he started his political career, eventually deciding to run for the Arizona U.S. Senate seat in 2020. I mention this horribly tragic story because, for many politicians, it’s not just a story they can use when talking about an issue, but the story that causes the start of a life-changing career in government.

In the case of Amy Klobuchar, her story falls under this tragic distinction. For the first part of her life, it didn’t look like Klobuchar was interested in taking the dive into politics in her own right. This isn’t to say that she had no connection to it, she was an intern to the then-Vice President and Minnesota icon Walter Mondale, she had frequently volunteered for DFL candidates in Minnesota throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and she had even taken a run at becoming the county attorney for Hennepin County in 1994. But after becoming a corporate lawyer and prosecutor, it appeared that she was more interested in the practice of law than being in a position to change policy.

However, all of this would completely change in 1995 with the birth of her first and only child, Abigail. What initially looked to be an exciting new chapter of her life soon turned into a nightmare, as it was revealed that Abigail had suffered from a condition making her unable to swallow, which meant that she would have to be fed from a feeding tube for three years afterward. This on its own would be scary enough news, one that most parents would be horrified by. But it would soon become even worse for the Klobuchar parents.

After the time had passed, and amid the shock they had, they were forced to leave the hospital. 24 hours had passed, the minimum amount of hospital stay guaranteed in Minnesota at the time. Not only that, but since Abigail had to be fed through a feeding tube, the parents were forced to go from the hospital to her hotel room every three hours to be breastfed properly, basically guaranteeing that neither of them ever got any sleep.

This event, which was caused by wholly inadequate guarantees under Minnesota law, was the spark that Klobuchar needed. The story that started her political career. The story changed her focus away from just law practice and towards changing policy in her own right. Her first fight, which would be for increasing hospital stay time, would be the first in her political life. And it was in this fight that she showed her first signs of political marvel.

Thanks to the connections she had as a corporate lawyer, she was able to earn herself a hearing with members of the Minnesota Senate, where she would use her personal story to get the chamber to understand the need to have a policy change. She would use this, as well as her connections, to successfully lobby the Minnesota Senate to pass a bill to increase hospital stay time to 48 hours, completely beating out the hospital lobby at virtually every turn. It was a big enough deal that it even eventually made it to the national scene, with then-President Bill Clinton signing a similar bill into law in 1996.

This on its own is a big enough success story. Being able to lobby for a bill in a way so effective that it jumps right over lobbyists and makes it into the halls of the U.S. Congress is something to behold. Just on that basis, this would already be enough of a sign that Klobuchar had a strong political career ahead of her. But that isn’t even the full story. During the process, there was a fight over one part of the bill that showed off her political skills even past what I’ve presented to you.

The fight in question was for when the bill was to be implemented. Of course, the lobbyists sought to delay the bill, effectively giving up on the grounds and just looking to minimize as much damage to themselves as possible. At first, it seemed like they might win on this one small front. It could have been a small boon that politicians in the State Assembly could have thrown their way in the face of a policy change that would go against their interests, while also not hurting their political standing too much in the process. Politically speaking, it made a lot of sense to go this route.

Of course, this was completely unacceptable, absurd, and totally pointless. It served as nothing more than the last cry of hospital lobbyists who had completely failed to use their influence to stop a much-needed reform from getting through. It symbolized them completely giving up on winning the fight, and out of spite, trying to make the fight something more akin to a wash. In this fight, Klobuchar could have chosen to let loose and allow them to have a crumb. She and her allies had already basically won the war, so it wasn’t like giving them this would really change the broader picture.

To her credit, however, she didn’t sit back and let it happen. Recognizing how pathetic the move was, she went all in on this difficult fight, and she wouldn’t hold back any punches. Not only did she make her opposition very clear in the Minnesota Senate to this change, but she would also bring an audience. In a story she loves to tell now, she would bring an audience of six pregnant women into the Minnesota Senate chamber in an attempt to outnumber hospital lobbyists and look good to the public.

It worked like a charm and exposed what the hospital lobby was trying to do to the bill. Not only did the effort ensure the bill would be passed in its full form, not only did it propel the policy change into the national scene, but it also made Amy Klobuchar a star in the DFL overnight. She clearly had a knack for political action, and even her political opponents on the conservative right could see she was obviously good at it. It paved the way for a dominating political career in the state, something that Amy Klobuchar was clearly aware of when she actually began to run for statewide office in 2006.

And in her second run for public office in 1998, this dominating political career would be put on full display for the first time.

1998: Going to the Lion’s Den

Her political image could not have been stronger by this point. On the one hand, she was a Democrat in a state that had been defined for decades as a bastion of liberal and progressive thought, giving her the by-default edge that generic Democrats had in this blue state. On the other hand, and the one that would later make her an electoral juggernaut, she had established a reputation as a bipartisan moderate driven by legislative success on popular issues. The hospital stay reform she successfully pushed through, despite not even being a politician, had given the people in Minnesota proof that she was good at doing this.

For most politicians, this strong reputation would not stick around for the long haul. This can be for a wide variety of reasons, whether it be controversial votes or positions they had to take on wedge issues, increasing polarization, or simply just getting tired of the politician in charge. Not many politicians are able to successfully keep up the popular image they first establish, and it was not certain if Amy Klobuchar would be able to do so. It’s an easy image to maintain when you fight lobbyists who are trying to keep their terrible, anti-parent policy in place, but it is more difficult when you are in a position to act on several other issues.

Amy Klobuchar, now a star in the state, would use that newfound image to once again run for Hennepin County Attorney in 1998. It was, for all intents and purposes, her first real run for office, as her 1994 run would be abruptly stopped when the incumbent, who had been running for governor, suddenly ended that bid after losing the DFL endorsement, and ran for re-election to his County Attorney position, effectively forcing Klobuchar to drop out of the race. This time, however, he announced that he was running for governor again, this time with the DFL endorsement he had lost in 1994.

With that in mind, the now-DFL star Klobuchar was able to step up to the plate, effectively winning over DFL support by default. The plate she was stepping up to, however, was not going to be one she could take for granted. This was shaping up to be a very tough race for any DFL candidate who wanted to step in. While the DFL was more dominant in Minnesota overall, this race was considered non-partisan, meaning that any by-default advantage they may have had in the state would not be able to help her.

On top of this, the Republicans had settled on an extremely strong candidate, Sheryl Ramstad Hvass. She was well-known in the area, being the president of the Minnesota State Bar Association, the sister of sitting congressman Jim Ramstad who represented the Hennepin County suburbs and exurbs, and experience being a federal prosecutor, public defender, and judge. Adding on the fact that she was ten years older than the 38-year-old newcomer Klobuchar, and she was by all accounts, a very strong recruit by the GOP, and one that would be extremely difficult to beat.

This is an example of a race where a person with weak political instincts would falter. Even someone with more neutral or decent political instincts may very well have also seen themselves lose to such a strong recruit. Even for a party star like Klobuchar, this was a race where at the start, she was the favorite to lose. It became clear early on that she would not have the advantage in cash compared to her Republican opponent, partly due to her refusal to take money from criminal defense funds. On top of this, it looked less and less likely that her party would win Hennepin County in the upcoming gubernatorial race, which was seeing the surge of a third-party outsider who was from the county, as well as strong Republican support in the suburbs and exurbs of the county. So, with all of these disadvantages going against her, what did Klobuchar decide to do?

Knowing the cash disadvantage she had, Klobuchar would immediately set out to make the advertising battle something of a wash between herself and the much wealthier Hvass. The first thing she did was take advantage of the quickly-growing internet, setting up a campaign website for herself and promoting her campaign through online advertising. This was a pretty big gap in Hvass’ frontlines that Klobuchar successfully took advantage of. Hvass, likely dismissive of the internet’s influence at the time, did not bother to set up a campaign network on it, giving Klobuchar free rein on that front. This alongside her TV advertising strategy of going low budget and hitting on her message of legal success with simple black and white photos of her winning cases, she had been able to remain competitive in the advertising market with Hvass.

But this on its own would not be enough. The politics of Hennepin County in 1998 is not at all like the Hennepin County politics of today. Today, you would expect a DFL candidate to be carried statewide by the county, which typically votes for the party by over 40 points. This is thanks to incredibly strong margins in the city of Minneapolis, and more importantly, thanks to increasing Democratic support in the suburbs seen in the last two decades, with many of them flipping outright after 2016. In the modern DFL, the county is the heart of their statewide success, and without it, the state would become far harder to win.

This was not the case in 1998. The Hennepin suburbs, which would later become the defining symbol of the DFL’s continued strength in the face of rural collapse, had not yet started voting blue. In fact, they were solidly Republican, often being up there as the strongest hubs of Republican support in the state. While the city of Minneapolis was very blue, it didn’t put up margins nearly as large as what you see today. These two factors combined meant that Hennepin County, while certainly not Republican-leaning, was not an impossible hill for them to climb, especially with the right candidate as shown by their strong results in the 1990 and 1994 elections, which saw them win Hennepin County both times by strong margins. Hvass, who had family ties with the popular Republican congressman in the Hennepin County suburbs, seemed to be one of those candidates who could pull off a victory in such a county.

Amy Klobuchar knew this very well. She was able to stay even in the advertising contest, but if she did not make an effort in winning voters beyond that, she was still likely to go down in defeat in this race anyway. While she was going to do very well in Minneapolis regardless if she tried or not, she had to make an effort to stop the bleeding she was essentially guaranteed to face in the suburbs and exurbs. If she lost there too badly, it would doom her bid altogether. So, what did she do?

As her campaign manager and future DFL chair Ken Martin put it, Klobuchar had decided to make a specific point of going to “the lion’s den”. But she wouldn’t just do that. She would make a point of appealing to the concerns of those in the lion’s den. The first and most obvious way she did this was just by going to these places. This is easy enough to do, and for a competitive Hennepin County race, doing anything less is just political malpractice. But the second one was much more of a gamble. She would message herself as a tough-on-crime politician, one who argued that the problem with rising crime in Hennepin County was that we were not replicating what other cities were doing and that Hennepin County had to start “enforcing the law down the line”.

This campaign message was a controversial decision and one that gave her many critics on the progressive left, even as recently as 2020. While it made her more palatable to many in the traditional Republican suburbs, it also risked alienating turnout in deep blue Minneapolis, something that she was going to need to have if she wanted to be County Attorney. It was a risky bet, one that many were not sure was going to pay off.

Ultimately, however, it would end up working out. While progressives and the left of the DFL didn’t like her more moderate messaging, they also had a history of liking her advocacy and work within the party, and were not willing to sacrifice her and give the County Attorney seat to the Republicans. Most importantly, it succeeded in stopping the bleeding in the Republican suburbs, playing right into her image as a moderate unifier who was willing to lead by consensus. While Klobuchar was still not favored to win them, the difference she had made campaigning and focusing on this area would pay dividends, and her numbers in the suburbs would go past many of the DFL statewide candidates running. Even her critics wouldn’t deny what had happened here. Her bet had paid off.

Combining all of this with a strong debate moment where she beat back an insult her opponent tried to make by bringing up her Iron Range roots, Klobuchar had turned a race that was heavily against her into an extremely competitive horserace, one that once again demonstrated how well she knew the art of politics. When she was just an advocate for hospital stay reform, it was still arguably easy to dismiss her. Successful advocacy on an issue does not always translate to strong electoral results, these are two separate fields that are by no means 1:1.

However, in the case of Klobuchar, this argument would be shattered on election day. Even as many other DFL candidates had lost Hennepin County, including the DFL candidate for governor who would end up in 3rd place in the county, Klobuchar would manage to defeat her highly funded, well-known Republican opponent by a margin of 0.8%, largely due to better than expected support from the county’s suburbs vs other DFL contenders.

While it was by far the closest election of her entire career, it’s important to not undersell how impressive this was. Virtually all of the odds were stacked against her in this race, whether it be lackluster fundraising, a strong opposition candidate, the removal of by-default generic DFL support thanks to it being non-partisan, and lackluster suburban numbers for the DFL. For a weak or even just normal candidate, this race would have ended in a loss, potentially a crushing loss.

But Amy Klobuchar had demonstrated that she was not like any normal candidate. She didn’t just know how to win. She knew how to win in even the most difficult of circumstances, and while doing so, still manage to overperform other DFL candidates on the ticket. Throughout the entire campaign, she had succeeded at maintaining the positive image she had among liberal DFL voters that she gained in 1995, while at the same time, bringing in a bunch of suburban Republicans who had hardly ever voted DFL before. She could maintain liberal-leaning positions using moderate rhetoric, something that most Democratic politicians, even one in the highest positions in government, can only dream of. Even many of her biggest supporters probably didn’t assume she would be able to pull it off in this race.

But she did, and her victory in this contest would be life-changing. Not only did it propel her into a position of power she had never previously held before, but the mastery of politics she put on full display in this election would be the model for all of her elections going forward.

Only this time, she’d have experience under her belt. And she was not afraid to run with it.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

If you have not read part 1, go read that one! Otherwise, this series won’t feel complete. Or do what you want, your loss.

1946-1948: The Battle for the DFL

After the shocking rebuttal to him at the convention in 1946, Humphrey and his allies had a mission on their hands: purging the new DFL of those they considered to be communist sympathizers hostile to their more anti-communist views. This would initially prove to be a somewhat difficult task.

After all, the DFL was hardly tested by this point. The one statewide loss they had in the 1944 gubernatorial race wasn’t unexpected. By the time Stassen resigned in early 1943 due to a promise he’d serve in the US Navy, he was very popular, and the man who replaced him, Edward Thye, was also a moderate Republican who was generally liked for similar reasons as Stassen. It wasn’t expected that the DFL would be able to take him on yet, even if Roosevelt carried Minnesota. For those reasons, 1944 didn’t pose much importance to the future of the party, especially as they improved their margins in Minnesota on the presidential level, and made US House gains surrounding the Twin Cities area.

1946, on the other hand, would be key to how the party chose to operate in the future. Since 1944, the war that had partially brought the two sides together had ended, and the president who the Farmer-Labor worked with so closely died at his vacation home in Georgia early into his fourth term. Not to mention, for the first time since 1936, the governorship would be an open contest, with Governor Thye deciding to run for the US Senate, eventually defeating incumbent Senator and former Farmor-Labor member Henrik Shipstead in the primary. This gave the DFL the advantage of not having to fight incumbency advantage as they had before, and it left open the possibility of a DFL flip. It was all up in the air now, and since the leftist faction was more in control at this point, it was going to be the faction that would receive the blame if things went poorly.

They got the blame.

1946 was a famously terrible midterm for Democrats, as Truman was suffering from the problems that came from a post-war economic slowdown and crippling low approval ratings. Minnesota was no exception to this rule, and the DFL was about to get a shellacking. Outside of one rare bright spot in the Iron Range, the DFL lost pretty much everywhere in the state. They would lose the governorship and US Senate seat by 19 points each, and all their Twin Cities US House seat gains from 1944 would be wiped out, leaving them with almost nothing left. The national environment was just not on the side of the Democrats, and I think it’s clear that no matter who was leading the faction, the result would have likely stayed the same.

However, even though I’d argue it wasn’t fair to blame them, since the leftists were the predominant faction, they were the ones that received the blame for the DFL’s failures in 1946, and to Humphrey and his crew, it was the opening they needed to take charge. Non-Republicans in Minnesota were sick and tired of losing after eight years, and they were willing to hear Humphrey out. But how did he take control?

He started by taking shots at what he described as the “communist party lines” within the DFL, arguing that if the DFL ever wished to be a truly progressive party movement, it needed to purge them. They then began working to build a statewide affiliate of Elanor Roosevelt’s Americans For Democratic Action, a liberal and progressive organization that was also staunchly anti-communist. Finally, they would fully flex their strength at the 1948 DFL precinct caucus, where their abilities would truly be realized.

The man in charge of this final operation was Orville Freeman, a key ally and friend of Humphrey’s. Under his control, he would lead a successful effort to get volunteers out to the event, and when the day finally came, they were ready and clearly more prepared. Despite heavy resistance from the leftists, the anti-communist wing won over the leftists, and they held clear power over the DFL.

The left would not respond kindly, boycotting the convention in Brainerd that occurred two months later, holding their own in support of Progressive Party candidate for President, Henry Wallace. It wasn’t an entirely nonsignificant break-off, with the most notable person being Elmer Benson, the Farmer-Labor side of the negotiation table that created the DFL, who would later leave the party entirely. Some others joined the Republican Party, similar to how Henrik Shipstead did years prior.

However, in comparison to where they started in 1944, their numbers were just too small for it to really matter anymore. Humphrey was hailed as a hero by the anti-communist faction, and in kind, they endorsed his bid for the US Senate in 1948 enthusiastically, where he would go up against incumbent Republican Joseph Ball.

This was the turning point of the DFL, the point when they shed almost all socialistic parts and went full speed ahead with progressive liberalism. It was a party that laid out Humphrey’s vision almost to a tea, a shocking rise in the party that he only gained real prominence in just five years prior. Now, he was ready to take it to the next level.

1948: The DFL Takes the Stage

Prior to this point, Humphrey didn’t have a lot of national influence. His influence in Minnesota politics was growing rapidly, but unless he did something big, something that would influence the national party itself directly, he would end up just being another politician, even if he managed to defeat Ball in the general election. If he didn’t do anything with his influence, his legacy would ultimately come down to one thing: being the first Democratic Senator elected in Minnesota since before the Civil War. Humphrey, determined to avoid this underwhelming legacy, sought to wield his growing influence in an area not many were willing to do so.

Civil Rights.

As most of you are probably likely aware of, prior to 1948, almost no one in the Democratic Party was really willing to take the issue on. The reason for this is pretty obvious: the Democratic Party at the time relied on a racist, white supremacist coalition in the American South. Roosevelt’s presidency demonstrated this extremely well, which saw Roosevelt not only avoid pushing for any anti-lynching legislation, but also blocked African-Americans from benefitting from several of his New Deal programs, done as a compromise to appease racist southern Democrats into voting for New Deal programs. Before 1948, while many northern Democrats found the policies of the Jim Crow South abhorant, many unfortunately chose to go along with it for political benefit.

However, as the progressive base grew in the Democratic Party, so too did the demand for doing something on the issue of civil rights. Despite being a supporter of civil rights and having a commission designed to recommened how to move forward on the issue, President Truman was not going to be the one who led the effort, as he would go on to shelve that commission and the party platform contained little more than platitudes on supporting civil rights.

To Humphrey and other liberals, this was an unacceptable compromise, and with his growing influence, he would seek to make sure that minority voices were properly heard in a way they never were before in the Democratic Party. Working with fellow anti-communist liberals like Paul Douglas and John Shelley, they sought to have a vote on what they called a “minority plank”, which called for banning lynching, banning school segregation, and ending job discrimination. It was the most pro-civil rights proposal seen by far, and predictably, it was fiercly opposed by southern Democrats, and Truman’s advisers didn’t want to put it to a floor vote out of fear of losing their support.

I want to stress something here. Humphrey really didn’t have to do this. Minnesota was overwhelmingly white, and he stood little to gain electorally by persuing this issue. He was risking upsetting the party bosses and by extension, ruining his chances of making it in national politics. But to his credit, Humphrey didn’t back down. In fact, he went on to give an famous speech on the floor of the convention, where he would proclaim:

“To those who say, my friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late! To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!”

It was an extremely effective speech, and thanks to further efforts by him and his allies, it passed the convention, and the minority plank was officially added to the Democratic Party platform. Humphrey had made a real impact on the party, moving it forward on an issue it had been stuck on for generations. Through his actions, he made several allies and enemies, with the latter group going on to nominate South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond onto the Dixiecrat ticket for president.

Most importantly, however, through his actions, he made the DFL a relevant player in national politics, and that would pay significant dividens back home.

1948: The DFL Breaks Through

Humphrey had finally made himself and the DFL players in the national party operations. But just how was that national party doing?

When the Dixiecrats broke off, it was with the explicit purpose of destroying Humphrey and his liberal allies’ work. Mainly, make the Democrats lose the 1948 election to the Republican nominee Thomas Dewey, and by extension, get them to strip the civil rights agenda out of the platform to earn back their support. It was a pretty scary plan, both for the parties liberal base and the establishment, the latter of which was looking to secure a full term for President Truman.

And initially, it looked like they would pay big for their decision. Truman was consistently considered the favorite the lose the election in November, not just because he was behind Dewey considerably, but he was also losing votes to the Dixiecrats and Progressive Party mentioned earlier, ones he wouldn’t be able to afford losing in the event of a close contest. This was also bad news for the DFL and Humphrey, who depended on Truman winning not just for their electoral prospects in the state, but also to have influence in the national party going forward.

Fortunantely for them, they began to do better and better in the polls. Even as the media dismissed Truman and the Democrats, it became more and more clear that the environment was trending in their favor. This became true in Minnesota as well, with Humphrey becoming the clear favorite to become US Senator, and the governor's race shifting more and more into tossup territory for the first time since the 1930s. This would be the first election where the DFL would be under Humphrey’s control, and his political career, both nationally and statewide, was on the line.

And when the election day results came, it was clear to everyone watching: the DFL finally broke through.

Both Truman and Humphrey would go on to win their respective races, as many had expected. But this was not a close race. This was a blowout victory for the two men, with Truman and Humphrey each winning the state of Minnesota by 17 and 20 points respectively, on par with the margins Republicans were putting up in the state for years. Not only that, but the DFL would pick up three US House seats and keep the incumbent Republican governor within 8 points. With Truman winning nationwide, not only did the DFL prove themselves capable of winning statewide under Humphrey, but they proved themselves capable of moving the party forward while being much more liberal on civil rights matters.

Of course, the DFL could have maybe done better that night. They could have flipped more US House seats that were previously held by Farmer-Labor members. They could have flipped the governorship. They technically could have done better. But make no mistake, this election was a huge breakthrough for the party, and it solidified Humphrey’s place in it.

After 1948, it was clear that the Republicans weren’t going to be able to take statewide elections for granted anymore like they had for the last decade. The Humphrey machine was just too difficult to ignore.

1950-1952: Playing Defense

Going into 1950, the base that the DFL had built up in the 1948 elections was put into question. The popularity that Truman got from his shock victory was long gone at this point, and it looked very possible that the Republicans would once again achieve control of both legislative chambers as they did in 1946. Unlike in 1948, this would not be an opportunity to play offense. They would have to bunker down and play defense.

This was demonstrated well in the gubernatorial race, where Republican incumbent Luther Youngdahl was planning on running for a third term. Elected to a first term easily in 1946, he had a bit of a scare in 1948, having his margin reduced from 19 points to 8 points. While this wasn’t a DFL flip, it was a demonstration of how well they did, as a race for governor hadn’t gotten that close since 1934.

This year, there would be no opportunity for such an overperformance, as Youngdahl would be benefit from a strong national environment and incumbency, two tools that made it practically impossible to defeat him. With potential pickups against the US House Republicans looking seemingly impossible as well, the DFL sought to cut their losses and protect what they already had in the US House.

All things considered, when the midterms actually came, they did a good job at this. While the Democrats did poorly in the 1950 elections overall, the DFL did achieve what they set out to do. Not only did all of their US House Representatives win re-election, all of them with one exception did so by comfortable margins. The DFL had finally learned the ability to take advantage of incumbency, and it played wonders at helping them from being wiped out like they had in so many Republican midterms prior.

1952 would be the next test of this, even more so than 1950. Truman was even less popular than he was in 1950, and after twenty years of the White House being home to a Democratic president, the American people were ready for a change. The Republicans, after nominating five losers in a row, finally nailed on a big winner, that being beloved World War II general Dwight Eisenhower, who was the strong favorite throughout virtually the entire election against his Democratic opponent, including in the state of Minnesota.

This was shaping up to be a bad year for the DFL. They had been able to defend their seats in a Republican year, but this one was shaping up to be a good amount bigger, and many weren’t sure if it would hold up. Worse for them, the bad environment meant that it was unlikely they’d be able to take advantage of Governor Youngdahl’s retirement. And with incumbent Republican Senator Edward Thye running for re-election shoring up Republican support downballot, this could have ended up being a rough election for the DFL.

But it wasn’t. They pulled it off again.

Despite Dwight Eisenhower winning the state of Minnesota by 11 points, despite Republicans taking the governorship by 11 points, and despite Senator Thye being re-elected by a 14 point margin, the DFL had done it again. They protected all of their US House seats, a miraculous showing for them in the face of a Republican wave. They didn’t just pull off a defensive strategy. They mastered it.

To address the obvious, it is definitely underwhelming that the DFL wasn’t able to make any gains in 1950 and 1952. They didn’t even really get close to, whether it be in the statewide offices or US House seats. In that sense, to draw a modern parallel, its similar to the results the Democrats had in the recent 2022 midterms, a similarly underwhelming showing when shown in a vaccum.

I think its important, however, like that election, to remember that the results could have been so much worse for them, and potentially had much longer lasting damage to their standing in Minnesota. Thanks to their excellent defense of what they had, however, they were primed to make gains going forward and hold onto a strong base that would stick by them even when they were at weak points.

And that’s exactly what they would do.

Part 3 will be out soon.

Response to Feedback

I wanted to add something here at the end addressing feedback I got on my first piece, because I just wanted to express deep appreciation for those that left commentary on my last piece, it means the world to me.

Everyone that left comments were kind, and that really gives me a ton of motivation to keep persuing writing, something I only recently discovered I have a real knack for. So thank you guys for that.

As for the critiques, the most common one expressed was that these pieces are too long, and should be made a bit shorter and less drawn out. This is a fair criticism, as was something on the back of my mind as I wrote that piece and this one you are reading right now. It can be an accessability issue, one that I myself have difficulty getting over when looking at other writers, unless I really like their past work.

For now, this is something that will unfortunantely have to stay around. The history of the DFL is pretty long and complicated, and I feel like I’d be doing a disservice if I missed or cut things out I otherwise would have if the pieces were made shorter.

However, once this series is complete and I begin work on other pieces, I will make my best efforts to narrow the posts down in length, while also making sure I don’t miss crucial and important details.

I’d once again like to say that I really appericate all the feedback left on the last post, and welcome any feedback on this post, as well as anything else I write in the future. Expect more content from me in the future.