A state that hasn’t delivered its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 is bucking the prevailing national political winds and contemplating a change after years of progressive mismanagement.
Yes, Minnesota may have some regrets.
Much has been made of the impending Blue Wave that’s sure to deliver Democrats control of the House, could make Chuck Schumer the Senate’s new majority leader and will in all likelihood render Donald Trump impotent in the final two years of his presidency.
Democrats are not only counting their chickens in battleground states like Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, but dreaming big in red strongholds like Iowa, Kansas, Texas and South Carolina.
But perhaps they should be looking in their own backyard: Republicans playing offense in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
“What we’re seeing is a kind of tug of war between what’s happening in Minnesota and what’s happening nationally,” said John Hinderaker, the founder of Power Line and president of the Center of the American Experiment, a prominent conservative think tank in the North Star State.
One recent survey conducted by his organization found that 58% of respondents believe Minnesota is on the wrong track; just 37% say it’s on the right one.
“Minnesotans are fundamentally unhappy with how things have been going in our state. There are several reasons for that, but clearly No. 1 is fraud,” Hinderaker told The Post.
Democrats and their forever allies in the media have downplayed the sweeping fraud scandal that eventually compelled Gov. Tim Walz not to run for a third term, but the taxpaying victims remain irate.
“Nobody in Minnesota thinks it’s a minor thing . . . I mean, it’s billions of dollars and it’s brazen,” observed Hinderaker, who pointed not only to the the fake charity Feeding Our Future, but the massive investigation into Medicaid fraud in the state.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Democrat running to succeed Walz as governor, knows just how big a vulnerability the current administration in St. Paul is — and she’s trying to put as much distance between it and her campaign as she possibly can.
“They were just signing off on these grants. Walz himself said he should have caught it earlier. Well, yeah. When the line item is skyrocketing up for one program that should be an immediate red alert,” Klobuchar told The Wall Street Journal recently.
“Major things went wrong. That pissed me off, and everyone else off.”
See that, under the bus?
There lies Tim Walz’s legacy.
Conventional wisdom might suggest Klobuchar is the heavy favorite against Republican Lisa Demuth, but Hinderaker isn’t so sure, even with Klobuchar’s supposed rejection of the far left.
Klobuchar garnered just 56% of the vote in 2024 when she was running against the cranky Royce White, or “essentially unopposed,” as Hinderaker put it.
“The idea that she’s this massively popular politician is, I think, overstated at best,” he argued.
Republicans are even better positioned in other races.
In the state’s race for US Senate, ex-sports journalist Michele Tafoya is giving Walz’s loony lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, a run for her money.
A trio of polls released last month found that Tafoya is either tied or just one point behind Flanagan.
And although a Minnesota Star Tribune survey recently found that Flanagan boasts a four-point lead, 9% of respondents called themselves undecided.
Hinderaker believes that both Tafoya and Ron Schutz, the GOP’s attorney-general nominee who’s taking on incumbent Keith Ellison, will prevail.
“I’ve thought for a long time that Michele’s going to win it,” he said, contrasting the “far left-winger” Flanagan with the much more moderate Tafoya, who has also been a “strong performer” on the campaign trail.
Ellison is also far too intertwined with the fraud scandal for his own good.
“We released a 54-minute audiotape of Keith Ellison meeting with Feeding Our Future fraudsters and promising to help them help them fend off inquiries about fraud — and 10 days later, some of them donated to his campaign,” noted Hinderaker.
“Ellison’s going down.”
Fraud isn’t the only black mark on Democrats’ nearly two-decade-long domination of state politics, either.
The economy is stagnant, the schools are declining and the streets are less safe.
That last bit is especially salient given the outbreaks of violence the Twin Cities have become famous for in the years since the George Floyd riots.
“There has been this outbreak of Somali gang violence in the suburbs,” said Hinderaker.
On Oct. 2, 18-year-old Adam Abdihakeem Adam allegedly opened fire and shot two teenagers at Eden Prairie High School’s homecoming football game.
He’s already been released after posting bond.
“This is a huge deal . . . and it came along at a very inopportune time for the Democrats,” said Hinderaker.
In 2024, the left thought it had found the answer to Trump’s domination of Middle America in Walz, the smiley “knucklehead” with a penchant for hyperbolic self-aggrandizement.
Just two years later, his failures in Minnesota are such an embarrassing spectacle that he may instead deliver the GOP an unlikely silver lining on election night.