In Brief:
- Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Minnesota in two decades, but have worked to highlight high taxes and a fraud scandal under Democratic control of state government.
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz bowed out of his re-election campaign amid criticism of his handling of the scandal.
- The federal government’s violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis has changed the political narrative in the state.
A few weeks ago, Lisa Demuth, the Republican speaker of the Minnesota House, had a pretty straightforward message in her campaign for the governor’s office: Under eight years of Gov. Tim Walz and two years of a Democratic trifecta in the state government, Minnesotans had been subject to one-party rule, resulting in higher taxes, a record budget surplus gone to waste, and such lax oversight of government programs that fraudsters in the Twin Cities area were able to steal hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Over the last month, the federal government’s response to the fraud scandal has complicated the message. The scandal involved a network of nonprofits, small businesses and individuals who claimed reimbursement from a pandemic-era relief program for meals to children that they had never served. Seizing on the fact that most of the people charged in the scandal are Somali American, President Donald Trump initiated an immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities known as Operation Metro Surge. The surge sparked a backlash over the aggressive tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, many of whom are new on the job. Mass demonstrations have filled Minneapolis streets in the last few weeks after federal officials shot and killed two protestors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were U.S. citizens.
The killings have altered the narrative around immigration enforcement in the U.S. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, called the shooting of Pretti “an inflection point” for Republicans that raises “questions and concerns” about ICE tactics. One Minnesota Republican, attorney Chris Madel, ended his bid for the governor’s office in a repudiation of the immigration crackdown, citing reporting that some people of color have begun carrying documentation of their citizenship as they fear being randomly stopped or racially profiled by ICE agents. Even President Trump, who has continued to disparage Somalis, calling them “garbage” and “low-IQ people,” has made efforts to de-escalate the tension in Minneapolis, promising to shrink the size of the ICE force on city streets.
“This,” Demuth says, “has taken Minnesotans’ eyes off the fraud.”
Minnesota is by most measures a blue state. It hasn’t voted for a Republican president since Richard Nixon in 1972; along with Washington, D.C., it was the only state Ronald Reagan didn’t win in 1984. Statewide elections have been dominated by Democrats for decades. Pawlenty was the last Republican to win the governor’s office, in 2006. Republicans have only periodically taken control of one or both chambers of the state Legislature since then. They currently have an edge in the state House, which is coming to an end after two Democratic wins in special elections this month will return the House to a tie.
The general election in November was shaping up to be a tough fight for Republicans, with the typical dynamic of a midterm backlash against the president’s party and widespread concerns about the economy and the cost of living. In that context, the fraud scandal, which unfolded on Democrats’ watch, was a gift to the Minnesota GOP.
“[The fraud scandal] is the worst kind of political story [for Democrats] because it’s a drip, drip, drip sort of a thing,” says Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist. “It was a story that didn’t have an end.”
Republicans made hay — perhaps too much hay, too quickly. Under fire from Republicans in Minnesota and around the country, Walz announced earlier this month that he was ending his bid for a third term. Then, the ICE surge, coinciding with the administration’s attention to the fraud scandal, sparked a nationwide backlash. Some of the prosecutors involved in the fraud cases resigned after the federal government sought to block state officials from investigating the shooting of Renee Good. Some polls show most people think the immigration enforcement effort has “gone too far,” including nearly two-thirds of unaffiliated voters. The issue is likely to motivate Democratic voters in November.
“One effect is going to be that you’re going to see super high turnout by Democrats in the midterm elections,” Jacobs says. “That is very significant because usually you see a whole lot of Democrats disappear [in the midterms]. The turnout is terrible. That’s not going to be the case this November.”
If Operation Metro Surge was an attempt to highlight the failures of Democratic officeholders, says Jacobs, “It backfired badly.”
Minnesota’s Republican leaders are trying to walk a careful line as they respond to the violence in Minneapolis. Demuth, for example, has acknowledged the deaths of protestors there as “absolutely tragic,” but says things only escalated to the point of violent clashes because of Democratic leaders’ lack of cooperation with federal immigration officials and heated rhetoric about ICE. “With any tragedy, any video, as things become viral, I’ve chosen to refrain from assumptions and what I’m seeing, because there has to be investigations on these things,” Demuth says.
They are also blaming protestors for stoking tensions.
“Renee Good and Alex Pretti both put themselves in this situation. I’m not saying they deserved to be killed, but they put themselves in this situation,” says Alex Plechash, chairman of the Minnesota GOP. He says gun owners like Pretti have an extra responsibility in public to avoid volatile situations. “If he wasn’t doing what he shouldn’t have been doing, he would still be alive,” Plechash says.
Still, the state GOP wants to draw a distinction between immigration policy — most Republicans remain staunchly supportive of Trump’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, especially those with criminal records — and the actions of ICE during Operation Metro Surge.
“The surge and the way it was handled, whether it was just perception or reality, and in politics perception is reality, what’s being perceived is that there was a huge federal government overreach in doing what they were doing here,” Plechash says.
In any event, Minnesota is not a hotbed of illegal immigration relative to other U.S. states, and the state’s Republicans would rather talk about high taxes and fraud.
“It has become a challenge for us politically,” Plechash says. “But I would also say, and I’m a little bit optimistic, this is going to pass rather quickly. It’s not going to last until the election.”
