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The century-old Nick’s Bar in the small Iron Range city of Gilbert was dim and empty on a recent Saturday morning as DFL state Rep. Dave Lislegard gathered with six area political leaders interested in rekindling support for a party that’s been losing ground.
The meeting captured the extraordinary political moment Gilbert and the rest of the Iron Range – synonymous with labor unions and the DFL for generations – is living through. Party faithful know the way the Range and most of northeastern Minnesota vote is changing.
“People up in rural Minnesota in particular are either feeling, at times, left behind by Washington D.C., or particularly Hennepin and Ramsey County,” said Al Hodnik, who formerly led the region’s biggest power company as CEO of Allete Inc., and sits on the board of PolyMet Mining, a company hoping to build a copper-nickel mine near Babbitt.
It’s that sentiment, in part, that has helped Republicans win most legislative districts across Greater Minnesota. But victories on and around the Iron Range have largely eluded the GOP, thanks to union support and veteran political giants like Tom Bakk and David Tomassoni.
Still, GOP legislative hopefuls need only look to strong showings for Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber to know the region is truly up for grabs. In fact, northeastern Minnesota could play a pivotal role in whether Democrats or Republicans hold majorities next year in a state where control of the narrowly divided House and Senate is typically decided in the Twin Cities suburbs.
Lislegard — a two-term lawmaker and former mayor of Aurora campaigning on his experience and legislative know-how — is facing Republican Matt Norri in one of seven bona fide battleground legislative races that touch nearly every part of the region, including Cloquet, Hermantown, Virginia, Two Harbors, Grand Marais, Ely, Virginia, Hibbing, International Falls and even a small slice of Duluth.
The campaigns reflect a scrambled political landscape. Two longtime DFL senators from the region who had left the party to become independents are out of the picture (Bakk is retiring, and Tomassoni died of ALS this year). Bakk recruited the Republican mayor of Babbitt to replace him while also endorsing the DFLer Lislegard. Both candidates also have support from the Trump-backing mayor of Virginia.
Candidates in both parties sought to win endorsements from law enforcement, unions and prominent political figures in elections that also feature debate on inflation, policing, economic stagnation, abortion, the state surplus, political independence, frustration toward the Twin Cities and Democratic divisions over a mining industry that is central to the economy and identity of the Iron Range.
“Where they believe up here that they can mine and recreate at the same time as their forebearers did, that’s not what they’re hearing or what they’re feeling or what they’re seeing from St. Paul,” said Hodnik, who supports Lislegard.
Shift to the right
Vote totals for Democrats in northeastern Minnesota are fading. Republicans have won districts including turf surrounding the Iron Range – Grand Rapids and Cloquet, for instance.
Stauber, whose 8th Congressional District includes a much larger swath of northeastern and northern Minnesota, turned heads by winning as a labor-friendly conservative. And voters in four of the seven northeastern Minnesota battleground legislative districts also favored Trump in 2020, who campaigned in Duluth and nearby Bemidji while highlighting his support for copper mining, steel tariffs on China and logging.
There’s a sense in the GOP that many northeastern voters are actually Republicans — mostly rural, friendly to guns and to industry over environmentalists, for example — they just don’t know it yet. The main six counties in northeastern Minnesota — Cook, Lake, St. Louis, Koochiching, Itasca and Carlton — are older, whiter and more male than the state as a whole, though there is a proportionally larger American Indian population in most of the counties. Fewer residents in most of those counties hold bachelor’s degrees than the state average.
Larry Cuffe, the mayor of Virginia, said the shift to Republicans, at least on the Range, is in part because of Gov. Tim Walz’s pandemic regulations and local support for gun rights. “But I think the primary driver up here is the huge groundswell of anti-mining south of us,” said Cuffe, who supported Trump in 2020 and the Republican Andrea Zupancich to replace Bakk, but has also endorsed Lislegard.
Aaron Brown, a writer and college instructor in Hibbing, said the changing landscape on the Range isn’t just due to mining politics. “When your grandpa spent his whole life complaining about U.S. Steel you tended to be a DFLer,” he said. “When your grandpa spends his whole life complaining about the Twin Cities, you become a Republican.”
While the DFL’s winning streak for legislative seats on the central Iron Range is intact, the GOP came close to ousting a few DFLers around the region in 2020.
That year, DFL Rep. Julie Sandstede of Hibbing was elected by just 30 votes after winning by more than 4,300 votes in 2018. She’s now facing GOP Rep. Spencer Igo of Grand Rapids after redistricting paired the two incumbents together in a more Republican-friendly district. Democratic Rep. Mike Sundin of Esko won in 2020 by roughly 3 percentage points, but is retiring. Democrat Pete Radosevich and Republican Jeff Dotseth are now running for the open seat.
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Lislegard won his race in 2018 by more than 24 percentage points. In 2020, he secured a narrower 9 percentage-point victory, surprising considering his opponent, Julie Buria, compared the state’s COVID-19 response to the Holocaust and appeared to back the QAnon conspiracy.
[image_caption]State Rep. Dave Lislegard hopes to finish stronger than his daughter’s dog Duke, who came in second in a two-dog heat in a Biwabik dachshund race.[/image_caption][image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit]
In the Senate, Bakk of Cook and Tomassoni of Chisholm both won comfortably in 2020 as Democrats, but voters in their districts favored Trump over Biden.
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Those 2020 results, and a stronger slate of candidates, are fueling the current optimism among Republicans. A wave of political spending across the region is evidence the GOP and its allies believe they can win seats.
Republicans currently control the state Senate and hope to shore up their slim majority. The DFL effectively holds a 70-64 majority in the House, making the five House seats in northeastern Minnesota one path to flipping the chamber.
A more labor friendly GOP? Norri-Lislegard race tests union factor
In 2020, a Senate Republican campaign official said the party can control historically Democratic districts that favored Trump by running “pro-life, pro-gun, pro union” Republicans. Matt Norri, the GOPer who is running against Lislegard in House District 7B, might fit that mold.
Norri spent much of his life working at his family’s prominent beer and beverage distribution business in Virginia, cleaning floors and ashtrays at a warehouse when he was younger before working with local breweries to distribute their beer.
The family business was sold in 2019 and Norri now works part time for an insurance company. But the Norri name remains well known.
Norri drove me to a restaurant and two bars in the city on a late September afternoon, ordering four beers on the tour — he says ordering beer is a habit meant to support the bars and the distribution industry — while chatting with light crowds. Between stops he pointed out family landmarks, like a portrait of his father as a high school wrestler on an athletic mural at Virginia’s high school.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]Republican House candidate Matt Norri, at the beer and beverage distribution warehouse in Virginia once owned by his family.[/image_caption]
Norri and Lislegard both oppose “right to work” laws that block unions from requiring workers to join or pay dues, though the major unions across the political spectrum, including the steelworkers and the 49ers, backed Lislegard. Both candidates also support the PolyMet copper-nickel mine, which is in limbo after courts halted some of the project’s permits following legal challenges by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and environmental groups concerned with potential water pollution.
When Norri talks to voters, he said they’re often most interested in mining policy. Even while other Range Democrats support PolyMet and the administrations of both DFL Govs. Tim Walz and Mark Dayton have approved permits for it, President Joe Biden’s administration has blocked Twin Metals, another copper-nickel mine proposed near Ely.
Aurora Mayor Doug Gregor said that stance is a liability for Democrats looking for support on the Range.
“If overnight, for instance, Washington flipped and said suddenly we’re going to take seriously what we’re saying about strategic metals, this region I think would really breathe a sigh of relief and say ‘OK, now the stars are beginning to align,’” he said during the bar gathering in Gilbert. “That we can support all the good things Democrats do because they don’t have that association or lobby against them.”
For now, though, Norri can use federal mining policy and the fact that many in the DFL don’t support PolyMet or Twin Metals as he campaigns. “I’m not going to have to vote against a metro Republican” on mining issues, Norri said. “If we gain the majority these things will happen, unless they get vetoed.”
More broadly, Norri says the GOP now appeals to the “working man.” People who have spent decades represented by Democrats are ready to take a chance on something new, he said. “We have been stagnant up here for the last however many years and I think people are like, well, what if?” Norri said.
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In his campaign pitch, Lislegard has focused squarely on legislative experience. He said he can better navigate the complex political system to help bring money and projects to the Range. He cites as evidence cash for a public safety center in Virginia, the expansion of Heliene’s solar panel manufacturing facility in Mountain Iron and increased subsidies critical for local government services passed by the Legislature.
The DFLer said Norri “is a very nice young man with no knowledge at any level.” And with the loss of Bakk and Tomassoni, generations of expertise and political power are walking out the door. (Norri said he is adept at making relationships through his time in business that will make him a more effective legislator.)
Lislegard, a former steelworker, also said it’s important for Greater Minnesota and the Range to retain influence within the DFL. And the DFL-led House hasn’t held an anti-mining hearing in four years, Lislegard argued, though Republicans contest that.
If there are no rural Democrats, Lislegard said the Range would be in a precarious position when the DFL controls the Legislature, as they often do in the liberal-leaning state. “If everybody from Greater Minnesota is a Republican, what are they going to focus on in the seven-county metro?” Lislegard said. “Either you’re on the inside of the tent or you’re on the outside of the tent.”
Many institutional voices on the Range still side with Lislegard, even if voters are moving to the right. The bar meeting in Gilbert appeared to be a show of unity amid the fractured political landscape. In attendance was Hodnik, the former CEO of Allete; Steve Giorgi, former executive director of the Range Association of Municipalities and Schools; and the mayors of Aurora, Biwabik, Buhl and Gilbert.
Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves endorsed Lislegard, as did the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association and the National Rifle Association. The MPPOA has endorsed mostly Republicans this year. Bakk endorsed Lislegard and DFL Rep. Rob Ecklund of International Falls, saying their “established seniority” is “critical to the region’s success.”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]Supporters of Rep. Dave Lislegard at Nick’s Bar in Gilbert. From left to right: Steve Giorgi, former executive director of the Range Association of Municipalities and Schools; Aurora Mayor Doug Gregor; Lislegard; former ALLETE CEO Al Hodnik; Gilbert Mayor Karl Oberstar Jr.; Buhl Mayor John Klarich; Biwabik Mayor Jim Weikum.[/image_caption]
Adjacent to that contested House district, Babbitt mayor Andrea Zupancich is the GOP candidate hoping to replace Bakk in the state Senate.
Senate District 3 covers an enormous area that includes rural townships, small cities like Ely, International Falls and Grand Marais, as well as the more suburban Hermantown and a small part of Duluth.
Zupancich became a real estate agent after being laid off from managing a curling club amid a mining downturn. The former K-12 substitute teacher now has a high profile in the area. In addition to being a mayor who owns a real estate business, Zupancich has ties to another prominent business — her husband is one owner of the Zup’s grocery company. She has been quoted in national outlets as an ardent supporter of copper-nickel mining.
“You can raise a family on that,” Zupancich said. “When I was subbing I would ask kids what they would want to do when they were older and all of them said there are no jobs here, we have to go away.”
And the one-time Barack Obama voter who endorsed Lislegard in 2018 also embraced Trump as a boon to industry, appearing at a roundtable event with him in 2018 and interviewing in 2020 with Fox News host Tucker Carlson after endorsing Trump.
Zupancich met with me at a Hermantown restaurant after an event in Hinckley hosted by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49, an influential union that endorsed both her and DFL opponent Grant Hauschild but whose leadership has accused many DFLers of straying from supporting industry and construction.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]Republican Senate candidate Andrea Zupancich of Babbitt talking to a prospective voter while doorknocking in Hermantown.[/image_caption]
Her website highlights opposition to gun restrictions, support for police and opposition to Walz’s use of emergency powers during the pandemic. She says she has a good handle on what people need from traveling the district for years for real estate and as a hockey mom. Zupancich said Hauschild can’t equal that after moving into the area from North Dakota in 2018. (Hauschild, a Hermantown city councilman since 2020, says his family chose to live in the area because they love it and said the breadth of his experience makes him a better choice.)
Outside ads also tie Hauschild and Lislegard to a House DFL vote to raise the gas tax in 2019, which was blocked by the Republican-led Senate. Hauschild wasn’t in the Legislature, while Lislegard said he knew the GOP would halt the tax and said the bill had other priorities of his that did become law.
Why does Zupancich believe voters are ready to vote for a Republican after Bakk? For one, Bakk recruited her to run and endorsed her.
“I believe the parties have changed,” Zupancich said. “Republicans seem to be more for the working folk and getting things done.”
But Hauschild, whose campaign T-shirts bear the slogan “just deliver,” says it’s DFLers who have gotten things done for the district.
“We’ve always had titans and we need another one,” Hauschild said of Bakk in an interview at the Hermantown YMCA before marching in a high school homecoming parade.
“It’s my perspective that what people are looking for up here is a senator that’s ready on day one and who can make sure that they’re bringing money north so that we’re less reliant on local property taxes, we’re funding our Northland schools equitably,” he said.
The Fargo native, who lived part time in Minnesota with his dad growing up, worked as a legislative aide and political director for then-Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, focusing in part on labor policy. He also worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture under Barack Obama concentrating on rural economic development nationally. Besides serving on the Hermantown council, Hauschild is executive director of Essentia Health’s foundation.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]DFL state Senate candidate Grant Hauschild greets parade-goers in Hermantown before the high school’s homecoming football game.[/image_caption]
For instance, around Hermantown, people are often focused on health care issues, workforce shortages or the cost of living, he said. On the North Shore, availability of housing is a worry. People in Babbitt and Silver Bay are concerned about Cleveland-Cliffs idling its Northshore Mining taconite plant, and there are steelworkers negotiating a contract with U.S. Steel who want support for labor. Hauschild and Zupancich support extending unemployment benefits for laid off workers at Northshore Mining.
Abortion is a top-three issue most places, said Hauschild, who doesn’t support new restrictions. Zupancich’s website says she will support “pro-life legislation,” but said in the interview that she isn’t pursuing a ban. Republicans, including Norri, often cite Minnesota’s constitutional protection for abortion.
Hauschild notes he has earned support from every prominent union in the region, even as Zupancich says she is a defender of unions. Zupancich said it’s difficult to give a “flat out yes or no” on “right to work” policy, which hasn’t been a priority of the Senate GOP. “I work with a union here at city hall and there are people that opt not to be with the union,” she said. Northshore mine workers “opted not to be in the union … every circumstance is different.”
On mining, the DFLer has called for a “rigorous regulatory process” for copper-nickel mining projects but opposes the federal ban Biden has proposed in the Rainy River watershed, which flows into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Hauschild has also earned endorsements from the mayors of Proctor, Hermantown, Grand Marais, Rainier and International Falls. He is also endorsed by Doug Johnson, the longtime senator who preceded Bakk in representing the area. Tomassoni’s son Dante marched with Hauschild at the Hermantown parade. The NRA-endorsed Zupancich is also backed by GOP House candidate and Ely mayor Roger Skraba, the Virginia mayor Cuffe, the mayors of Winton and Eveleth and a handful of local elected officials across the district.
The DFL history
[image_credit]Courtesy Legislative Reference Library[/image_credit] [image_caption]Carl M. D'Aquila[/image_caption]
“They were so adept at it because they worked as a coalition,” said Giorgi, the former leader of the Range Association of Municipalities and Schools. “The Range delegation, hopefully along with the Duluth delegation, had enough swing votes to be able to bring the dollars home.”
Since 1973, when legislative elections again became partisan in Minnesota, four out of five legislators who have represented any part of six northeastern Minnesota counties — Cook, Lake, St. Louis, Koochiching, Itasca and Carlton — were Democrats.
Brown, the writer in Hibbing, said the last Republican to be elected to the Legislature from the heart of Democratic power in the region — the central Mesabi Iron Range — was 22-year-old Carl D’Aquila of Hibbing in 1946. He served two terms in the House while caucusing with conservatives when the positions were nominally nonpartisan.
“He was kind of a novelty,” Brown said. “The only Republican to win on the Range, back when that was much harder to do. Now, I think it will begin to happen more regularly.”
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More than a million Americans died of Covid-19. If you want to vote for someone foolish enough to not get vaccinated call the disease a “flu bug” running for a party that rejected an election and embraced the insurrection to install Dictator Don and end our democracy, it says a lot about you. Do you think that Trump and his big money boys care about the small guy. Wonder why the Range is behind? All the profits of mining get sucked out of the region while you are left to handle the clean-up. Back in the day Hibbing HS was a showplace because companies were expected to pay their way to build local communities. Modern Republican businessmen could not care less about the human or environmental damage they leave. If you insist on voting for them, at least ask they to embrace elections and invest locally.
If they focused on bringing in high quality broadband internet it would provide many more job opportunities than the highly automated mining industry.
This source shows 42,000 mining jobs in the entire USA.
https://datausa.io/profile/naics/metal-ore-mining
Meanwhile, there are more than 2 million people working in computer science and it is growing at 10+% annually. There are more than 40,000 job OPENINGS in the USA and there are projections that we need 20,000 more people every year. Every two years there are more new computer science jobs created than all of the mining industry jobs in the entire country.
Following the link for metal ore mining you see this fun blurb:
“The highest paid occupations in Metal ore mining, by average wage, are Chief executives & legislators, Financial managers, and COMPUTER & INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGERS.”
The best paying job at the mine is the IT guy. Focus on the economy of 2040, not the economy of 1940.
Not everyone is able to go and get a CompSci degree. Actually that number is pretty small. The real need is for people that have a trade skill.
If rural MN had good internet service then anyone with a computer science degree could live there. As is any talent they do have is forced to move away to find work. They don’t have the infrastructure needed to compete.
Disappointing and humorous that these people think repubs care about them, will do something for them…which they won’t.
How do people become so gullible?
Gene, they become that gullible by watching Dems do absolutely nothing up here for years. They got that gullible by watching the DFL waste IRRRB money left and right. Watching the Leftie’s side with the “greenies” versus logging and mining may have changed a few minds also.
Joe! Senator Bakk “did things” for the Range for decades! There were millions of dollars in the omnibus bill to get internet service to out-state Minnesota. The Republican Leadership shut it down. Don’t be fooled by the headlines; we need reporting that drills down into the issues so that voters can be knowledgeable going into the polls. If the miners are pissed at the Democratic Party, it isn’t because Democrats oppose mining. It’s because Democrats expect multi=national mining companies to honor, respect, and play according to our environmental regulations. Those regulations protect you, me, and our great-grandchildren from an environmental that doesn’t support life. If you think that it’s not important to protect future generations, you shouldn’t vote at all. “I won’t be here, so it doesn’t matter” is a very harmful position to vote from.
I don’t know where these 10 syllable memes come from, but trust me…there’s a lot more to elections than 10 syllable memes…especially if you live in Northern Minnesota.
Cuyuna is doing as well as it is BECAUSE of the lefties and greenies, not in spite of them.
Chisholm is now copying Cuyuna’s successful moves, starting with the creation of the Redhead Mountain Bike Park and the opening of the Minnesota Discovery Center to draw visitors and their dollars (especially from the Twin Cities).
Nobody can ignore the power of tourist dollars to augment/replace the shrinking mining dollar (hint: a large share of the mining dollars flow from The Range to multinational owners. There is no comparable outflow of tourism dollars.)
Jason, the area doesn’t need a bike trail that is operational 5-6 months a year. What this area needs is some manufacturing jobs also bring some businesses up here with the 10’s of millions IRRRB dollars. I’ve seen enough bike trails and boat landings to last 2 lifetimes.
The IRRRB do spend money up here, they have to, how they spend it is the issue.
You won’t get companies to create manufacturing jobs if you don’t the ability to move product (highways and airports), skilled people (and universities to educate them) or a way to connect with the outside world (broadband communications technology). Fargo and Duluth have all three of these but in between those cities it is difficult to find all of those in Northern MN. Bemidji has a fighting chance but other areas are going to continue to decline.
Dan, I’ve worked with high school educated, college educated, trade school educated and apprentice trained workers, all are good. You don’t need a college education to be successful. Between Hwy 169, Hwy 53, Hwy 73, Hwy 2 you have plenty of roads to move product. The Range has hard working folks who need good paying jobs! That is the number one job of IRRRB. Not everyone needs a humanities degree!
Hermantown has everything you would find in Hibbing but it’s closer to the Duluth airport and you can find engineering and business school graduates from UMD, UWS and St Scholastica. More importantly it has access to broadband internet service at work and at the homes of employees.
No company is going to put a new manufacturing facility in a white spot on this map.
https://mn.gov/deed/assets/service-availability_tcm1045-255862.pdf
There may be hard-working folks on the range but it doesn’t do any good if they’re all watching the blue circle spin on the screen waiting for things to download.
Just curious Joe, but what have repubs done for the workers? Zilch, but for some reason you think they will or have.
Frequently I ask repubs such as yourself this question and they never answer it…because they cannot.
And then there is always the truth too:
Some of the manufacturing companies and jobs assisted by the IRRRB:
Detroit Diesel Remanufacturing
Midwest Aircraft Refinishing
Minnesota Diversified Industries
Range Steel Fabricators
Virginia Plastics
Zakobe
Edward, good try, Minnesota Diversified is a non profit company and Midwest Aircraft has 8 employees, Zakobe is a family business. Only know of those 3 IRRRB backed companies. When I’m talking manufacturing I’m not talking non profit or a family business, I’m talking major manufacturing, dozens and dozens of direct jobs and spin off jobs from the plant. Living up here you actually know the folks and their businesses plus you see where the IRRRB spends its money…. But good try.
Minnesota Diversified Industries (that I first visited at its’ original Midway location while in college in 1976) is a manufacturing company that provides jobs for special needs people. I do believe that even the Range may have people with special needs looking for a paying, manufacturing job that enables one meaningful aspect of their life: work.
That the IRRRB supports this is some how not a good thing or a positive example of it’s work, or simply “doesn’t count”, is a little cynical…
I’m well aware of Minnesota Diversified, yes they do employ a wide variety of workers many with special needs. I think what they do is fantastic but they still are a not for profit business. I wasn’t talking about nonprofits, I was talking about high paying manufacturing jobs being brought here with IRRRB money to pay for building costs, property taxes, machinery, anything that stimulates a company to build products up here. Again, good try.
Really? I seem to remember Democrats fighting to keep mining jobs, supporting unions, among other things. Recently.. Ben DeNucci and some other Dems are working to get an independently owned grocery store in Aurora. What has Stauber done, other than vote no on the infrastructure bill, then try to take credit for what it will do for MN.
Gene, we call this The Big Lie. Stuart Stevens wrote the book; a former Republican operative who could no longer support the QAnon, Trump, conspiracy crowd. He went deep into the history and came forward through Trump’s candidacy for the President of the United States. This isn’t just talk; Stevens talks from an insider view. America is better informed after reading this book. I recommend it.
Was this journalism? When people make false statements, you need to address that. You need to state the facts. “I believe the parties have changed,” Zupancich said. “Republicans seem to be more for the working folk and getting things done.” This very hopeful statement is not based in reality – this is not a true depiction of what goes on in the legislature. The facts do not support this at all. If we are to look past the state legislature and look at the voting record of Congressman Stauber this statement becomes a joke.
So true, they just aren’t smart enough to.know what is good for them.
Certainly the change in the shape and size of the district has also had some impact on vote distribution, because it now dips southward into Republican territory north of the TC metro. That would also have brought Republican campaigners into the Iron Range to make their points about why they should switch to the Republican ticket. But, the people of the range have always stuck to their pragmatic needs over everything else: they support companies when they can provide jobs, detest companies that diminish job-holder working conditions and benefits. So, loyalty doesn’t focus on institutions nor perhaps even to parties, but to individual needs. [Incidentally, MinnPost needs a proofreader. What’s a hockey hom?]
Thanks for the typo catch, Stan. It’s been fixed.
Northshore is idled, Minorca has a new contract. Guess which one is union. We’re not talking Polymet pie in the sky, we’re talking here and now. Vote blue, for social security might depend own it as well.
The Range will be a solid Red area very soon. Folks down in Twin Cities will get fed up with crime, businesses leaving the Cities, a burnt out Lake street, a Mpls public school system failing children yearly and move away from DFL. Hopefully for the health of the state, it happens sooner than later.
Do you even live in the same city I do?
Thank you for saying that.
Thank you for an analysis of why the Range will turn red based on all that you know about an area you don’t live in.
I’m sure diligent internet research tells all these things, but does not tell about a pleasant day walking around Minnehaha Falls, a great night out at a new restaurant and countless other things that are the reason St Louis County saw a population increase from 2010 to 2020 of 5 (five!), and Hennepin County 129,140.
Perhaps the Kim Crockett defense:
“It is not like these new people are from Norway”
Sorry Edward I have a house in the Twin Cities and have had it for probably longer than you have been alive. I spend enough time in Mpls to see how far downhill it has gone since the 1970’s. I enjoy the Range much more and spend 90% of my Minnesota time up here.
“When your grandpa spends his whole life complaining about the Twin Cities, you become a Republican.”
Dependency breeds contempt. I think that these right wingers on the Range know instinctively that they need the funds provided but the state’s economic engine (the Twin Cities Area) to maintain their seasonal work/hunt fish life styles and that makes them resentful of the Twin Cities. They’d never be able to afford the taxes required to maintain their own infrastructures just working the summer months and spending the fall and winter collecting unemployment, hunting and ice fishing if the rest of us weren’t paying the bills.
You obviously know very little about the Range. Before Covid the the supply chain less, very few people were laid off.
As a reminder for Trumpian Rangers, here is the last interview of Rudy Perpich on Almanac before his death. It is a reminder of why the Range was traditionally DFL and how people have needs and it is OK to help them.
https://www.tpt.org/almanac/video/perpich-vtr-4856/
Watch it before you launch into an Anti-Perpich rant…
Much of the Republican support is – to be very, very charitable – short-sighted at best. Dan Landherr’s comment about jobs is spot-on. Mining jobs will disappear quickly, as soon as the well-paid IT folks and the engineers figure out how to automate even more of them.
Equally on-point, much of the rhetoric of Republcians and their supporters is intellectually and morally contradictory. Being “pro-gun” and “pro-life” is oxymoronic. If by “pro-life” people mean they’re opposed to abortion, the sanest policy would be for them not to have one. If they’re opposed to “big government,” they shouldn’t support the notion that government can tell women whether or not they must bear a child. Otherwise, by using the euphemism of “pro-life,” what they’re actually saying is that they favor “forced birth.” I’d argue that that’s a morally problematical position to take.
Third, if the Range and northern Minnesota haven’t seen as much money coming from the legislature as they think they ought to get, they should be looking critically at Republicans, not the DFL. Broadband access is the most obvious example of Republican promises during past campaigns disappearing in a flurry of “no” votes when those programs and proposals get to the Republican-controlled Senate.
And finally – for the moment, at least – it’s worth considering that the Republican Party has become, in effect, the anti-government party at best, and the new American fascist party at worst. Either one will, in the long run, be bad for rural areas losing their political clout. Moreover, I’ll suggest that Republican elected officials still talking about “stolen” elections in 2020 shouldn’t be holding public office at all. There probably aren’t two issues that Liz Cheney and I agree on, but we’re in sync on this one: In a speech delivered to an audience at Arizona State University, she said, “If you care about democracy and you care about the survival of our republic, then you need to understand—we all have to understand—that we cannot give people power who have told us that they will not honor elections.” Mr. Stauber is one of those people. So are the mayors of some of northern Minnesota’s towns.
Well said, well written and well done.