WASHINGTON — Donald Trump says he’s expanding his electoral map to include Minnesota, but that prize may elude him for a third time.
Trump has lost Minnesota twice, the last time to President Joe Biden in 2020 by 7 percentage points.
Yet Trump plans to headline the Lincoln Reagan dinner, a huge event for the state GOP. State Republican Party Chairman David Hann said in a statement that he is “thrilled” that Trump will host the dinner, which Hann called “an annual tradition that reminds us of the roots of our party and leaders who have been impactful in promoting American values.”
Besides providing Trump with a platform in the state, the event is likely to raise a lot of money for the Minnesota GOP.
Minnesota Trump campaign chairman Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, will be co-hosting the dinner, which will be held May 17 in the Twin Cities.
“I could not be more excited to host President Trump and officially kick off our 2024 campaign,” he said.
Trump was excused from court on May 17 to attend the graduation of his son Barron from a private school in West Palm Beach, Fla. by the New York judge presiding over the former president’s “hush money” trial. That allows Trump to travel to Minnesota the same day.
Emmer, who is House Majority Whip, has been repairing his relationship with Trump after the former president torpedoed the congressman’s bid to become House Speaker last year. In fact, Emmer was the one who extended an invitation to the Lincoln Reagan dinner to Trump, said a source familiar with the situation.
Now he and the Trump campaign have joined forces to make a run for Minnesota, a state that has not voted for a Republican president since 1972, when it backed Richard Nixon.
Yet at a Republican National Committee retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., over the weekend, Trump campaign officials assured donors they could flip the Democratic strongholds of Minnesota and Virginia.
“We have a real, real opportunity in expanding the map in Virginia and Minnesota,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita told NBC News.
Emmer has also assured Trump – who vowed during a 2020 campaign stop in Minnesota that he was “never coming back” if he lost the state — that he could win the state.
A ‘head fake’
Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, said the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s strong ties to labor makes it difficult for Trump to win the support he needs in Minnesota. However, the DFL has lost influence in the Iron Range and Republican candidates do well in other rural areas in the state.
Still, Baker said “Minnesota is a state Trump cannot win.”
“Somehow he thinks because (Congresswoman) Ilhan Omar is there and there are other Muslims in the Twin Cities, this is going to throw Minnesota to the Republican Party, but it won’t,” Baker said.
Baker said either the Trump campaign is “delusional” or it’s deploying a “head fake” to force the Biden campaign to spend time and resources where it once thought it did not need to.
Biden and surrogates like Vice President Kamala Harris and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have already made stops in Minnesota, and more visits are likely in the works.
“By saying he’s campaigning in Minnesota, Trump forces Democrats to defend those states,” said David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University. “This is just strategic. Even if you can’t win, force the Democrats to campaign.”
Schultz pointed out that after failing to win the Minnesota Democratic primary caucuses in 2016, Hillary Clinton never returned to campaign in the state, taking it for granted. She won Minnesota only by a mere 1.5 percentage points.
Trump, meanwhile, campaigned in Minnesota in 2016 and 2020.
Schulz also said that when Biden and Trump campaign in Minnesota, their ads and coverage of their events will be broadcast on stations that reach into Wisconsin, a true swing state.
“So, for the campaigns, it’s a two-fer,” Schultz said.
Polls show a virtual tie
The new GOP focus on Minnesota could also be political retribution.
Biden has expanded his map beyond the key swing states that will most likely determine the outcome of the presidential election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — by saying he’s going to fight for North Carolina and Florida, two states that have firmly been in Trump’s column.
In their event with donors last weekend, the Trump campaign released the results of internal polls that showed Minnesota is within reach. But it’s the media polls that indicated the presidential race is close in the state that have done much to turn Minnesota into a political battleground.
For instance, last month KSTP released a poll that showed that Biden leads Trump 44% to 42% in the state with 11% saying they’ll vote for another candidate and 4% undecided.
And last fall, a MinnPost-Embold Research poll also showed the race was nearly a dead heat.
But Ross said it is too early in the campaign cycle to take polls too seriously. He also pointed out that more recent polls show Trump has a slight advantage or is tied with Biden when all voters were surveyed, but Biden is stronger than Trump among likely voters.
DFL Chairman Ken Martin said Minnesota Republicans are “doubling down” on Trump and his “MAGA agenda.”
“Minnesota voters have repeatedly rejected Donald Trump and his efforts to ban abortion, take away their health insurance, and attack our democracy,” Martin said in a statement. “Republicans up and down the ballot will have to answer for why they are abandoning Minnesota values and kissing Donald Trump’s ring.”
Ana Radelat
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
