It is the political dilemma of partisan politics in Minnesota and nationally: To win endorsements and primary elections, candidates have to tack toward their party bases — conservative for Republicans and progressive for members of the DFL. Then, if successful, the same candidates have to try to appeal to moderate voters who usually decide who wins in November.
Both parties tend to attract delegates — the people who end up deciding on each party’s endorsement — from their flanks, making their respective conventions more conservative or more liberal than even the parties’ primary election voters, and much more so than general election voters.
But the partisan gymnastics can be more strenuous for Republicans in Minnesota, mostly because of the party’s success at getting rank and file voters to support the candidate endorsed at their conventions. Not since 1994 has a non-endorsed GOP candidate bucked that process and won at the primary. That sort of party discipline is far less common in the DFL; the last two DFL governors both won the party’s nomination over the endorsed candidate.
All of which means that the endorsement is more valuable for Republicans than it is for DFLers.
This cycle, Republican candidates for governor of Minnesota — at least the five who sought the party endorsement Saturday — spent months campaigning among the most active party adherents. Ultimately, 1,344 of the 2,200 delegates from across the state decided that former state Sen. Scott Jensen would be the party’s endorsed candidate for governor, choosing him over current state Sen. Paul Gazelka, businessman and former congressional candidate Kendall Qualls, Lexington Mayor Mike Murphy and dermatologist Neil Shah.
While Jensen could face opposition in the August GOP primary — former Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek did not seek the endorsement and hasn’t said whether he will file for the office — the endorsement makes it very likely that Jensen will prevail then and face incumbent Gov. Tim Walz in November.
All five candidates who vied for the endorsement ran as conservatives. All five questioned the integrity of the 2020 election. All five were critical of Walz’s actions during the pandemic and his management of riots following the murder of George Floyd. All oppose abortion rights. All endorse gun rights.
Yet it was a convention rule that exacerbated the need for the candidates to stake out the most-conservative positions to even compete for the endorsement.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley[/image_credit][image_caption]Supporters of Scott Jensen waving placards during last weekend's convention.[/image_caption]
The time between ballots gave time for person-to-person campaigning among the delegates in Rochester’s Mayo Civic Center, while the subsequent speeches gave the candidates a chance to address the concerns they’d heard from those on the floor. Saturday, they frequently attempted to prove their conservative bona fides and refute allegations that they would fall short of delegates’ expectations.
“I’ve been a pro-life activist since I was a teenager,” said Sen. Michelle Benson, R-Ham Lake, herself a former candidate for governor. “If you have a question about Kendall Qualls and his stand on life issues, ask me. I’ve seen him and Sheila behind the scenes. I’ve listened to stories they haven’t told you.”
In a later address aimed at quelling more of those questions about his anti-abortion credentials, Qualls jettisoned prominent supporter Michele Tafoya, the recently retired NBC sports reporter who was his campaign co-chair but who has said in interviews that she supports abortion rights.
“Michele Tafoya is not going to be my lieutenant governor, I want to make sure I dismiss that,” Qualls said. “We’re going to have a lieutenant governor who has our values, that are consistent: A pro-life, 2nd Amendment conservative that wants to return our country back to a constitutional, patriotic way of living.”
In one of his speeches, Jensen used his time to refute complaints that he’d worked for Planned Parenthood during his medical training. “I’ve never seen an abortion. I’ve never done an abortion and I wouldn’t,” Jensen said.
Dermatologist Neil Shah, who later endorsed Murphy and then Jensen, used some of his time to criticize Qualls for saying he would limit emergency declarations to 30 days. Shah supports the “never again” movement that opposes all emergency declarations, which give governors authority to take executive action without legislative approval.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley[/image_credit][image_caption]Supporters of Kendall Qualls for governor.[/image_caption]
“Most of us are first-time candidates here,” Bishofsky said. “It’s time we brought some real change to St. Paul. Come with me and endorse Mike Murphy.”
Jensen was vulnerable on the issue of gun rights because he once cosponsored a gun-safety bill with DFL senators. To counter that at the convention, he first endorsed stand-your-ground legislation that would say a gun owner has no duty to retreat when threatened. At one point, he also said he would prefer his daughter “shoot the dang felon” if confronted with a carjacker than try to escape.
Later, he apologized for even considering a conversation on gun safety bills. “I put myself on the wrong side of the gun issue by thinking I could compel a conversation by putting my name on a bill and removing it six weeks later,” Jensen said. “That was a mistake and I’m sorry and I won’t ever do it again.”
Jensen also played to the belief shared by many of the delegates that the 2020 election results were inaccurate and manipulated. “I will shut down the government to get election security,” he said. “We are going to have voter ID.”
He also repeated his assertion that Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon would be jailed, that “he should know what he looks like in stripes.”
In his initial speech, Gazelka, the most politically experienced of the candidates — and likely the most pragmatic — had seemed to warn against the subsequent competition to be the most anti-abortion rights, the most pro-gun rights, the loudest complainant about the 2020 vote count.
“In order to win in November, we need to run on two issues that properly and deeply worry every Minnesotan in every corner of the state,” Gazelka said. “It’s crime and it’s the economy. Think of all the lost purchasing power. Think about the fact that you can’t even buy formula right now. That’s Tim Walz and Joe Biden. We can win on a wave in November on these two issues.”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley[/image_credit][image_caption]Trump t-shirts for sale at the convention.[/image_caption]
“Once you get the endorsement, I think you can broaden your platform. You can start to talk about: What does consumer protection look like? What does corporate responsibility look like? What’s the Republican perspective on how do we conserve water and protect our aquifers and what’s our position on the environment?
“New issues will be brought into the mix,” he said.
Exactly!! Run on crime prevention and the economy, not that hard. Jensen is Dem Lite and will need to be pushed to put this state back on track. The state needs someone to stand up to Teachers Union and get our children educated. The state needs someone to force Mayors and city Council to clean up crime riddled streets by taking on Police Union.
I wish the GOP had candidates that would fight to improve our state. Unfortunately we end up with “let’s have a conversation “ candidates. Time for talk is over, we need changes.
Interesting you mention educating our children, when the vast majority of WORST k-12 systems are in repub states and even here, repubs constantly attempt to undermine educational funding.
You also talk about crime…and yes…it’s a problem. The repub solution is short term and unworkable, which calls for more police and prisons…while the main driver of crime is poverty.
And let’s not ignore the repub obsession with guns…and the truth that the more guns on the street, the higher the frequency of shootings.
You’re correct Joe…we need changes…but as we are seeing…repub changes are leading to more wealth inequality, poverty, gun deaths…as repubs appear to be undermining all facets of our democracy…and Jan 6 is just a symptom of their anti-democracy behavior.
It’s merely idle curiosity on my part, but I can’t help but wonder if, when Joe calls people like Jensen Dem Lite, he is deluding himself or just trying to delude the rest of us.
He may well be successful at the former, less likely the later.
“The state needs someone to force Mayors and city Council to clean up crime riddled streets by taking on Police Union.”
Actually, there are state regulations that limit the actions mayors or councils can take to clean up police forces. In fact, when the DFL has brought up such legislation, your party has killed it. But I’m glad to see you appreciate the need. Please contact your representatives to encourage this line of thinking.
Joe…..
As long as Republican voters, those who have savvy but still are under weapons and anti-education Trump bondage remain quiet; crime, the slaughter of innocent civilians, and public education will continue to suffer.
Herman Cain, lost to Donald’s covid policies, once said: “I don’t have facts to back this up” and I’d like to steal it. I can’t give you facts to back this up, but I am pretty damn sure that “Dem Lite” Jensen will NOT be taking any Democratic voters from Tim Walz.
Yeah the old crime and economy: And exactly what does the Governor do about crime? Hire more police, have one on one talks with criminals, have one on ones with the judges and dictate sentences? And inflation, last check it was supply chain issues from that (non-existent Covid) and failure of the Fed to act in a timely manner. Love these guys and their got to blame somebody, not propose a solution, because the solution is blame somebody, looks like blaming the electrician for a plumbing problem, or the HVAC guy for a backed up sewer is the Republican solution. Seems the farther right these guys go the more (anti reality), wrong, not right they become.
Imagine that…to be a repub politician…one must call the last presidential election fixed, not to mention supporting those who attempted the Jan 6 violent coup attempt or worked to enable it.
And…Jensen…what a disgrace…a medical doctor who ignores his knowledge of diseases to undermine safe during a pandemic.
What is with todays repubs, who are in total denial of anything logical, factual…as they spew deceit…they know is deceit?
As a teacher, and teacher union member (Education Minnesota), I am proud to be in opposition to someone like you, Joe.
Gazelka says, “Think about the fact that you can’t even buy formula right now. That’s Tim Walz and Joe Biden.” Actually, it’s the result of a closed factory as seen in the headline “Abbott reaches agreement with FDA to reopen baby formula plant to ease a nationwide shortage.” Perhaps critics of politicians are unable to understand that closing a contaminated factory in Michigan for health reasons is not somehow the fault of the Governor of Minnesota.
In fact, the closure was the result of FDA action, and, yes, someone should have foreseen the result of an extended closure on the nationwide supply. Abbott would be in a better position to determine that effect and to identify their competitors who would need to step up to the plate during their closure.
It’s altogether too easy to blame politicians for issues over which they have no immediate control. If you are monitoring the war in Ukraine, domestic violence in more than just New York, inflation in a recovering economy, the price of gasoline which is controlled by oil-producing companies, housing availability, and rising interest rates; the lack of supply of a single food product can possibly be lost in the cloud. It is now being addressed at a national level and Abbott is rushing to reopen its plant. The situation has identified a gap in the supply chain that merits better monitoring in the future.
“Abbott would be in a better position to determine that effect and to identify their competitors who would need to step up to the plate during their closure.”
To be fair, it is hard for Abbott to respond to the situation when they spent all that money on buying back their own stock. Priorities.
The multiple inspections have shown no link to the tragic deaths and the factory.
And the Woke Warriors wont be out in full force this weekend?
Using a term like “Woke Warriors” is an invitation to anyone to dismiss anything you say without reading it.
Yep, all those darn people who stayed awake in science and history classes are out to get you . . . half-wits who failed every class more demanding than gym.
To Mr. Callaghan: How many times did you use the word “conservative” in the above article? Isn’t it part of your craft, and that of your fellow journalists, to question the use of words that disguise reality, and to use words that are accurate? The left is conservative and progressive. The Republican party platform is nihilism, the very opposite of conservatism.
I am an “old school” conservative – maybe voted for a Democrat 4 times in the last 30 years – but I just flat out will not vote for any of these nutters who keep screaming the election was stolen – to vote for them would be an endorsment of their lies.
In our system of checks and balances, few things come without a cost. While it is true, the the party endorsement on the Republican side is more valuable in terms of winning primary elections and getting on fall election ballots, it has been of little use at all in getting elected to office. The price of getting support within the party for Republicans has been a high one.
Are these people even serious? How can anything meaningful or helpful to our state in any remote way come out of such a knuckle-headed approach like this, where you need to appeal to the worst instincts in the people to get the party’s endorsement?
And the fact that they passed on several other absolute disasters-for-candidates on the way to…Jensen?…is not at all reassuring. The guy who apologized for an act, back when he was young and foolish, of co-sponsoring a bill for gun safety – he would like to lead the state? Where to, pray tell?
Well, these Repubs have certainly outsmarted me on this one. They have figured out that there are people right here in Minnesota, right in our midst, who would vote for a guy who embraces the Big Steal nonsense AND doesn’t believe in pandemic protocols.
Why didn’t they demand his views on UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and the tooth fairy?
I’m sorry, but – speaking as a former regular Republican voter – these people (Republican candidates for statewide office, and their enthusiastic supporters) are not “conservative” in any meaningful sense of the term. At best, they are reactionaries. At worst, they are neofascists. I’m sure Mr. Jensen is correct in saying that there are certain “purity tests” that candidates must pass at a convention – which is, in a political context, a gathering of zealots. As long as that’s true, Republicans will have, I think, a very hard time winning state office, since many of their positions and their few stated policies are demonstrably unpopular with the general (i.e., voting) public.
All of the candidates for Governor, endorsed or not, are still taking the position, nearly two years later, that the safest and most secure election this country has ever seen, in November, 2020, was somehow “stolen,” implying that the current President is somehow illegitimate, though they have presented zero evidence of said “steal,” and lost, if I remember correctly, 59 of 60 cases brought in lower state courts – some of those cases presided over by judges appointed by Donald Trump – to toss out the election results. Thus, these candidates for statewide office subscribe to The Big Lie – perhaps the biggest lie foisted on the American public in our electoral history.
There’s no hint of public service in the current Republican Party – no party platform or legislative agenda beyond a handful of right-wing platitudes and a drumbeat repetition of the phrase, “lower taxes,” as if lowering taxes – i.e., reducing the revenue of the state, its counties, and its municipal governments – will somehow fix all of this state’s and this society’s ills, while simultaneously providing prosperity to everyone. This, too, is presented as if it were fact, when in truth, no evidence has been shown to support their position. It’s a steaming pile of libertarian nonsense. The evidence of the past half-century shows that longer prison sentences – always a standard part of any “get tough on crime” rhetoric – do nothing to reduce crime rates
The teachers’ union is not forcing children to refuse an education. I’ve yet to see Joe Smith and other critics provide a single shred of evidence that teachers statewide, or even in the urban core of the Twin Cities, are not qualified to teach, or are failing to present lessons in the appropriate subject areas. I agree with Smith that mayors and city councils ought to take on police unions, but not for the reasons he implies. Police unions are not the cause of crime, nor are they inherently bad, and every worker should be able to organize and bargain collectively. That said, the militarization of our police forces has made racist bias and right-wing extremism among the police more common, more extreme, and more dangerous to the citizens those police are supposedly serving.
The t-shirts in the article’s photo do not represent a coherent governmental philosophy, they represent a cult of personality focused on an incompetent, racist, misogynist bigot who deserves none of the admiration, not to mention the money, he gets from some quarters of the population.
“At best, they are reactionaries. At worst, they are neofascists.”
I’ll say they are neither. They are nihilists. They stand for nothing except opposition to liberals, the Democratic Party, and the “Woke Warriors.” Although they may dutifully recite some vague platitudes, in the end, they define themselves by their hatreds (an odd position for so-called Christians), and by what they are against. It’s opposition, all the way down.
Right. It’s less a shift to the right as a shift to the fascist tendencies that erupt in the racist, anti semetic, censorship, authoritarian policies they rally around. The right used to be small government, personal responsibility and economic growth.
They certainly used to claim to be the party of small government and personal responsibility, but history shows that hasn’t been true since Eisenhower. From Nixon on, every Republican President has accelerated the debt, spent money like it was water, and done their best to create a Big Mommy government that regulates individuals at the expense of the 1% and corporations.
We with a modicum of intelligence and compassion, do hereby dub thee “Right On, Ray”!
What the heck!! I thought we were living in a post realignment political world where some of the old cleavages would be muted…..So what is the core and not peripheral differences? I think it may have to do with the role of government. But I could be wrong. Is it run it (the economy) hot until collapse or grab what you can? Calling all academic political profs.
In my experience, the DFL caucuses and conventions tend to move the party to the left. I wouldn’t expect any thing else in either party, given who is most likely to participate in the process.
Way to spot a trend Callaghan, glad you stepped in four decades after the fact to sound the alarm on this. Thank you.
Having been involved for a few years in a local Democratic party group, I can say that the endorsement process there does the same thing. Essentially you have core believers involved who push to the left (like the GOP pushes to the right) and you end up with two choices often not palatable to moderate voters. The media and social media help push enough voters to the ends of each spectrum to get one or the other elected. The district, state, country loses. Having said that , Democrats at least still profess belief in democracy (small d). The extreme right candidates on the right appear to have come from the Vladimir Putin/Viktor Orban school of governance.
Your observation is obviously not reliable Mr. Elson. In fact Democrats and their leadership marginalize leftist influences and have been pushing their candidates towards the moderate incrementalist “center” for decades. While Fascist end up on Republican ballots and in office, “moderate/centrists” like Walz and HRC end up on Democratic ballots. Democrats may be drifting to the “left” to some small degree as of late, but their primary process certainly hasn’t dictated that drift, on the contrary. Liberals have had to fight tooth and nail to get beyond the margins. Sure, we see “centrist/moderate” Democrats complaining about the liberal insurgence in their Party, but that’s about Party mechanisms that typically marginalize anyone who’s not a radical centrist failing, it’s not about a systemic drift to the left.
Who is HRC?
And there you have it:
To Joe Smith, Scott Jensen is DFL lite and to Paul, Hillary Clinton is a near neocon.
Not a lot of hope here for reasonable compromise…
Don’t forget the endorsed Secretary of State candidate who is trafficked in election conspiracy theories also lost her job over racist comments and went anti semetic tropes at the convention forcing the party to apologize while she dismissed the issue. The rot in the MN GOP goes far deeper than the conspiracy theory spouting Jensen.
It was kind of amusing though to follow along the self inflicted paranoia from all their “big lie” election 2020 rhetoric that had them internally arguing if should be hand counting all paper ballots for “election integrity”, could they even trust themselves?
Of course, they can’t trust themselves. The Big Lie of a stolen election is just a confession of what the Republican will do when given the opportunity.
There was a time when we thought that those who voted Republican and those who voted Democratic just had different views on how to make a better democratic society. By this time, hastened along by the manipulations that saturate the sphere of public discourse, we have been fully sorted so that those who vote Democratic are those aligned with a democratic view of how political power should be allocated in a society (with corresponding rules and norms for civic engagement) and those who identify as Republicans are those aligned with an authoritarian view (with corresponding rules and norms). Unable or unwilling to perceive this sorting, each side projects its own traits onto the other. Republicans attribute to those who vote Democratic a will to power and a willingness to do anything to attain it. Those who vote Democratic continue to believe that Republicans can be engaged in good faith on the basis of shared democratic goals.
On a LOONNNGGG road trip recently and listened to Esper’s, Bolton’s, Yovanovich’s and Vindmann’s books. The first 2 are true blue Republican Republicans and the last 2 served with distinction for both D and R previous administrations. These are not liberal hacks from the media.
One after another, each going into great detail on Trump’s total unfitness for office based on the actual experiences of these “I only hire the best people” people. The examples just went on and on. Yet a majority of Republicans are all for giving him 4 more years and the core of his philosophy will live even longer than Trump’s political viability. Ignorance is bliss…
They’re not just willing to give him four more years… they’re willing to tear up the US Constitution in order to get him back into office. Let’s not pretend we’re still dealing with “normal” electoral politics here.
Agreed: Rationalization is the key to mental health and these guys wrap themselves in the flag and constitution. They treat the Second Amendment like something from the Arc of the Covenant and the rest like a 90 day free contract with a health club.
Trump enjoyed every privilege provided for in the Constitution guaranteeing him proper redress from any electoral wrongs in the 2020 election and he lost every step of the way. Just ask any big lie supporter how the Constitution failed so badly and wait for the crickets or the rationalizations that allow them to plod along in ignorance.
Just imagine if Biden appointed his 29 year old former caddy as the Chief of Executive branch personnel as Trump did. Watch for heads to explode, yet Johnny McEntee influenced the next SEC DEF after Esper. Trump and Meadows spent considerable time fighting the promotion of Lt Col Vindmann to Col Vindmann. Inexcusable pettiness reigned and the GOP longs for Act 2. There is a reason the GOP has recused itself from any debates in 2024…
MY first thought as well, Ian!
“I will shut down the government to get election security,” [Jensen] said. “We are going to have voter ID.”
Excuse me? The voters said NO to a Constitutional amendment for Voter ID, back in 2012. I presume nothing has changed – and Voter ID would still have to be approved by the voters as a Constitutional amendment.
Voter ID has been called “a solution in search of a problem,” but it’s more complicated than that. From the Republican point of view, the “problem” is high voter turnout, because it tends to favor Democrats. Therefore, the solution is Voter ID. Checking IDs at the polls is time-consuming and cumbersome, which greatly slows down the voting process by creating long lines and increasing wait times.
However, it also gives Republican poll watchers time and opportunity to confront, question, challenge, harass, and/or intimidate anyone they suspect might be a Democrat. Ideally, that person will leave instead of voting. What’s more, they know full well that other prospective Democratic voters will see this, and in order to avoid the same treatment, they’ll simply leave without casting their vote.
Obviously, if voters aren’t required to show an ID to vote, and/or aren’t carrying an ID on their person, such tactics are useless. This is precisely why Republicans insist on “in-person” voting, strict limits on absentee voting, and the elimination of “mail-in” voting.
Since 1982, the Republican Party had been under a court-ordered consent decree, forbidding various forms of voter intimidation. Unfortunately, the consent decree was lifted in 2018. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know they’ll soon be doing it again. Meanwhile, Republican-cpntrolled Legislatures continue to do whatever they can to make voting as complicated and difficult as possible, which is why restrictions on early voting, cutting the number of polling places, and reducing voting hours – in addition to Voter ID – have been implemented.
Many Democrats argue that Voter ID is too much to ask, because it’s discriminatory. Conversely, many Republicans argue that it’s NOT too much to ask, because people are asked for ID all the time. Whether true or not, both arguments are simply beside the point. But they also obscure the real problem with Voter ID, which is that it’s an especially insidious form of voter suppression.