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Six months ago, very few people imagined that this year’s senate and governor races in Minnesota would be anything but Democratic Party blowouts, but as we approach October, and the beating heart of the midterms, the Gopher state appears suddenly and stunningly in play.
Recent polling, as shoddy as this cycle’s surveys have been, show GOP senate candidate Michelle Tafoya within 2 or 3 points of her opponent, sitting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flannagan, and while the chaos surrounding the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE is in the rearview mirror, the massive Somali fraud scandal decidedly is not.
On Sunday, I headed over to Cowboys Saloon in Lexington, Minn., just north of the Twin Cities, to attend a Vikings game watch party for local Republican volunteers, where I found Lisa Demuth, Speaker of the Minnesota House and candidate for governor, rallying the troops ahead of some door knocking and leafleting.
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Demuth is running against sitting senator Amy Klobuchar for governor as the Minnesota Democrats play a high stakes game of political musical chairs, in which poor Gov. Tim Walz has already lost his seat.
"We have heard from Minnesotans across the state," Demuth told Fox News Digital, "when we’ve been traveling, that they are ready for a change, it's nice to see the polling start to reflect that, but we were hearing voters ready for a change, ending fraud, making the state affordable, just all the desperate change we have needed."
Minnesota’s GOP House Majority Leader, Harry Niska, was also on hand for the 9-3 Vikings victory and offered this explanation to the tightening races: "It’s not a surprise to those of us who have spent months talking to voters in Minnesota as more and more Minnesotans become aware of the billions of dollars that have been stolen from our taxpayers."
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The fraud that Niska refers to is, of course, the ongoing scandal surrounding the Minneapolis community in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, that has been bilking tax dollars with fake learning centers and autism care, to the tune of a possible $9 billion, with a "B," dollars.
Indeed, the scandal, now long since a national story, was on the tongues of almost everyone I spoke to, of both parties, in the warm afterglow of the Vikings "W" once the canvassers had left to knock upon doors.
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"It’s infuriating," Tony, in his late 30s, told me, going on to say, "There’s just no rules, and we all pay for it, it's like, how does this even happen?"
I met Bill and Laura, who appeared to be longtime friends over a cigarette and they had two distinct takes on the races. Bill told me of Michelle Tafoya, "She doesn’t impress me," then suggested, "I just don’t see the makings for an office for [her]."
But, when I asked how Minnesotans were feeling about their leadership on the state and federal level, it was Laura, without a beat who insisted, "We’re all very discouraged," prompting Bill to admit that Walz, "Took the opportunity to make choices that were not well conceived."
In one dire last comment, Laura shook her head and said, "People are losing hope, man."
My longest conversation of the day was with Dan, a smart, well-traveled and worldly man with a lovely little dog named Jasper.
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Dan is a Democrat who freely acknowledges that bad mistakes have been made by Democrats in his state, but who sees the GOP as an existential threat, "They want to destroy the country," he told me, "just start with data centers, they just seem to serve these corporations."
Dan is skeptical that Tafoya and Demuth can pull of the upsets, and gave me one pretty compelling reason why when he pointed a table of about 8 people, various ages, in their purple and gold and finery, saying, "I promise you every person at that table is a Republican, how many do you think will vote?"
"Three," I replied, "Maybe four?" To which he simply said, "Bingo."
The flipside to Dan’s turnout argument were the two or three dozen volunteers stomping the suburb for the GOP even as we spoke, and having that kind of ground game as early as September is typically something you see from Democrats, not from Republicans.
Over the next several weeks, the key question will be whether Minnesota Republicans, and fed-up independents, really believe they can win this time, after decades of Democrat dominance, if they do, and all signs point to yes, then expect a nail-biter in the Land of 10,000 Lakes coming this November.
This column will be in Minnesota for the rest of this week, looking to find out if a red dawn is really rising in Minnesota.
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