From the George Floyd riots to anti-ICE insurrections, what is happening in Minnesota? Why are leftist hordes concentrating their efforts to attack and destroy ICE in this state, as opposed to California or New York?
Minnesota has always been an odd, progressive political animal, even a little bit loony (the Common Loon is the state bird, by the way). Leftist politics has been at home there longer than most realize.
At the outset, Minnesota welcomed a large swath of Scandinavian and German immigrants, and they brought socialist ideas with them. In fact, most of those settlers were radicals seeking to live out their views, having faced persecution in their home countries. They came to America to establish and roll out their collectivist programs and policies, incorporating them into the state long before socialism gained traction with younger voters today.
This collectivist core shaped Minnesota’s political party structure. The Democratic Party holds a lot of sway in the state, but it's really the Democratic Farm and Labor Party. A more progressive moniker, this liberal movement reflects the more socialist-leaning political program that has been pervasive.
Of course, it’s not as though Republicans have been shut out of Minnesota politics. Republican governors have been elected in Minnesota, but one of them (Arne Carlson) endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. The last Republican Governor, Tim Pawlenty (serving from 2003 to 2011), could have carried the GOP ticket in 2012, but he was too bland for the national conservative grassroots’ interest. What’s worse, according to conservative Minnesotans I have spoken with, he was partly responsible for the increased Somali refugee settlement in the state. Just a few months ago, he faulted President Trump for “stigmatizing Somalis” because of their exposed culture of corruption and violence, plus the lack of assimilation to American views and values.
With Minnesota Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?
The last time the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes elected a Republican for president, in 1972, Richard Nixon rode to a 49-state wave of victory, a massive backlash of the silent majority against the moral collapse of the Hippie Movement. Yet even then, Nixon won the North Star State by a bare five percentage points. He was also the last Republican nominee to win Hennepin County (Minneapolis and St. Paul). Keep in mind that current deep-blue states like California still voted consistently Republican until 1988, and even Oregon and Washington were voting Republican in 1984! Worse, Ronald Reagan never won Minnesota. Talk about resistance to conservatism!
At the state level, Minnesota politics has often taken a weird turn. Post Watergate, the Minnesota Republicans faced such damaging prospects that they rebranded themselves as the “Independent-Republican Party.” In 1998, Minnesotans elected a Reform Party governor, Dope Opera pro-wrestler Jesse the Body Ventura, who also went by the moniker Jesse “The Mind” Ventura. He talked a good game on some issues on the Right (cutting taxes, supporting gun rights), but also took some bad turns to the Left, favoring the legalization of drugs and prostitution. That same year, the voters handed him a split legislature, forcing him to grapple with a Republican House and a Democratic Senate.
After one term, Ventura left office, fed up with the infighting and the relentless media scrutiny (what did he expect would happen?) Instead of maintaining a dignified political profile, he started hawking conspiracy theories about 9-11, then comparing political parties to criminal enterprises (with no real suggestions on how to improve politics). He is now gone even more disturbingly to the left, praising Minnesota students for disrupting lawful immigration enforcement while falsely condemning ICE for rounding up (violent) illegal aliens.
And who can forget former Democratic US Senator Al Franken, aka Stuart Smalley? Minnesota voters threw out their last GOP US Senator (Norm Coleman) by a slim 300-vote margin. Of course, the Minnesota canvassing board’s decision to count 900 absentee ballots for some reason helped Franken’s cause. Coleman was good enough and smart enough, and doggone it, Franken stole the election!
From there, Minnesota was a blue bastion. Democrats took the executive office, but Republicans would eke out some power by taking back the legislature from time to time. Things looked better for the conservative cause in 2016, when Trump became the first GOP nominee in decades to come within two percentage points of winning. Democrats had every reason to panic at that point. Trump’s working-class rebranding of the GOP pushed Republican opportunities throughout the Rust Belt, and Minnesota is a prime prize for the political taking.
Of course, the fight for the North Star State was not over. In 2022, Democrats succeeded in taking back both branches of the government. With Weird Tim Walz as governor, the Minnesota Democratic Farm and Labor Party rolled out every destructive, progressive agenda program they could, hoping to turn their progressive state into a colder version of California. Republicans rightly feared the worst, and at the 2024 MNGO conference, they resigned themselves to the fact that there was no hope. But then came Election 2024, and Republicans won a 50-50 split in the Minnesota House. On top of that, the Democrats refused to show up for work! Why? Because one of the Democrats was disqualified from serving since he had moved districts! That gave the Republicans a brief one-seat majority, and now Republicans run the Minnesota House for the first time in nearly 10 years.
The Minnesota GOP-led House cut off Minnesota Medicare benefits to illegal aliens. They have also launched investigations and filed impeachment charges against disgraced Gov. Walz!
And these slow but steady victories reveal the real departure point for the latest leftist political upheavals in the state. Radical pro-illegal immigration, pro-Islamic militancy activists have descended on Minnesota because they know the state is on a political knife’s edge. As immigration enforcement removes all the illegals, especially the large Somali population of “refugees” who have lived off the United States taxpayer, Minnesota will lose a Congressional seat. On top of that, the Minnesota Democratic Party has long depended on the widespread welfarism, broad voter corruption, and the Democratic open border program of refugees to beef up their numbers. With those numbers gone, Republicans could take back the legislature and even the governorship this year!
Minnesota Republicans still control the House, and they are just two seats away from getting back the state Senate. Now that Walz, who was a couple of thousand votes away from being a heartbeat away from the presidency, has given up his reelection bid, Republicans can capitalize on a lot of outrage across the state and restore a GOP trifecta.
Republicans are close to taking back power in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, a victory that would deliver a huge blow to Democratic power across the country. It's bad enough that the Democratic Party lost the Rust Belt states in two presidential elections already. If Minnesotawere to slip back into the Republican column at the state level, it would open up opportunities for Republicans to take the state for the first time in over 50 years at the presidential level.
Minnesota is a do-or-die for the Democratic Party. They can’t afford to lose the Land of Ten Thousand Lunatics.