We had a really good day in Minnesota this past Tuesday. The Blue Wave did hit here pretty well. We re-elected both of our Dem U.S Senators. We swept the constitutional officers races.
We took back the state house in resounding fashion, winning eighteen races (pending the recount of a northern Minn seat). The next speaker of the state house will be Rep. Melissa Hortmann, who showed her mettle when she called out some of her male colleagues for ignoring the words of their female chamber-mates (one of whom is now a U.S. Rep-elect and the other is our lt. gov.-elect).
There was one place we stumbled a bit though.
While defeating Republican incumbents in CD 2 and CD 3 were fine accomplishments, we also lost two seats that had been in Dem hands — CD 1 and CD 8.
The post-mortems on both those races showed how the much-discussed divide between urban voters and more rural voters has grown in the last couple of decades. County by county results of the outcomes of both races show this. The great folks at the on-line outlet MinnPost, compiled graphs which showed the starkness of the splits in both those races.
In CD 1, Dan Feehan, who was the subject of some of those disgusting George Soros ads in the waning days of the race, did very well in the larger cities of the district, notably the medical hub of Rochester, and the college town of Maknato. The remainder of the district went to Jim Hagedorn.
In CD 8, Joe Radinovich did very well in St. Louis county, home to Duluth and many of the Iron Range cities, but in other counties his margins were awful.
Over in CD 7, long time Dem Rep Collin Peterson won his sixteenth term with his smallest margin (52-48) in years.
We started the day with a 5-3 Dem/Rep split for Congress, and ended the day with a 5-3 split. We traded two seats for two others. Not exactly the outcome we hoped for.
The examination of the results noted some..interesting...attitudes on the part of those who had voted for Dems for many years, only to switch. That divide was especially stark in CD 8. Some of the comments from rural residents about their city brethren included:
"They've just got a different way of thinking," said Phil Smith, 67, who sat a few cafe tables over from the Steeles. He's a truck driver and log furniture maker who lives near Lake Mille Lacs. He's voted Republican his whole life — and says his experiences with people from the metro area have been mostly negative.
I’m a rural Minnesota kid (well, not a kid any more, but I try...), born and raised and lived most of my life there. Two factors frustrate me: the perception that the Dems don’t care about rural voters. That’s just not true. The other is how as the outstate districts have aged and not seen the demographic changes of other districts, they have seemingly ossified and backed away from the economically progressive policies that the DFL supports.
Am I simplifying some, sure; I’m not here to pen a dissertation. Go back and read the linked article from Minnesota Public Radio, and you can see those attitudes in full force from the voters interviewed.
I for one am not going to give up on rural Minnesota or rural America at all. Issues like health care access and rising costs, high-speed internet, education funding inequalities, transportation difficulties, and a lack of good-paying jobs are issues Dems excel at. Nope, not giving up; and I hope the rest of you don’t either.