On Politics: How Tim Walz’s congressional district embodies rural Democrats’ challenges
POSTCARD FROM MINNESOTA How Tim Walz's congressional district embodies rural Democrats' challenges
The latest, 85 days out
It was an idyllic night at the Nicollet County Fair in St. Peter, Minn., on Thursday. The air smelled like kettle corn, the tractor pull was in full swing, and a trio of lambs named Frank, Freddie and Finn had been selected to go to the State Fair later this month. But when I asked fairgoers here about their governor, Tim Walz, the mood turned a little less celebratory. "He leans very left," said Steve LeBrun, as he waited for his family between an exhibition hall and a beer garden. "I almost feel like we're becoming a miniature California with some of the stuff that's going on." Nicollet County, an upside-down triangle southwest of Minneapolis, is part of the wide and largely rural swath of Minnesota represented by Walz in Congress before he won the governor's race in 2018. The success of the camo-hat-wearing, sharpshooting Walz in the First Congressional District, which currently stretches all the way across the bottom of the state, is a big part of why he is seen by Democrats is somebody who can bolster Vice President Kamala Harris, a Bay Area liberal, in key Midwestern states and beyond. The fact remains, though, that he might not be able to win his old district today. Last week, after Harris and Walz rallied together in Eau Claire, Wis., I headed down to the district, winding my way about 200 miles from Red Wing on the Mississippi River to the big Farmfest agricultural show in Morgan, just over the district line, back to St. Peter. I saw the world's largest boot and ate a divine pork chop sandwich — and I caught a glimpse of how tough territory like this has become for Democrats. Walz beat an incumbent by nearly six percentage points to flip the district in 2006 and won it again by nearly 30 percentage points two years later. But as the rise of Trump drove more rural Republicans to the polls to vote for him, Walz hung on by less than one percentage point in 2016. Over the years, he and the First District seemed to draw apart from each other; he lost the district, which has been slightly redrawn over the years, when he ran for re-election in 2022. "Greater Minnesota turned a darker red in more recent years," said Amy Koch, a former State Senate majority leader and a Republican. "We've become so geographically dug in now." Disillusioned votersThe district had been held by a Republican for 12 years when Walz, a high school teacher in Mankato, first won the district in 2006. The growth of the city of Rochester, formerly a Republican stronghold that is home to the Mayo Clinic, helped give him a shot there amid the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the president then, said Blois Olson, a Minnesota political analyst. Doug Schultz, an 81-year-old former dairy farmer who was catching up with a friend near the petting zoo at the Nicollet County Fair, said he remembered meeting Walz during that campaign at a parade in nearby New Ulm. "Wherever he saw a crowd, he stopped and he gave us a sermon, and the parade kept on going — I don't think he ever finished the parade," Schultz, a longtime Republican, said. It didn't win him Schultz's vote — but Walz did win over Mike Anderson, a farmer from Windom, Minn., which was part of the First District at the time. I spoke with Anderson at Farmfest, where he told me he has since become deeply disillusioned with Walz. Walz took liberal votes as a congressman, but as governor he has signed numerous bills that many voters in this conservative region believe tugged the state too far left. "He's very liberal. His spending is beyond control," said Anderson, pointing to Walz's support for stricter emissions standards and electric vehicles. "Look around you," he said, pointing to the hulking and decidedly gas-powered farming equipment that surrounded us as exhibitors packed up their tents. "Can you imagine all these vehicles driving on electricity?" 'He was kind of below the radar'Some Republicans in Minnesota say the issue is not that the district has grown more conservative — it's just that Walz, as governor, has become more liberal. The Republican Party booth at the Nicollet State Fair was decorated in part with attacks on Walz's record, like his support for limiting the size of church gatherings during the early part of the Covid pandemic and for a law allowing people to get drivers' licenses regardless of their immigration status. Many voters I spoke with also complained about his handling of the violent protests in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd. "He was kind of below the radar" while in Congress, said Tom Grefe, a Republican who was manning the booth. Now, he said, "their mandates and their social constructs are getting more expensive." In recent years, Democrats here and elsewhere have taken a hit. Democratic state legislators lost their seats; in 2020, Representative Collin Peterson lost his seat in the Seventh District, which borders this one and covers much of the western part of the state. "It's a little bit harder in the rural precincts," said State Senator Nick Frentz, a Democrat representing Mankato, who said Walz still performed better than other Democrats in places like these. "His rural identity helped him compared to other candidates," Frentz said. And that might be where Walz really helps his ticket: not by winning rural areas, but by losing them less badly. He has outperformed Biden twice in the district since becoming governor, my colleague Christine Zhang, a data journalist for The New York Times, found. Biden lost the district by nine percentage points in 2020; Walz won it by nearly three in 2018, and then lost by 7.5 percentage points when he was on the ballot again in 2022. Dean Graner, an ex-farmer who was selling sweet corn out of a truck in Red Wing, said he saw Walz as a "down to earth" guy who understood people in this part of the state. "You need somebody who can talk to people," he said. And Schultz, the former dairy farmer who didn't vote for Walz back in 2006, said he probably will in November because he just can't vote for Trump. "Hope he does better than Mondale," Schultz said, referring to the Walter Mondale, a Minnesota native who was vice president to Jimmy Carter, who lost re-election in a landslide in 1984.
Fact-checking questions about Walz's role as a coachA surprising argument has emerged from some right-wing circles: that Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was not a high school football coach because he was his team's defensive coordinator, not the head coach. I asked my colleague Alan Blinder, a font of football knowledge who wrote about Walz's coaching career *and* answers my questions about sports whenever I have them, to explain what's what. Setting aside that assertion's spuriousness for the moment, our reporting last week on Tim Walz as Coach Walz suggests just how comfortable he is with not being the top dog. Rocky Almond, who coached basketball with Walz in Nebraska in the early 1990s, said that Walz had "been the supporting actor for his whole life," recalling a trip to China that the future vice-presidential pick organized. Even though Walz was the group's veteran Asia hand, Almond remembered a coach who never tried to seize command. "He just was always in the background," said Almond, who thought the vice presidency was "the perfect role" for his old colleague's temperament. "I think he had the intensity, but it was a positive energy," said Jeff Tomlin, the Nebraska high school head football coach who brought Walz aboard to coach linebackers. "He was a very good assistant that way. As the head coach, you sometimes have to be an enforcer and really guard your culture and make hard decisions. As assistant, you want to be loyal to your head coach and back up your head coach, and he was all of those things." And as for that question of whether Walz should count as a coach at all? Some players on his Minnesota title-winning team still refer to him as "Coach Walz," and football staffs are filled with specialty coaches who are, in fact, coaches with headsets and playbooks. "Defensive coordinator is arguably the most important position on a coaching staff other than the head coach," the ESPN commentator Paul Finebaum mused to me today. "You can't win a game, let alone a state championship, without being able to stop someone." — Alan Blinder Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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