MN 2022 Gov Race Megathread

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/1504479907836882951

This is a pretty great win-win move by Walz. (For the record he's calling for $500 checks to single filers and $1000 to married couples.) It'd require legislative approval, but that means either the Republicans in the Senate oppose it and give him yet another wedge issue (in addition to already existing ones like marijuana legalization) or they pass it and give him a victory and popular policy in the run-up to the election.

As an outsider, Waltz's optics seem pretty good compared to a lot of other govs on both sides facing tough re-elections. He comes across as someone trying to do good for his people and less into the political football

[ProgressiveModerate]

Minnesotans, feel free to disagree with me. But I'm starting to worry about Democrat's chances here. Polling so far has shown a tight race between Wolf and Jensen and with a strong third party (legalize pot now) taking a significant number of votes away from Wolf, all Republicans might really need a small polling error to win.

We already saw this in 2020 with Tina Smith only winning by about 5 and most of the marijuana party votes likely coming from Dems. Seriously though, why is the party so influential in Minnesota and why haven't MN Dems found a way to just unite with them or smtg?

Walz is pretty inoffensive as an incumbent relative to other Dem governors which I think helps, plus the twin cities has become a very powerful and reliable base for Dems. This will certainly be put to the test come 2022.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1593019859407089664
https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1593030124328595456
https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1593037076978896898
https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1593040474688065538
Also that sole Biden/Jensen district is the closest one that exists to the one Jensen represented when he was in the State Senate.

And 34A voting for Walz is just.....WOW. Even as close as it is...that seat probably voted for Romney by like 20 points. It's the northern edge of Hennepin County and consists entirely of formerly hyper-GOP hyper-partisan exurbs.

As for the other seats he mentioned, 3 is the one in the northwest corner of the state and is one of those ancestrally D trending R areas but still not all that strongly D even for Trump, and 32 is an Anoka County district based mostly around Blaine (very swingy city) but with parts of hyper-R Ham Lake also attached. R candidate won it by 6 points regardless. 48, the aforementioned sole Biden/Jensen one that Jensen himself mostly represented is based in Carver County, a former R stronghold based on a coalition of ancestral R rural German areas and affluent suburbanites that has now strongly trended D with the suburbanites jumping ship.

I gotta say Dems geographic distribution in Minnesota kinda sucks since MSP is very blue and also relatively high turnout.

However, if in a few years they can solidify these suburban Trump-Biden MSP seats, they basically have a lock on the legislature; the GOP has to win at least some suburban MSP seats to win both chambers since Dems will always have the Duluth and Rochester seats.