Minnesota Is a House Divided on Trump [View all]

Amid a parade of firetrucks, Model Ts and Shriners driving go-karts, Pete Stauber is running—literally—for Congress. As the procession rolls through this town of 1,350 during Oktoberfest (held, naturally, at the end of August)

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What may change that is Donald Trump. The district’s center of gravity has shifted slightly in recent decades, as Duluth lost population and the Twin Cities suburbs crawled further up the map. Still, Northeast Minnesota went for Mr. Trump by 16 points in 2016 after President Obama won it by 6 in 2012, one of the largest swings in the country. Now the president’s blue-collar appeal is helping make the congressional seat competitive, at least for a certain kind of Republican. Mr. Stauber, a retired Duluth police officer, was at one point the president of his union, Local 363, and he opposes right-to-work laws. He backs President Trump’s 25% steel tariffs to the hilt. “The Chinese steel dumping should have been dealt with decades ago,” he says. “It devastated our Iron Range and our mining industry.” The splash photo on Mr. Stauber’s website shows him riding with Mr. Trump in “The Beast,” the presidential limo, before a June rally in Duluth attended by 8,000.

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One point of contention, splitting Democrats, is a pair of proposals to mine copper and nickel in Superior National Forest. The Obama administration, in its waning days, moved to block mining within about 365 square miles. “It was purely political,” Mr. Stauber says, “and it was the biggest assault on our way of life.” When President Trump came to town, he pledged to reverse the ban. Mr. Radinovich, who defeated explicitly antimining Democrats in the primary, has said he thinks the work can go on without hurting the environment. But he seems much more comfortable talking up Medicare for all.

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In the state as a whole, however, Mr. Trump’s approval since Inauguration Day has dropped 17 points. This is a problem for Republicans in places like the Second District, anchored in the suburbs south of the Twin Cities. Though it’s a somewhat purple area, Republicans had held the seat tightly since 2002. The GOP contender in 2016, Jason Lewis, was expected to flame out, given incendiary comments from his 20-year career in talk radio. Critics dubbed him “mini-Trump.” He won by 1.8 points. But that year’s ballot also featured a perennial candidate on the populist left, running under the Independence Party, who took 8%.

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The Democratic candidate, Angie Craig, is the same one Mr. Lewis beat in 2016. A former HR executive at a company that made pacemakers, she was raised in Arkansas and still has a hint of Southern accent. So far, her soft-focus ads center on family life with her wife and four sons. And if, as November nears, the Democrats want to talk about talk radio? Mr. Lewis is defiant. “I’d rather talk about Enbridge Pipeline, about the Met Council, about a rising tide of economic growth,” he says. “If they want to dig up old radio clips, and they think they can win a congressional seat that way, let ’em do it.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/minnesota-is-a-house-divided-on-trump-1536962886 (paid subscription)