In the minds of most Americans, Minnesota looks like the George Floyd riots, its goofball governor flopping on the national stage, Somali-Americans guilty of entitlements fraud, and an ICE-hating woman shot dead in her van. That’s just the tip of the iceberg that’s sinking the Democrat Party, which considers Minnesota a great success – and why is that?
Because it’s the most reliably blue state in the Midwest (the state last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1972, and the GOP last won a statewide election – Tim Pawlenty for governor – in 2011). Because two thirds of its electorate is Christian AND Minnesota’s government supports boys competing in girls sports (source: Pew Research). Because 81.9% of its electorate is white AND the people in power doggedly incite the harassment of ICE agents (source: World Population Review). Because Minnesota is a better-than-average state, with the 14th highest median household income, 20th highest GDP, and 22nd most populous (source: USBEA).
That’s why Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her 2024 running mate; i.e. a midwestern “moderate” governor would persuade white men to care about aggrieved minorities, global warming, and income inequality. That backfired (the Democrat share of the white male vote did not budge from Biden’s 38% in 2020) because the numbers say Tim Walz and his state have been the DON’T DO THIS example since 2019 (data from USBEA):
- 46th in median household income growth
- 40th in labor force growth
- 39th in job growth
- 33rd in GDP growth
- 32nd in population growth
Conservatives blame Minnesota’s decline on Governor Walz, who responded to the Covid pandemic with an emergency declaration (March 2020) that allowed him to rule by decree for 15 months; the result of which was closed businesses, churches and schools. He even banned family get-togethers. Then, after George Floyd’s death, he allowed protests to escalate into riots, arson, looting, a burned police-precinct headquarters, and $500 million in damages in the Twin Cities (because he failed to deploy the National Guard on time). This is not an unfair accusation, because Florida – with ten times more black residents than Minnesota – maintained peaceful protests throughout the summer of 2020.
Minnesota took a decided turn for the worse in November 2022, when the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFLP) won the governorship and both chambers of the legislature. Thanks to Republicans holding a narrow Senate majority in the preceding two years, the DFLP inherited an $18 billion surplus. They then initiated a “progressive” spending spree; notably, energy policies that included a ban on fossil fuels by 2040, healthcare policies that opened taxpayer-funded programs to illegal aliens, and education policies that included DEI mandates.
In short order, these polices resulted in electricity-grid instability and higher energy costs, higher healthcare costs and medical-provider shortages, and precipitous drops in scholastic test scores and widening achievement gaps (source: The Washington Examiner). Not surprisingly, by 2024, Minnesota’s yearly spending had grown from $25 billion to over $35 billion; thereby erasing the $18 billion surplus and ensuring an (estimated) $3 billion budget shortfall by 2028, This, in spite of Walz raising taxes (Minnesota now has the 7th highest tax rates out of all 50 states). Frozen and taxed to death is no place to live…
…not when Florida and Texas offer attractive alternatives. To wit, the Sunshine State is the top in-migration destination in the nation – and why is that? Because it is #1 in new business migrations, workforce development, and overall job growth (source: CNBC). It has no state income tax, and US News & World Report ranks its public education #1 out of 50 states. And those “culture wars” Minnesota is still fighting? Florida has the nation’s third largest LGBTQ population AND a law protecting girls sports from unfair male competition. It has twenty times more Latinos than Minnesota AND local law enforcement that assists ICE agents. One more time: Florida is the #1 in-migration state in the USA.
When widespread fraud in state-run social services programs led to increasing pressure from his own party, Gov. Walz announced he would not seek re-election, adding this weird mea culpa: “If the buck stops with me when there’s problems, the buck stops with me on successes.” Shortly thereafter, his PR firm released these “success” doozies: (1) State Fair attendance – “an important metric of Minnesotans’ pride” – is up since 2019, (2) life expectancy is “highest in the Midwest,” (3) homicide rates, while high, are down from the Covid spike, and (4) wages are “highest in the Midwest.” It did not take conservatives long to counter with these facts: (a) Minnesota GDP growth lagged the US average, (b) unemployment has risen since its 2022 recovery, and (c) test scores have fallen since pandemic school closings (source: Minnesota Reformer).
I wish the term “silent majority” had not been coined by Richard Nixon, because Democrats should acknowledge how America’s racial and religious majorities react to failed cities and states. In the fifties, liberal media coined the pejorative “white flight” in reaction to decent folks (who happened to be white) leaving bad schools and urban crime for the normalcy of nearby suburbs. That’s happening in Minneapolis, thanks to the DFLP. From 2016-2019, 19% of Minneapolis residents moved to the suburbs, a number that increased to 21% in 2020-2023 (source: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis).
Now, it’s obvious that the Democrats running decent folks – meaning families and taxpayers – out of blue cities like Baltimore and Chicago are now running decent folks out of blue states. The biggest “losers” are New York, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts (source: UHaul growth index). This is what pandemic closures of businesses, churches and schools…Defund The Police and DEI…Sanctuary Cities and overcrowded emergency rooms did, along with normalcy and opportunity in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina.
Hillary Clinton got it all wrong in 2016. Half the GOP is not deplorable, not even close, because it is good parenting (not deplorable) to move one’s child out of a bad school. It is good judgement (not deplorable) to move one’s family out of a dangerous neighborhood. What’s deplorable is burning and looting a city, defrauding state-run entitlements programs, and harassing federal law enforcement.
We know where this ends, right? Americans keep leaving blue cities and blue states – Minneapolis and Minnesota included – because it’s easier to move to Nashville than elect a Republican in Chicago.