Tag Archives: pete stauber

Sobriety Amid a War

Whatever else one might say, I’ve never thought the United States doesn’t have the government it deserves. The results of the 2018 midterms reflect an increasingly polarized electorate, and promise two years of rancor to make the past two look tame. The polls were mostly right, though the Republicans can claim some real wins in the Senate and the Democrats now have power over the House. In a saner world this would prompt humility amid both parties, but we all know better than that by now. President Donald Trump again showed his peerless ability to turn out his base, and the Democrats now have some decisions to make as they decide whether to keep their gerontocratic House leadership or start anew, and whether to open up every possible investigation or learn from the 1990s Republicans’ excesses on that front. Let the fun begin.

Here in Minnesota’s eighth congressional district, Republican Pete Stauber collected a 5-point win, and gave his party one of its few bright spots in the House. The final result was almost in the dead-center of those two contradictory New York Times polls. He ran a very disciplined campaign, had massive institutional support, and had the distinct advantage of a clear field in the primary that spared him a bruising fight or a real need to take concrete positions on things versus a more Trumpy or more moderate challenger. (Sorry, Harry Welty. whatever you might say, you’re not a Republican anymore.) He stayed on point and rode a strong image, mild email flap aside, to a win. He outpaced 2016 Republican Stewart Mills by a fairly consistent margin across the district; only St. Louis County really held its margin for the Democrat, and the biggest Republican gains were not in the much-hyped swinging Iron Range, but in the rural counties that were already the reddest parts of MN-8. I’m very curious to see if Stauber now governs as the moderate suburban dad that was at the core of his persona as a candidate, or if the nationalizing forces in congressional politics lead him to vote in lockstep with his now-minority party in the House.

Joe Radinovich, on the other hand, didn’t enough to win in the face of an unfriendly district and some huge ad buys against him. He failed to control the narrative early, allowing his personal issues to dominate the race and set an ugly tone. Even when things stabilized somewhat, his messaging was a fairly generic turn to bread-and-butter DFL issues like healthcare, not the potentially race-flipping roar of old DFL labor power or some sort of independent fresh turn.

Radnovich, with his youth and lack of a professional life outside of politics, never could assume the rugged fighter’s mantel of a Tom Rukavina or a Rick Nolan. This isn’t to say another candidate from the Democratic primary would have outpaced him; the two who ran second and third were probably too disliked by one wing of the party to do any better, and everyone else was too much of an unknown. Instead, many of the more experienced Democrats who I think could have closed the gap somewhat—a cast that includes Tony Lourey and early retirees Tony Sertich, Don Ness, and Carly Melin—stayed out. (Yes, I think Radinovich’s fiancé would have been a stronger candidate than he was.) Incumbent Rick Nolan overreacted to the threat of a primary fight and dropped out, depriving the DFL of a proven winner; Leah Phifer overreacted to the contested convention, killing any energy the base might have mustered. The Democrats were left with a nice guy who was nowhere near their best option. After much hand-wringing in Democratic circles about Skip Sandman’s potential spoiler role, his ultimate share of the vote wouldn’t have made a difference either way.

So maybe a different Democrat would have made a difference, but maybe not: the results across the nation on Tuesday showed an increasingly nationalized politics, where national leanings are more and more accurate predictors of congressional seats. MN-8, with its very white working class population away from the shores of Lake Superior, is a Republican-friendly seat. As a whole, Minnesota is now in the advanced stages of a realignment, as the four flipped House seats show; it will be complete when Collin Peterson retires or Minnesota gets redistricted in 2021. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party might now be more accurately called the Democratic-Suburban-College-Educated Party, while the Republicans are anything but the Independent Republicans (their name in Minnesota until the 1990s), and are now very much the party of Trump. I expect some plaintive cries from labor Democrats and country club Republicans in the coming days as they try to figure out where their parties have gone. The world has changed.

Unlike some other states, this trend does favor the Democrats as a whole in Minnesota, as the North Star State has a dominant, white-collar metro where there are more votes to collect than in dwindling rural areas. We certainly saw that in the statewide races, where Democrats maintained their stranglehold. That was no surprise with the dominant Senator Amy Klobuchar or with Tim Walz, the governor-elect with a throwback talent for retail politics. I was, however, a bit surprised to see Tina Smith track nearly evenly with Walz. For a candidate who did not exactly exude charisma, her comfortable win was one of the brighter spots for the Democrats on an otherwise rough night in the Senate. Keith Ellison’s narrow win suggests that a front-line Republican candidate could have exploited the controversy surrounding Ellison’s alleged spousal abuse, but Doug Wardlow was not that, and a rare opportunity slipped away.

In down-ballot northeast Minnesota races, there was little to write home about; the big news here, with the Democrats flipping back the state House, took place almost exclusively in the aforementioned suburbs. Moderate Republican Sandy Layman kept the Itasca County seat she flipped two years ago, while the Democrats did appear to claw back a Bemidji area district by an infinitesimal margin. (Expect a recount there.) In the one open house race vacated by MN-8 DFL nomination aspirant Jason Metsa, Dave Lislegard of Aurora cruised. In Lislegard one sees the increasingly rare figure who can still decisively claim Range labor power and could probably win a general election in MN-8, but his staunch support of non-ferrous mining is going to be a liability in any primary. While I don’t think it was decisive this year, that divide is going to be an anchor dragging down the MN-8 DFL in one direction or another until that debate is resolved, if it ever truly is.

Closest to home, the Duluth school referendums outpaced my expectations, with a comfortable win for the second ballot measure aimed at drawing down class sizes and a very narrow defeat for the third, technology-oriented piece. As has been the case in past cycles, the second referendum’s success relied on heavy support on the east side overpowering opposition out west, though this time around there were some exceptions around Denfeld and in Lincoln Park to run up the pro-levy margins. The passage of the new levy follows on the wave of strong support for establishment candidates in the 2017 school board elections, so it seems safe to declare any lingering rancor over the Red Plan thoroughly in the rear view mirror of most Duluth voters. This city supports its public education, and district leadership now must invest its new funds wisely. (Annoyed aside to the city clerk: why didn’t you publish the results of the five ISD 709 townships in your breakdown of precinct results, as you have in the past? And while you’re at it, maybe update your format to something that doesn’t look like a photocopy from 1956?)

As one friend and I observed, there was no real cause for drinks for either party last night, either in celebration or in sorrow. The semi-United States are divided and lurching in opposite directions, as blue areas get bluer and red areas get redder. That fact should be sobering, but for the partisans in their bubbles, it won’t be. The national political environment hews all too closely to that of Lyndon B. Johnson in All the Way, and until some people figure out how to fight those battles while still pushing politics somewhere else, we will have more of the same.

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Half-Hearted Election Eve Notes 2018

I feel obligated to put out an election preview post, though I struggle to find much to say that has not already been said at the national level. I’m not really in the forecasting business, and I enjoy carrying on my feeble localist quest to not let my opinions on national politics to bleed into writing on other issues. But I live in a state that probably has the highest percentage of competitive congressional seats in the country (outside of those with one or two seats), a gubernatorial election and two open senate seats, and also a whole bunch of other stuff.

The race for the Minnesota Eighth Congressional District, my home district, has mostly made me not want to pay any attention. (Way-too-early preview here; primary reaction here.) The level of discourse has been truly putrid, and I am left trying to decide whether I prefer a congressional representative who had a few parking tickets and smoked pot once or one who sent a handful of harmless emails from the wrong account. That’s what’s at stake here, right?

As has become the norm, we likely won’t know the outcome in MN-8 until late in the night on Tuesday. I’m taking it as a given that Pete Stauber will gain on Stewart Mills’ margin two years ago on the Iron Range, but that leaves a few questions that could swing the outcome. First, do the North Metro bits of the district become slightly bluer in a year when the suburbs are trending in that direction, or are they too far out for that wave to reach? But, if this is a close race, in the end I think the most crucial battleground will be Duluth. The Stauber name is well-known here, but it is also a Democratic bastion, and high turnout around Duluth was probably the difference-maker for Nolan in 2016. I’m not convinced Radinovich has done enough to shore up that flank, especially with Skip Sandman set to skim off a healthy chunk of voters disillusioned by his embrace of non-ferrous mining projects on the Range. My bead on this race hinges on two rather contradictory New York Times polls and a lot of guesswork from my work-related travels to most corners of MN-8; after Stauber seemed to take command of the race in October, my sense (shared by that of MN-8 election punditry eminence Aaron Brown) is that Radinovich is closing some down the stretch, but it may not be enough unless it really does turn into a big night for Democrats nationally. I have a lot of thoughts on both campaigns, but we’ll save the Monday morning quarterbacking for Wednesday.

In the rest of the Minnesota House seats, anything seems possible, from Democrats controlling seven of eight to a surprise upset of Collin Peterson in CD-7 giving the Republicans six, or just four seats flipping for a net change of zero. The other big-ticket races will only be dramatic if the Republicans dramatically over-perform the polls. Amy Klobuchar will roll to re-election, Tim Walz seems like a fairly comfortable favorite over Jeff Johnson, and Tina Smith probably has enough of a wave beneath her to resist fend off a spirited effort from Karin Housley. The most interesting statewide race of the night may be the Attorney General contest between Keith Ellison and Doug Wardlow, in which neither candidate has exactly piled up the positive press.

Meanwile, here in Duluth, there is one local race that’s actually interesting: we have three school board levies on the ballot. The first renews an existing levy and a second aims to reduce class sizes; as someone who would like to send his children to good Duluth public schools someday, they are no-brainers. I am a bit peeved by the third one, which focuses on technology upgrades instead of increasing class options, which the school board momentarily discussed. Moreover, the digital divide between the rich and the poor is increasingly the reverse of what conventional wisdom might assume. Poor kids get screens shoved in front of them for diversion all the time now, while the well-off have recognized that things like human interaction and personal attention, shockingly, are more valuable to their kids’ well-being, and forced their schools to respond accordingly. Students need personal attention, smaller classes, and—most relevant to ISD 709—seven-period days that allow for more class choice. But I doubt that one will pass anyway; the second question will also likely face serious opposition, and if its rejection is a prelude to some fresh thought on some of these questions within the district, it won’t be the end of the world.

I could trail on, but the world really doesn’t need any more pre-election hypothesizing. I’ll save my comments for the day after, if we know who’s won by then. Time to swallow my cynicism over awful ads and nationalized campaigns for a little while and get the popcorn ready. Even when it’s terrible, democracy can still be pretty entertaining.

Minnesota Primary Election Reactions, 2018

In the wake of Tuesday’s primaries in this most unique of Minnesota election years, here are a few stray thoughts that worked their way through my mind today.

In the Democratic gubernatorial race, Tim Walz eased to victory on the strength of his performance across the state, particularly in his southern Minnesota base. Erin Murphy struggled to gain much traction beyond deeply urban areas (and dear old Cook County), which was always the concern with her campaign. Lori Swanson ran well in some initial polls, but from my vantage point, ran one of the more tone-deaf political campaigns I’ve ever seen. While any political campaign will make its share of calculated moves to win support, the degree of pure cynicism, woodenness, and poorly disguised politicking here was about as egregious as it gets. She did best up north, where she enjoyed the coattails of embattled running mate Rick Nolan, but struggled in the metro, and fell behind even supposedly rural-unfriendly Murphy in parts of southern Minnesota. The end result was surprisingly lopsided, and shows Walz’s strength as a candidate this fall.

Over on the Republican side, anyone surprised by Jeff Johnson’s win over Tim Pawlenty wasn’t paying attention. The political moment very much favored Johnson, and much like the Swanson campaign, Pawlenty’s efforts to dodge engagement and float in on name recognition and a money dump demonstrated a terrible sense of the pulse of primary politics. Johnson likely faces an uphill battle; he lacks Pawlenty’s fundraising prowess, and his path to victory likely laies in running up margins in rural Minnesota, where the Democrats have nominated the candidate most likely to resist that tide. That said, Johnson is a canny operator who was able to channel Trumpish political instincts without ever sounding very Trumpish, and that ability to seize the moment is going to win Republicans some elections in the coming years.

Statewide, there’s been talk of Minnesota as a unique opportunity for Republicans amid political climate that favors Democrats, and the attention is worthwhile after the razor-thin 2016 presidential election in this state. However, it’s worth recognizing how historically strong Trump’s performance in rural Minnesota was, and any Republican who wins a statewide race is going to have to outpace that rate. That is a very tall order for anyone in an election where the fundamentals will favor the Democrats, at least to some degree. The fairly straightforward race unfolding in the competitive Senate seat between Tina Smith and Karin Housley will also operate under these general political headwinds, and while I think it’s winnable for Housley, she will need some things that aren’t on our radar right now for things to break her way over the next two and a half months.

If there is a race where that is most likely happen, it may be in the contest for Attorney General. Keith Ellison has run as an unabashed progressive. Last-second domestic abuse allegations have now saddled his campaign, and there’s the lingering question of how well a Muslim man will play outside of his safe congressional district. The next few months will allow the former storyline to play out, and we’ll get a sense of just how much the latter matters.

Up here in the northeast corner of things, Pete Stauber rolled to victory, and will give the Republicans one of their best chances to pick up a Democratically-held congressional seat in the country. Joe Radinovich, meanwhile, had a very strong showing in the DFL primary, and has earned himself a battle with Stauber. Radinovich has a number of things going for him that could help keep CD-8 blue, including a fresh face amid a branch of the DFL that needed one and a lot of outside money. (I should call him by his proper title, Iron Ranger Joe Radinovich, as the outside Super PAC that clearly does not understand anything about CD-8 geography sold him in mailers to Duluthians. Meanwhile, the Stauber camp has already developed a Trumpism for Radinovich: Metro Joe, an attempt to shove him in with those Big City Liberals like Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, whose campaign he ran. It’s going to be a long fall, CD-8.)

Progressive favorite Michelle Lee finished comfortably in second, despite running a very low-budget campaign. Her rise was a signal of the base’s strength, but to win, she really needed Radinovich and Jason Metsa to cannibalize each other in the moderate wing of the party. Instead, Radinovich rolled while Metsa, despite the backing of the traditional DFL power players on the Iron Range, put in a surprisingly distant third-place showing. That says a lot about the state of the Iron Range DFL, both in terms of the influence of its bosses and their ability to activate a pro-non-ferrous mining wing of the party without seeing said wing just defect to the Republicans. Meanwhile, I give a lot of credit to Kirsten Kennedy, who ran even with Metsa despite no name recognition beyond a town of 10,000, no money, and no natural constituency in the mining debates that activated many CD-8 Democratic primary voters. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of her political career.

The Stauber-Radinovich fight is going to be brutal, and all corners of this sprawling district are in play. As a Cuyuna Country native, Radinovich has some base to work with in the western, reddest parts of CD-8, and a national map that favors the Democrats will stem any bleeding in the growing exurban part of the district. All signs point to Stauber making gains for the Republicans on the Range, where Trump’s coattails are longest and displeasure with the Democrats’ mining divisions runs deepest. That means the election could turn on the greater Duluth area, which has been an afterthought in recent campaigns, to the point that Stewart Mills didn’t bother having a presence in the city. But Stauber has local name recognition, while an activated base and high turnout in Duluth proper could be Radinovich’s saving grace. The real key, then: do the committed anti-non-ferrous mining activists plug their noses and vote for the vague Radinovich, or do they defect to independent Skip Sandman or stay home?

The Swanson and Pawlenty experiences, coupled with the results of other races dating back to 2016, have made me rethink a theory on how to win elections. In an era of negative campaigning, candidates often don’t win elections so much as they don’t lose them (especially if they have money), and the safest way to lose them is to lose the pulse of one’s base. Pawlenty and Swanson did, and while Walz wasn’t as attuned to the Democratic base as Murphy, he moved just enough to show he understood the moment, and avoided some of the unforced errors of his opponents. I don’t foresee him having the struggles to unify the party that Hillary Clinton had, or that Joe Radinovich will have. Radinovich didn’t run to the base, but did enough to keep much of it on board, and focused on the overall goal, which he pitched as keeping MN-8 blue. He, too, avoided any unforced errors, reacting well when Rick Nolan’s harassment scandal broke. Stable, mistake-free messaging can mean everything.

For all the talk of a progressive wave, meanwhile, Minnesota only really turned left in its areas that were already quite left, with the possible exception of Ellison’s primary win, which has a lot of asterisks right now. This is a pattern consistent with the rest of the country: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez won in the bluest of districts, and democratic socialism has not really caught on in places where one might not expect it to. The result is a Democratic Party that is running very different races in different parts of the country, with Ilhan Omar and Joe Manchin marching under the same banner, playing to the moods of their respective constituents. That may seem incoherent from a national standpoint, but the Republicans have managed to win plenty of elections over the past decade despite an ongoing feud between the Tea Party and Chamber of Commerce wings of the party, so on paper I don’t see why the Democrats can’t have a similarly broad tent. I’m not convinced that party unity is all it’s cracked up to be when it comes to winning elections. When it comes to governance, on the other hand…well, time will tell.

Of Congressmen and Mockingbirds

Time to make a rare foray back into political commentary on two Duluth area stories that have made national attention this past week.

A Congressional Free-For-All

Well, everyone else is doing it, so I’d like to declare my candidacy for—nah. Not a chance in hell.

Rick Nolan threw the race for Minnesota’s 8th congressional seat for a loop with his abrupt decision not to seek re-election last week. (For much more timely and thorough coverage than mine, visit Aaron Brown’s blog.) I pointed to Nolan as a survivor after his 2016 win despite the Trump tide in his district, but the center he held to pull together the MN-8 DFL—economic and social populism to satisfy the base, and unabashed support for mining projects to preserve the Iron Range votes—began to fray this term. He faced a spirited primary fight from Leah Phifer, a 30-something former intelligence analyst who argued it was time for a fresh voice in Washington. Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto’s win in the MN-8 DFL caucuses was a sign that Nolan was going to face a real battle, though my own suspicions about his candidacy began to creep in a few weeks earlier when he called off a Duluth fundraiser.

I found it fascinating that Phifer became the rallying point for environmental causes when her public stance on non-ferrous mining is actually a fairly muted endorsement of existing processes. It goes to show just how jaded the DFL’s environmental base was with Nolan’s attempt to defund a U.S. Forest Service study that that came along with a late Obama-era moratorium that it flocked to a moderately more acceptable candidate. This is the wedge issue in the MN-8 DFL, and Nolan’s rock-solid liberal credentials neither assuaged the environmental left nor drove away Iron Range blue collar social conservatives. To her credit, Phifer also scored authenticity points with her early entry and trailblazing around the district, and a young, female political newcomer was a better fit for the DFL base’s current mood than some of the male longtime politicians like Nolan, and some of those who could now oppose her. Time will tell if she is a serious contender or merely playing Eugene McCarthy to Nolan’s LBJ, but she’s certainly made a splash.

There is room on several sides of Pfeiffer within the DFL for competition to emerge. If the pro-non-ferrous mining camp wants a champion of its own, its foremost options are Jeff Anderson, a native Ranger and Duluth city councilor in the 00s, and Jason Metsa, the state representative in the Virginia area. North Branch mayor Kirsten Hagen Kennedy, the first announced new entrant to the race, has loosely come out in favor of non-ferrous mining, and if no one from the Range chooses to enter, she could be the beneficiary, though she has a fairly large name recognition gap on the rest of the field. Meanwhile, we have an entrant to Phifer’s left, and it’s an intriguing one: longtime Duluth TV anchor Michelle Lee. She has the media savvy and the positive general perception that she could perform well, especially in a crowded primary where turning out a base will be key. Her announcement also made it clear she isn’t going to try to “thread the needle” on the big wedge issue, as she will oppose non-ferrous mining. Candidates who leave no room to one side of themselves on this issue, for or against, are going to get some vocal supporters.

On the list of people who will probably try to thread that needle, one candidate has already declared for the race: Joe Radinovich, a former one-term state congressman who had just taken a job as chief of staff to new Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey. Like Mayor GentriFrey, he comes off as a polished young candidate groomed for politics who will take some principled stands here and there—his support for gay marriage probably cost him his House seat—but otherwise speaks in sweeping, optimistic generalities. I could see his candidacy finding the middle ground, or crashing and burning in a crowded field. Duluth area senator Erik Simonson has opposed non-ferrous mining, but does have some union bona fides that might not totally doom him on the Range if he were to enter the race. If there’s a safe pick to bridge divides, it’s probably state senator Tony Lourey, who has a long track record in the legislature, has consistently won in a very rural district, and carries a valuable family name in liberal circles. But we’ll see if he has any real interest, and if his style can succeed in a political environment that would seem to reward turning out core supporters.

No one has an easy path. Skip Sandman still looms there to drain votes away from any Democrat who supports non-ferrous mining, but any DFLer who doesn’t support it is going to take some blows on the Iron Range. A Michelle Lee-type figure would need to limit the damage there, turn out the base in Duluth, and try to make inroads in the Twin Cities exurban portions of the district that don’t much care about mining debates. Lourey and maybe Radinovich might have the best odds in a general election, but 2016 reminds us that candidates need to inspire enthusiasm in addition to seeming electability, and they’ll have to get through a crowded primary. If the DFL has a saving grace, it is probably its ground game in the Eighth; if the primary winner comes through without too many burned bridges, he or she will have the backing of a very strong infrastructure.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have a much cleaner field right now. Pete Stauber, who has a lot of potential, remains the only declared candidate. Stewart Mills is apparently pondering a third run now; while he has the money for it, he feels like an also-ran at this point. That leaves Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt lurking in the shadows as the only likely person who could both win the nomination and the general. Conventional wisdom says Nolan’s withdrawal ups Republican odds of a win, since Nolan has proven resilient in past election cycles, but Nolan’s left flank on mining (and mining alone!) was exposed enough that I’m not sure that will be the case until we know who the Democratic nominee is. At this point, all Stauber can do is try to build familiarity as the Democrats squabble with one another, and we’ll revisit this if someone else jumps in.

To Kill a Reading Assignment

The other newsmaker in Duluth recently was a decision by the Duluth school district to strike two classic texts, To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn, from the curriculum due to their use of racial slurs. I’ll concede that my initial reaction was visceral: I cringe at any seeming attempt to wash away unpleasant histories, and I’m a graduate of this district who read and was moved by both. The world of Mockingbird may be an idealized version of the South, but the standard it sets for childhood recognition of injustice and moral conduct in the face of it deserves the credit it has earned. I struggle to think of a book that inspired a more emotional reception from the classroom in my high school years.  Huck Finn, while probably less beloved, is still perhaps the most complex work of one of America’s most delightful authors, and is the rare novel with literary merit that unabashedly captures the voice of an adolescent boy. And while I acknowledge that there was a fair amount of discomfort among some (white) classmates of mine in reading a certain word over and over again, I would like to think that a high school classroom should aspire to be exactly the sort of safe space where students can come to recognize the full extent of racist sentiment in American history, and hold a productive discussion about what it means, and how far we have (or haven’t) come. If not here, then where?

Of course, I know nothing of what it is like to read these books as a black kid. (For that matter, there wasn’t a single African-American in either of my Duluth East English classes in which we read these books.) And while I will defend the concept of a historical literary canon that captures the best of literature, I also don’t think that these things have to be static, with certain books taught in perpetuity. Canons grow and evolve, and there are a lot of good books that can touch on similar themes without losing literary merit. Books in English classes shouldn’t just be “relatable,” as good writing needs more than that, but there are points at which books become so inaccessible that there are better alternatives. I’ve seen plenty of suggestions bandied about already, and would have a couple of my own, too, if there were space for a productive community conversation here. The district could have that very debate internally, perhaps while including community stakeholders such as the NAACP at the table, but instead decided to make the decision first and then respond later.

What irks me most about this was how it was handled. No teachers, nor even the school board, had any say in the matter. It was an edict handed down from on high, as has become the norm in this district. (I’ve usually heard good things about curriculum director Mike Cary, but how naïve did he have to be not to realize this would happen, as he seems to suggest in his claim that this “took on a life of its own before having a chance to talk about it,” when the very first talk anyone outside of a district office heard on this was the announcement that the books were gone?) All too predictably, this drew some fairly negative coverage, and now the district gets itself splattered across national headlines, and occasionally used as a punchline. I sometimes think that ISD 709 could find some way to turn getting the best test scores in the state into a PR nightmare. This is the direct result of its manner of engagement with its most important stakeholders, its students and its teachers. Some things never change.

Oh No We’re Already Talking About 2018 Congressional Races

It’s never too early to start handicapping congressional races! (Ugh.) Pete Stauber, a Hermantown resident and current St. Louis County Commissioner representing the exurban areas around Duluth, will seek the Republican nomination challenge incumbent Democrat Rick Nolan (presuming he runs again, as he seems all but certain to do) in Minnesota’s eighth congressional district. This district is one of the more politically interesting in the country, and produced the most expensive congressional race in the nation in 2016. I also live in it.

On paper, Stauber is probably the most dangerous possible opponent for Nolan. While a solid Republican, he has some centrist credentials, and is very popular in a county board seat that otherwise tips a little to the left. His announcement speech sounded more like that of a Chamber of Commerce conservative with a common touch than a right-wing firebrand. His resume sounds like it was designed in a lab to be a friendly moderate conservative who can win MN-8: police officer, working class roots, self-made man through his small business stake, veteran wife, past hockey stardom. His most obvious shortcoming is a lack of the deep pockets that Stewart Mills has, and he could face a disadvantage if Mills decides to give MN-8 a third try. There is also real room for someone to give him a primary test from his right, and if that happens, it could alter the character of the whole race.

Stauber also has something going for him that recent Republicans haven’t: he can put the Duluth metro area into play. He has deep roots here, and his family name is littered all over local politics. Chip Cravaack and Mills effectively ceded Duluth to the DFL; Mills didn’t even bother opening a campaign office in the largest city in the district. This struck me as a grave error; even if they have no prayer of winning the area, just trimming off a few votes here or there could have made the difference in some razor-thin elections. I doubt Stauber will make that mistake, and this election could come down to Hermantown and Proctor and Duluth Heights instead of Hibbing and Grand Rapids.

Looming over Stauber’s run, of course, will be the perception of President Donald Trump. I wish all politics were local, but these national indicators matter an awful lot. Stauber did endorse Trump a year ago, and if 2018 turns into a Democratic wave year, you can hear the attack ads already. On the other hand, if El Presidente manages to chart a course free of major scandals and musters an unorthodox, not-just-GOP-boilerplate politics (and/or the Democratic Party’s outrage machine goes overboard), his relatively strong showing in MN-8 two years ago may boost a supporter. The real question is whether Trump’s 16-point win over Clinton in MN-8 was an anomaly or a signal of things to come, and that has a lot to do with the direction the Republican Party decides to take in relation to its President. (The same is true of the Democratic Party’s tack now that it’s out in the wilderness, though less so in a district with a well-known incumbent who runs a pretty tight ship.)

Rick Nolan won’t go down easy. The Republicans’ inability to dislodge him in 2016 was a testament to the congressman’s strength as a political operator. There isn’t much room to attack Nolan on mining, which is the main wedge issue in the Iron Range swing areas of the district, and he walks the tightrope of bringing home some bacon to the district without losing his folksiness. The DFL still has the superior campaign machinery in the region. And if the Democrats do reclaim the House, Nolan now has some seniority, which would wield a lot more influence than a rookie Republican looking to find his position in a much more heterodox caucus. (Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi or winning battles but losing wars, the House Democrats have pretty much voted as a bloc for over a decade, while the GOP delegation has been riven by division since its populist wing arose in 2010.) The Stauber name also probably doesn’t mean much in North Branch or Brainerd; this district is so large that a local dynasty means little in some parts, for good or ill.

I hate to feed the horse race cycle this early, but it’s all become real, and we have a long way to go here. This is also a fascinating district, and one that could break different ways based on its various scattered parts. To set the table for this long campaign slog, I’ll break MN-8 into four distinct regions:

MN 8 Districts

  1. Red MN-8. Seven rural counties and a piece of an eighth that consistently vote Republican, and have done so even since before this district began its rightward drift. With the exception of Crow Wing County they are sparsely populated, but combined they account for nearly 31 percent of the district’s population, which is a plurality of the four groups I’ve identified.
  2. Blue Collar. These are the rural parts of MN-8, including five counties plus northern St. Louis County, that form a collar around the Duluth metro. They have traditionally been bastions of the DFL, but have all shifted rightward in recent election cycles. That shift is in different stages across the region; it’s basically complete in Aitkin County, and still has a ways to go on the heart of the Iron Range, which covers central St. Louis County and eastern Itasca County. But these areas all share a white working class identity, economies heavily dependent on extractive industries, and an unstable political climate that includes both some rising Republicans and some well-entrenched DFLers. These areas, for fairly good reason, have gotten all the attention as the swing zones in recent elections, and forms nearly 29 percent of the electorate.
  3. Blue MN-8. Basically, the Duluth metro (southern St. Louis County and Carlton County), plus Cook County, which is rural but doesn’t vote like it, and is so small and unique that it doesn’t fit well elsewhere. These areas are solidly Democratic, going over 60% for Nolan in 2016, though there are certainly some swing votes to be found in the exurban areas. It makes up 26 percent of the electorate.
  4. Exurbia. Chisago and Isanti Counties, which straddle the north end of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro and enjoy some economic spin-offs. While only 14 percent of the electorate, they’re interesting and distinct for a number of reasons. One, they’re wealthier than the other rural parts of this district (and the urban parts, for that matter, save a few pockets in and around Duluth). Two, both Chip Cravaack and Stewart Mills, the two Republican candidates for MN-8 in the last four election cycles, were from here. Three, Nolan outperformed Hillary Clinton by a very large margin here, which I’m not really sure how to interpret. Point being, I think there are more votes up for grabs here than most may realize. For that matter, these counties are also growing, while population in much of the rest of the district is flat or shrinking. (The other growing areas are spread out pretty evenly, including red Crow Wing County, contested Itasca County, and in the Duluth metro.)

We’ll revisit this whole scheme in November 2018 and see which way each one broke relative to past election cycles. For now, though, I’ll keep my attention on the elections are actually happening this year.