Good morning. Every week seems busy these days.
When you’re a national candidate, that means spending time getting around the nation, naturally. For Gov. Tim Walz, his campaign job is pulling him away from his day job. MPR’s Dana Ferguson reports on the frenzied travel schedule for Walz so far that is unlikely to let up anytime soon. The official schedule put out by his office has become repetitive of late: "Governor Tim Walz has no public events scheduled." He’s delegated some duties and taken on other functions remotely. Walz is currently on a coast-to-coast fundraising swing and will be in many more places before formally accepting the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.
Case in point: Walz will travel to his home state of Nebraska this weekend as the Democratic vice presidential nominee makes a play for a single Electoral College vote. Nebraska is a firm red state but it allocates electoral votes differently than the majority of the county. Two electoral votes go to the state’s popular vote winner and the rest are divided among the popular vote winner for each congressional district. Democratic President Joe Biden won Omaha’s congressional district in 2022 and former President Barack Obama won it in 2008. The Harris-Walz campaign hopes the Nebraska native’s roots help pick up one Cornhusker state electoral vote in this very close presidential race.
The vice presidential debate between Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance could be nailed down soon. The Harris campaign said it had agreed to an Oct. 1 debate, but several other options are floating around. It’s likely to be hosted by CBS and happen in New York.
One of the Walz duties on the ticket is to give the Vice President Kamala Harris-led campaign more appeal in rural parts of the country. His record on guns is sure to be analyzed closely. Dana examined the Walz evolution on guns — from NRA ally to adversary. Read her story here.
No surprise, but there was pretty low turnout for the August primary. This is about to get nerdy. We don’t have official word from the Secretary of State’s Office yet. It appears as though it’ll wind up being somewhere between 12 and 13 percent. We’re hedging because we don’t know the voting-eligible population assigned to Minnesota for 2024. But if we use the 2022 number of 4.14 million , the turnout would be in the 12.4 percent ballpark. The votes for statewide Senate candidates added up to about 515,000. Anyway, it marks the lowest since the 7.4 percent in 2016 — when there were no statewide partisan races on the ballot. In 2014, when there were contests for the U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide offices to sort through, the turnout was about 10 percent.
Minnesota could be in for its most expensive legislative race ever. The west metro special election is set after former State Sen. Ann Johnson Stewart won the DFL primary Tuesday. She’ll run against Republican west metro real estate agent Kathleen Fowke. Whoever wins this race will determine which party has a majority in the Senate. The race is already attracting the attention of national groups. Political analysts believe $3 million to $5 million dollars could be funneled into the district as both parties try to gain the majority. The record amount of spending in competitive races around the state is a little over $2 million. Ellie wrote about it all here.
In case you missed it, the entire politics team was featured on Minnesota Now yesterday for a primary night recap. The show was packed with appearances from Minnesota House leaders, who talked about the race for control of the chamber. Dana Ferguson recapped primary night with the legislative races she was watching and what those outcomes mean as we hurtle towards November. And Clay Masters and Mark Zdechlik provided a look ahead to next week’s Democratic National Convention that they’ll both be attending. Busy week as usual for the team! You can listen to the show here.
Every member of the Walz family is getting more attention these days, even the dog. Scout Walz made his national debut in Vogue . When the magazine writes about famous people’s pooches, it’s apparently reclassified as “Dogue.” For the article, Walz recounts the viral story of his labrador mix rescue dog getting locked in the bedroom (the fire department had to come to the rescue), the time Scout devoured his dad’s glasses before a COVID-19 press briefing and all the other shenanigans that come with adopting a rescue dog. It seems those black lab mixes — or at least Scout — are always getting into mischief! | 