Good morning and welcome to Thursday. President Trump and Vice President Pence will be in Minnesota today, and that’s where we start the Digest.
1. Rally will help Trump as he organizes in Minnesota for 2020. The Trump campaign and his allies are organizing earlier and more aggressively than past Republicans in Minnesota. Trump’s team saw his narrow Minnesota loss last time -- by about 44,000 votes out of almost 3 million cast -- as an invitation to compete in the consistently Democratic state. “Gut and intuition got the president within 1-and-a-half points. Now we’re going to get him over the line with data-driven, strategic political operations and plans across Minnesota,” said Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan. “And not take for granted the accomplishments he’s had, the energy that he brings, the inspiration of driving people out. We’re going to make sure that that’s all there -- and then some.” Carnahan said there are 25 paid staffers connected to the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign now, with a plan of reaching 100 next year. Some have been at it since June. They’re working to recruit and train thousands of volunteers. To get rally tickets, people supply the Trump campaign with their name, cell phone number and email address. Carnahan said that information gets plugged into party databases. The party assigns every registered voter a score. It’s based on voting history, other political activity and consumer information. All is used to judge how likely that person is to vote for Trump or be open to persuasion. On Thursday, volunteers will also be working the lines outside Target Center to solicit future help. MPR News 2. Minnesota Democrats are worried about the head start Trump has. As Republicans prepare to rally behind President Trump in Minneapolis, Democrats have plenty of candidates but no good sense of who will become their nominee to run against him next year. The nomination battle threatens Democrats’ chances going into the 2020 election, said Minnesota DFL Party Chair Ken Martin. “There’s no doubt, the longer this nominating contest goes on, the steeper the hill is for us in terms of beating Donald Trump,” he said. Martin said Republican fundraising and organizing efforts should be of particular concern in Minnesota, a state where the last time a Republican presidential candidate prevailed was 1972. Trump narrowly lost in the state in 2016 and is targeting it for victory next year. “Minnesota has the longest streak of any in the nation of voting for the Democratic presidential nominee,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be the party chair that loses Minnesota on their watch.” MPR News 3.Protesters ready to converge on downtown. Trump held rallies in Duluth and Rochester in the last campaign cycle, but his Minneapolis appearance is expected to draw much larger crowds, including thousands of protesters. Minneapolis is in the 5th Congressional District, one of the most Democratic districts in the country. It elected DFL U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar last fall with 78 percent of the vote, and in 2016, only 18 percent of voters there backed Trump for president. Jackie Schwarz Craig, who works with the Women’s March Minnesota, said her first reaction to the rally was fear for Omar, whom Trump has targeted in his tweets. “He’s been targeting Ilhan with a lot of rhetoric and quite frankly a lot of hate. And she has been nothing but graceful,” she said. “I personally fear for her and her family. We shouldn't have to fear for the families of people representing our communities.” Giselda Gutierrez works with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, which posted a Dump Trump protest event on Facebook that's attracted thousands of responses. She said she was shocked when she heard Trump was coming to Minneapolis “It seems very intentional that he’s coming here. He’s going to hit on those messages of being anti-Muslim and anti-refugee, and that’s why we decided we needed to oppose that,” she said. “We’re not going to be sucked into that message of hating our fellow community members, people we live with.” More than a dozen groups are working together to coordinate the protests and they’re training hundreds of marshalls to try and keep protesters safe during the event. The groups said they don’t want any violence. MPR News 4. Trump supporters protest Frey. Supporters of President Trump protested Wednesday outside the City Hall office of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has been in a public spat with the Trump campaign over the $530,000 security bill for Thursday’s Target Center rally. Chants of “We support our police, Frey do you?” and “Trump, Trump, Trump!” rang out for about a half-hour as the crowd of about two dozen people mobilized outside of Frey’s office. The mayor was not present, in observance of Yom Kippur. Plans for the rally first surfaced late Tuesday afternoon when the national coordinator of Bikers for Trump posted a Facebook plea for supporters to demonstrate outside Frey’s office. Later that evening, an e-mail from Trump campaign volunteers urging people to show up at the same time and place was also shared online, which included suggestions for signs and chants. Tim Anderson, a Trump supporter from Minneapolis who calls himself a “political junkie,” was one of the early arrivals. Anderson took issue with the city’s insistence that the Trump campaign pay for costs associated with the rally. “He doesn’t want Trump here,” Anderson said. “He would get rid of him if he could and this is a way to get rid of him.” Star Tribune
5. In pre-rally rally, GOP tries to appeal to women voters. President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign wants to turn Minnesota red in 2020 — and it’s counting on women to make it happen. Second Lady Karen Pence and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, drew hundreds of women — and a few men — to St. Paul’s Union Depot for a standing-room-only event Wednesday night. “They tell us women for Trump do not exist, but here you are,” Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for Trump’s 2020 campaign, said before introducing the two women to the cheering crowd. The visit came a day before both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were scheduled to visit the Twin Cities. It drew a crowd, dotted with bright red outfits and “Make America Great Again” caps, that started lining up more than an hour before the event began. Seated in front of a “Women for Trump” sign and flanked by United States and Minnesota flags, Karen Pence and Lara Trump, who is married to the president’s son Eric, told stories about the first time they met the future president, then launched into a variety of issues — the economy, support for veterans, health care, immigration. They acknowledged that some women may still be undecided on who they’ll vote for in 2020 — and even if they have decided, “we know it’s not easy sometimes to be a Trump supporter,” Lara Trump said. Star Tribune | 