Minnesota increasingly important to both political parties
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Former President Donald Trump will campaign alongside his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, on Saturday night in St. Cloud.
It will be the first time the Republican presidential ticket has campaigned together since President Joe Biden announced he was leaving the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to replace him.
The Trump-Vance rally will take place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on the St. Cloud State University campus.
Earlier in the day, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other Democratic leaders are hosting their own campaign event in St. Paul.
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The dueling events come as both parties have said Minnesota is in play this election.
Donald Trump has a keen interest in picking up a state that has gone for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election for the past half-century.
He came close to winning Minnesota in 2016, and polls between Biden and Trump this election cycle remained close. While Biden is no longer atop the Democratic ticket, Minnesota’s highest-ranking Republican, Congressman Tom Emmer, doesn’t think the odds have changed.
“I think Donald Trump has a great chance of winning Minnesota in November because people recognize the choice is pretty easy,” Emmer told MPR’s “All Things Considered.” “There’s a choice of opportunity or there’s a choice to go down the same road that’s been failing us for the last three and a half years.”
Democrats from Minnesota and other states held an event earlier in the week in St. Paul to drum up support from Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander organizers working to engage voters from those communities.
The Democratic mayor of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, said he doesn’t think Ohio is winnable for Kamala Harris. But speaking on a rooftop alongside the mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Pureval said Harris has to win Minnesota in November.
“You have to push her across the finish line, you have to have our auntie’s back,” Pureval said. “Because look, there are people who say the country is too racist, and too sexist to elect someone like Vice President Harris — and that is crap.”
St. Paul City Council member Hwa Jeong Kim was in the crowd.
“The message that I’m leaving with is very clear, that there are other states in the Midwest and other states across the country that are really relying on Minnesotans to pull our weight and knock on the doors and make sure that we carry the state for our next president, President Harris,” she said.
The state Democratic party said it saw a big boost in fundraising in the two days following Harris’ announcement.
But the Trump campaign has been beefing up its operations in a state where the former president came just over one percentage point from winning eight years ago.