During his victorious campaign for president in 2016, Donald J. Trump nearly won Minnesota, losing to Hillary Clinton by just 1.5 percent in a state that seems to relish breaking Republican hearts.
On Friday, the former president will be back, speaking at a fundraising dinner for the Republican Party of Minnesota in St. Paul, open only to paying guests and invited media. Whether this visit is a feint to attract Democratic dollars to the state or a genuine effort to expand the electoral map, only the Trump campaign knows.
But now is the time to observe the deep divisions in a state where the political and social divide between urban and rural areas is particularly wide.
“No one feels this harder than me,” said Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat whose swing district, perhaps the last in the state, stretches from the southern limits of Minneapolis and St. Paul to to rural areas southeast of cities. “Look, I was on the ballot in 2016 when Trump first ran. He won my district and I lost my race. We are all going to have to work very, very hard this year.
Minnesota has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard M. Nixon won the state in 1972. But Mr. Trump’s vote share has actually increased. from 2016, when he earned 44.9 percent and Mrs. Clinton took 46.4 percent, 2020, when the former president won 45.3 percent and President Biden won 52.4 percent.
State Republicans insist 2024 is their year.
“Minnesotans are hard-working, blue-collar Midwesterners, and they are being crushed by this administration’s policies,” said Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican who in 2018 flipped a Democratic seat that covers a vast swath of the Northeast. eastern Minnesota, including its seat. iron range. “These 10 electoral votes will go to President Donald Trump.”
Some Democrats are worried. Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat who represents the affluent, educated suburbs west of Minneapolis that voted Republican for years and then switched to him, said he was surprised by the number of voters who he spoke and who are ready to vote for Mr. Trump. . Mr. Phillips challenged Mr. Biden for the Democratic nomination and got nowhere. He now wants the president to be re-elected.
“I don’t think Trump would spend his valuable time coming to this event, in the case of the Twin Cities, if his campaign didn’t have good internal numbers,” Mr. Phillips said.
No Republican has won a statewide election since 2006, but the Democratic winning streak doesn’t capture the complex dynamics of a state where the urban core, Minneapolis-St. Paul and its suburbs, has greatly increased its population and noticeably to the left, while rural Minnesota has moved to the right.
The defeat of Representative Collin Peterson, a 15-term moderate Democrat and head of the House Agriculture Committee, in 2020, and the retirement of Rick Nolan in 2018, replaced by Mr. Stauber, swept away the last vestiges of Democratic centrism in 2020. the vast northern reaches of the state. The largely rural southern Minnesota district once represented by the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, now has a well-established conservative Republican as its member of Congress.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, the Democratic Socialists of America and their the allies obtained the majority on the city council last year. The suburbs, once dominated by moderate Republicans, have passed into Democratic hands.
The Trump campaign believes it can capitalize on — or foment — a backlash against the Twin Cities’ march to the left and the still-fresh memories of the unrest following the killing of George Floyd.
“Very sad what happened to your condition,” Mr. Trump told a news anchor on the conservative site Alpha News on Thursday, attacking progressive Minneapolis Rep. Ilhan Omar as a “hater,” promising “mass evictions” and vowing to “bring law enforcement back to the way it was” before M’s killing .Floyd. “Your state is out of control, and it’s this radical left philosophy that cannot continue.”
According to a recent poll, Mr. Biden is clinging to a narrow lead in Minnesota, within the margins of error in some polls. Its precarious position has been exacerbated by the war in Gaza. A Protest campaign for the “uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primary in March attracted 19 percent.
“We have a real opportunity to expand the map here,” Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told The Associated Press before Mr. Trump’s visit.
Even state Democrats have their concerns.
“Ultimately, I don’t really think Minnesota will come into play, in part because when the contrast between a completely lopsided Donald Trump and Biden crystallizes late in the campaign, disgruntled and undecided voters will turn here for President Biden. ” said Jim Manley, a Democratic political consultant who lives in Minneapolis. “But it will be too close for comfort.”
Mr Phillips said: “I admit I have spoken to more people, and remarkable people, who say they will vote for Trump. Many will, and many more than will admit it.
That said, Minnesota has been to Republicans what North Carolina has been to Democrats. They can see how to win it. They have won it in the past. But they always seem to fail. Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008. Tim Pawlenty, the last Republican governor of Minnesota, was narrowly re-elected in 2006.
