Gov. Tim Walz begins his campaign for an unprecedented third consecutive term as governor with more than $1 million in the bank and the potential to raise millions more from Minnesota donors and his national connections.
Republicans are ready, feeling more confident about their prospects to win the state’s top office than they have in years. They have issues that rally their base and an opponent in Walz whose popularity has faded, according to recent surveys.
Add it altogether and Minnesotans are in for some campaign in 2026. Not a good campaign, mind you, if recent past is prologue. Republicans will try to convince voters that there hasn’t been a single tax dollar spent for honest purposes in Walz’s eight years. In response, Walz will play his greatest hits for Minnesotans, a litany of big-government programs passed in his terms and especially during the 2023-24 legislative session when the DFL ruled the roost.
Next year’s gubernatorial contest has all the elements for an ugly, down-in-the-dirt campaign, a campaign that will elect one of the candidates but will leave Minnesota without a mandate for moving forward.
Minnesota Star Tribune editorial columnist Rochelle Olson is among those rightly calling for a 2026 gubernatorial campaign of big ideas. In particular, she recently called on Minnesota Republicans to “seize the moment with a (gubernatorial) candidate who may be untested, but is willing to lead a debate about the future of the state and bold enough to drag the party out from under President Donald Trump’s hulking shadow” (“Republicans can reset the governor’s race without waiting for Walz,” Aug. 19).
She could have made the same pitch to Democrats. The DFL is plagued by its own “hulking shadow,” identity politics and ideological purity run amuck. Research shows that white progressives often hold views far to the left of the minorities they seek to represent. And there is little room for dissent. Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and chief of staff to President Barack Obama was right when he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, “When the woke police come at you, you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”
All this comes at a time when the state’s economy and core institutions are facing strong headwinds. Population growth is stagnant, and even declining in some years. The state’s economic growth has trailed the nation for most of this century. Minnesota’s 3.5% unemployment rate gives job seekers a favorable market, but overall the state has trailed the nation in the creation of jobs for most of the last two decades. Half or more of students tested in the state’s once-envied public schools are not proficient in reading or math.
In spite of this, Minnesota remains a state with strong, foundational assets. The state boasts a generally healthy population, a diverse economy with a large number of corporate headquarters and natural resources that provide bountiful quality-of-life and economic opportunities.
Voters need to hear from those seeking to lead the state how they plan to build a stronger, brighter future on Minnesota’s foundation. A few topics worth discussing:
– In spite of record funding increases in recent years, school districts across the state are facing huge budget deficits. It is time for a new “Minnesota Miracle,” a complete re-thinking of how schools are funded, how school districts are organized and how new technologies can be incorporated into classrooms. Candidates owe voters a vision of how to assure that every child graduating from high school in Minnesota can read, write and do math at a 12th grade level and has the basic skills to be successful in the next phase of life.
– Property taxes in Minnesota already are soaring and the new federal rules on Medicaid will shift even more costs to state and local governments. That’s a huge challenge for Minnesota which remains one of the few states in the nation to deliver and administer many social services, including health programs, through the counties. Property taxes are the primary source of revenue for counties. When more costs are imposed on counties, as the federal budget will do, the only choices are to curtail some programs or raise property taxes. Often, neither is acceptable, so what is the solution and what role should the state play?
– What are the candidates’ plans for sustaining a culture of innovation and economic growth in Minnesota? A large part of the state’s population challenge is the “brain drain,” young people who leave for college and don’t return. What tax and regulatory reforms would promote investment and entrepreneurship while avoiding the partisan and unproductive debate between “government is the problem” or “more government is the solution”?
And those are just the topics for the first few millions of dollars to be spent on campaign ads. To be sure, the issues are complicated and solutions are challenging. But come November 2026 two people – and perhaps more – will ask Minnesotans to entrust them with the future. Voters should have a shared vision of what that future is and an investment in the policies that the winning candidate proposes.
Getting to that kind of productive debate starts not with the candidates but with we the people. Bold candidates are born of bold voters. Get involved, not as a partisan cheering for your team, but as a Minnesotan committed to a state that works for everyone.
Three suggestions:
– If you belong to a business or civic group, urge your organization to host forums, including debates. But don’t accept ground rules that promote vapid talking points over substance. Bring in a moderator who can hold candidates’ feet to the fire.
– Participate in the campaigns. Attend political events, to cheer as appropriate but to question as is necessary.
– Engage in policy conversations with your family, friends and networks. Have facts, not just opinions, and be respectful. For example, Walz has been governor during a time of massive fraud. What’s the solution, and how does the state protect the integrity of tax dollars while still investing in programs that make Minnesota better? Or, on the other side, if the answer to every challenge is to cut taxes, what is the path forward to funding what most Minnesotans value, including education, a responsible social safety net, the environment and other assets?
In the 1950s, Minnesota was an also-ran state. We were blessed, though, with three important assets: innovative public leadership, involved and committed business and non-profit sectors and an engaged citizenry that supported bold policies. By the early 1970s, Minnesota had became “the state that works,” as Time Magazine said.
Minnesota has had strong leaders since then. Governors of different parties have led through innovation to strengthen education (Rudy Perpich) and spur economic growth and development (Arne Carlson), among other achievements.
That same leadership is needed today, and it starts with campaigns of ideas.
Well I think the author is probably well intended but I didn’t find this helpful. We are urged to focus on issues, but nearly everyone, except the MAGA far right, is addressing issues. I see the problems somewhat differently: There are strong differences concerning what the most important issues are, there is a lack of clearly articulated proposed solutions even when there is agreement concerning what the main issues are and there are questions of technical competence when elected officials attempt to implement programs when some kind of consensus has been achieved. In this article with regard to the first item, the closest the author comes to defining an issue which I agree is important is in the paragraph on K-12 education. But when it comes to the second and third points there is nothing new offered and the question of how to improve K-12 has been addressed in recent years in a series of failed attempts at new approaches all over the country. With regard to my third point, we have had competent leaders, (including Carlson and Perpich) with whom I disgreed on quite a few issues but who did useful things and also people like Tim Walz, with whom I agree on most issues but I am concerned about his competence. But my biggest problem with this piece, as with just about everything that appears in the Minneapolis Times, is that the biggest issue for me is looming fascism. People on this forum still seem to have their heads in the sand about it ,even after DC, Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago have been occupied by the federal military on very flimsy pretexts and in a totally unconstitutional manner. How will the various institutions in the city react when Minneapolis-St Paul is invaded by federal troops from Texas or another red state? Are any of you thinking about it? Or perhaps some are not concerned because they don’t regard fascism as a problem. I do actually hate to think that about the apparently mainly rational readership here but it begins to cross my mind.
Woods Halley
What a great article! I would love to see the parties lead on changing the discourse to focus on real and important issues but I doubt they will. Voters/citizens need to demand more substance, actual ideas, and viable strategies. Alas we are awash in “vapid talking points” – a well-stated description from the article.