Minnesota Republicans think they have found a golden issue to run on in 2024. In the 2022 elections, campaigning on interfering with women’s healthcare decisions, blocking gun protections, banning books, censoring teachers, and championing insurrectionists didn’t go that great for them. Therefore, Republicans have settled on an old reliable “bread and butter” issue — fighting to cut taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Bam! Take that, big-taxing progressives. Here come the trickle-down “Reagan Republicans.”
The problem is that this isn’t 1984, and most Americans do not want the wealthiest and corporations to have lower taxes. According to a March 2023 Pew survey, a jaw-dropping 83% of Americans are bothered — 61% “a lot,” 22% “somewhat” — that “some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.” A nearly identical number are bothered that “some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share.” Only 17% agree with Republicans on that issue.
Looking at these numbers, you would be hard-pressed to find a worse issue for Republicans to emphasize during the 2024 elections. DFLer activists should consider contributing to Republicans who are paying to put their “shame on the DFL for taxing the wealthy and corporations” messages in front of voters. That messaging does Republicans much more harm than good.
If only Minnesota DFLers had a way to show the swing voters who will decide close races how they are fighting to ensure that wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes to support state infrastructure and services.
Enter the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The national think tank recently found that Minnesota currently has the #1 most equitable state and local tax system, thanks to changes made by DFLers.
How does Minnesota have a more equitable system than other states? The breakdown for Minnesota by the Minnesota Budget Project shows that Minnesota’s highly progressive state income tax offsets out highly regressive sales and excise (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, gasoline) taxes.
You may recall, that in 2020 GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and his followers ran on eliminating that state income tax. That 2020 election didn’t go particularly well for Johson and his party.
Based on the polling and Jensen’s shellacking, shouldn’t Minnesota’s tax fairness ranking be something that DFLers tout to the 83% who agree with them? Shouldn’t they “go on offense” on this issue?
U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-Edina) seems to be relishing the national attention that comes with his months of hemming and hawing about a long-shot potential challenge of Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. To be clear, Phillips is far from the best Democrat in the nation to serve as an alternative to Joe Biden. In fact, Phillips is not even close to being the best presidential candidate in little old Minnesota.
Phillips is fine. The former CEO of Phillips Distributing, his step-father’s inherited business, is thoughtful and decent, if also sometimes dull and self-righteous, as centrist politicicans tend to be. His bipartisan instincts have made him a good fit to represent the purple-ish 3rd congressional district, which is anchored by Minnesota’s most affluent western suburbs.
However, it’s time for Phillips to come out of the TV studios and return to representing his district. As Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) said in today’s Star Tribune:
There’s no path. There’s no outcry. Personally, I think it’s a vanity project by Mr. Phillips, and I think it could do serious damage by emboldening the Trump Republicans.”
To be clear, the most talented politician in Minnesota isn’t Phillips. It’s DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar, and it’s not even close. Reports about Klobuchar’s erratic behind-the-scenes behavior are concerning when it comes to the world’s most pressure-packed job. Still, no Minnesota politician is better than Klobuchar at doing what presidential candidates must do well – sell progressive ideas and positions in both wholesale and retail settings to a wide variety of audiences. Whether on big or small stages, Klobuchar consistently comes across as warm, sincere, tough, bright, thoughtful, prepared, nimble, and persuasive. As such, Minnesota’s senior senator would be a much more compelling presidential candidate than Phillips.
While Klobuchar is Minnesota’s most skilled politician, DFL Governor Tim Walz ranks second. At the same time, Walz has more marketable policy accomplishments than Kloubachar or any other Minnesota pol.
In a purple state with a slim one-vote DFL advantage in the state Senate, Walz can boast on national stages that he signed many state laws that national Democrats want to see on a national level, such as legislation creating a family and medical leave system, securing abortion rights, legalizing marijuana, expanding child care access, creating new gun violence protections, making voting more accessible, providing free school lunches for all, investing much more in public education, building a public option for health insurance, and requiring disclosure for dark money donors.
All the while, the Minnesota economy has outpaced a relatively strong national economy, with a lower rate of inflation and unemployment than the nation as a whole.
Walz’s long list of significant policy accomplishments would be popular among the national Democrats he would need to win over in a primary challenge against Biden. Importantly, it also would be popular among the swing voters a Democratic nominee will need to win over in a 2024 presidential general election. Politically speaking, Walz is well poised to make a “we will do for America what we did for Minnesota” pitch to Democrats clutching their pearls about Biden’s electoral viability.
State Capitol insiders are quick to point out that Walz’s myriad policy wins had more to do with House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, and a number of very capable DFLers chairing key committees. But that kind of inside baseball would largely be ignored by national pundits and reporters if Walz ran for President. Walz vocally supported those progressive changes and signed them into law. Therefore, it would be fair for him to tout them in early Democratic primary states.
But Klobuchar and Walz aren’t going to be in those states, not as candidates anyway. They have enough political sense to understand that they’re never going to defeat an accomplished, albeit ancient, incumbent, and that trying to do so at this late hour would irreparably ruin their reputation with the leaders and activists they need in order to be effective.
Phillips, for all his strengths, appears incapable of understanding that part.
This past winter and spring, the DFL-controlled state House, Senate, and Executive branch produced much more for ordinary families than Republicans ever did when they were in power. It’s not close.
As a result, things are getting heady for Walz and DFL legislators. To cite just one example of the national acclaim they’re getting, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne recently lavished praise on the Minnesota DFL’s 2023 legislative tour de force with a sloppy wet kiss of a column.
“The avalanche of progressive legislation that the state’s two-vote Democratic majority in the Minnesota House and one-vote advantage in the state Senate have enacted this year is a wonder to behold.
It’s no wonder former president Barack Obama tweeted recently: ‘If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.’
Democrats in the state are known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from their merger with a third party in the 1940s. True to the name, the party’s agenda combined social concerns such as abortion rights with what Long called “bread-and-butter, populist things that sell everywhere in the state.”
Well, E.J., thanks to the rural-urban division that the Minnesota Republican Party relentlessly promotes on the campaign trail, the DFL achievements don’t actually sell well “everywhere” in the state. According to an early May 2023 KSTP-TV/Survey USA poll, Walz still has much lower approval ratings in rural parts of the state (51% in the southern region, 42% in the western region, and 46% in the northeastern region) than he has in the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area (60% approval).
Still, Governor Walz’s 2023 performance is selling relatively well statewide. He has the approval of 54% of Minnesotans, compared to the disapproval of 41%. In a purple state that Trump only lost by 1.5 points in 2016, Walz’s 13-point net positive approval rating is impressive. Progressivism is selling pretty well in this purple state.
However, the political debate is just heating up. We can expect Republicans campaigning in 2026 to focus on the unpopular, vague notion of “government spending increases,” rather than the DFL’s specific policy changes. After all, polls show that individual DFL-enacted achievements are popular. For instance, 80% of Americans support paid family and medical leave, 80% of Americans support more child care assistance for families, 76% of Minnesotans support universal background checks for gun purchases, and 69% of Americans support more school funding, to name just a few of the many popular policies that DFLers passed during the 2023 session. Therefore, Republicans will focus on how much more the DFL-controlled state government is spending, not the DFL’s signature policy achievements.
It is true that the state budget is increasing under DFLers in 2024. But is state government spending really that high?
According to usgovernmentspending.com, state spending in Minnesota in 2024 will be 10.15% of the state’s GDP, making it a middling 25th among the 50 states. Yawn.
So, sure, our Republican-controlled “race-to-the-bottom” neighbors in Iowa (9.87% of GDP), Wisconsin (9.64% of GDP), North Dakota (9.08% of GDP), and South Dakota (8.12% of GDP) are spending less than in Minnesota. No surprise there.
But state spending in Minnesota is nothing like what is happening annually in the top ten states of New Mexico (17.64%), Alaska (16.96%), West Virginia (16.42%), Vermont (16.12%), Hawaii (15.88%), Kentucky (15.18), Oregon (15.14%), Mississippi (14.94%), Louisiana (13.78%), and Maine (13.51%).
Despite Minnesota Republicans’ red-faced hyperbole about the DFL’s “out of control spending,” in a national context Minnesota is, meh, just average.
Governor Tim Walz and Minnesota DFL state legislators are getting glowing national attention for passing an array of progressive changes in recent months. NBC News recently reported:
Nearly four months into the legislative session, Democrats in the state have already tackled protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana and restricting gun access — and they have signaled their plans to take on issues like expanding paid family leave and providing legal refuge to trans youths whose access to gender-affirming and other medical care has been restricted elsewhere.
“When you’re looking at what’s possible with a trifecta, look at Minnesota,” said Daniel Squadron, the executive director of The States Project, a left-leaning group that works to build Democratic majorities in state legislatures.
In fact, the Legislature passed more bills in its first 11 weeks of the current session than in the same time frame of every session since 2010, according to an analysis by The States Project.
To me, the lesson is clear: When voters in gridlocked purple states elect Democrats, Democrats deliver on changes that are popular with a majority of voters. However, Republicans who have blocked these same politics for decades see it differently. They’re crying “overreach.” And crying. And crying. And crying.
What’s “overreach?” Republicans claim “overreach” every time something passes the Legislature that they and their ultra-conservative primary election base oppose. A more reasonable definition is passing something that a majority of all Minnesotans oppose, If DFLers are doing that, it would reasonable to conclude that they have gone beyond the electoral mandate they were given in November 2022.
By that definition, DFLers aren’t overreaching. For instance, survey data show that 67% of Minnesotans oppose abortion bans, and therefore presumably support DFL efforts to keep abortion legal in Minnesota in the post-Dobbs decision era. Likewise, gun violence prevention reforms are extremely popular with Minnesotans – 64% back red flag laws and 76% want universal background checks. Sixty percent of Minnesotans support legalizing marijuana for adults. Sixty-two percent support making school lunches free. Fifty-nine percent say everyone should receive a ballot in the mail.
I can’t find Minnesota-specific survey data on all of the other changes DFLers are making, but national polls give us a pretty good clue about where probably Minnesotans stand. Given how overwhelming the size of the majorities found in the following national surveys, there’s no reason to believe that Minnesotans are on the opposite side of these issues: More school funding (69% of Americans support), a public option for health insurance (68% of Americans support), disclosing dark money donors to political campaigns (75% of Americans support), child care assistance for families (80% of Americans support), and paid family and medical leave (80% of Americans support).
Granted, Minnesotans may be a few points different than national respondents on those issues. But it’s just not credible to believe that there isn’t majority support among Minnesotans on those issues.
The only issue where there might be a wee bit of overreach is on the restoration of the vote for felons. While national polls find 69% support for restoring the vote for felons who have completed all of their full sentence requirements, including parole, that support might be a little weaker for restoring the vote before parole is completed, which is what DFLers passed. A survey of Minnesotans conducted by the South Carolina-based Meeting Streets Insights for the conservative Minnesota-based group Center for the American Experiment found only 36% support on this question:
“Currently in Minnesota, convicted felons lose their right to vote until their entire sentence is complete, including prison time and probation. Would you support or oppose restoring the right to vote for convicted felons before they serve their full sentence?”
I don’t suspect that restoration of the vote for felons is a top priority issue for the swing voters who decide close elections. Moreover, the strong 69% support found in surveys for restoring the vote after parole indicates that if DFLers are perceived to be “overreaching,” it likely will be viewed by swing voters as a relatively minor one. Republicans probably will try to characterize this as “a power grab to stuff ballot boxes with votes of convicted criminals” in the 2024 general election campaigns. But they won’t have much luck with that issue, beyond the voters who were already supporting them based on other issues.
I understand that the loyal opposition has to say something as DFLers hold giddy bill-signing celebration after celebration on popular issues. But survey data indicate that Republicans’ “overreach” mantra is, well, overreach.
Elections in a purple state can give you whiplash.
After red wave elections, we’re led by Republicans like Tim Pawlenty who push for low taxes, poor services, and culture wars.
After blue wave elections, we’re led by DFLers like Tim Walz who push for higher taxes, better services, and cultural tolerance.
After elections with more mixed results, legislative stalemates cause us to keep the prevailing status quo frozen in place.
That makes every election cycle extremely consequential.
The South Dakota Vision for Minnesota
In 2022, a decidedly purple Minnesota – at the time, it was the only state in the nation with one chamber of the state Legislature controlled by Democrats and the other controlled by Republicans – held a particularly high-stakes election.
If Minnesota voters had elected ultra-conservative former physician gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and a Republican Legislature dominated by far-right Trumpers, Minnesota would have become a conservative promised land, much like its neighbor to the west, South Dakota.
During the campaign, Jensen and other Republicans proposed a race-to-the-bottom on taxes, including eliminating the state income tax, which would have led to dramatically worse services. Republican spinmeisters prefer to say “smaller government,” but the reality is that it would have meant much worse services. The anti-vaxxer Doc Jensen also pledged a South Dakota-like war on public health and culture war initiatives to force conservatives’ thinking on gays, guns, God, and gynecology on all Minnesotans.
In other words, think Kristi Noem, with a stethoscope prop.
The Scandinavia Vision for Minnesota
Fortunately, 192,408 more Minnesotans voted for incumbent Governor Tim Walz than Jensen. More surprisingly, since it was predicted to be a historically horrible year for Democrats, Minnesotans also elected narrow DFL majorities in the state House and Senate. The all-important Senate majority is especially razor-thin at 34-33.
Walz and the DFL-controlled Legislatures are armed with a $17.5
billion budget surplus and are offering a vision that is more like a social democratic-led
Scandinavian country in the 1970s than South Dakota in the 2020s:
Paid family and medical leave;
An enormous funding increase for public schools;
A targeted child tax credit to dramatically reduce childhood poverty;
Down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and rent vouchers;
A huge package to save the beleaguered childcare sector and make child care free for poor families and more affordable for middle-class families;
Large subsidies for weatherization, electric vehicle infrastructure, and solar energy expansion to combat climate change;
A range of gun violence prevention reforms, such as universal background checks, red flag laws to prevent people who could be perceived as a threat to themselves or others from getting guns, raising the legal age for obtaining military-style rifles to 21, and banning high-capacity magazines;
Enfranchising felons who have served their time; and
A capital gains tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.
The list goes on. Overall, think Bernie Sanders, with a Fargo accent.
This is the most dramatic swing of state policy in my lifetime, and perhaps in the history of the state. And if somebody you may have never heard of, Judy Seeberger (DFL-Afton), had received just 322 fewer votes in her state Senate race, most of those changes would never have been possible. Without Seeberger’s handful of votes in the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota would still be stuck in limbo between the South Dakota vision and the Scandinavia vision. 322 votes.
Up until this weekend, I haven’t been much of a fan of Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen. But maybe I’ve been too hard on him. I wanted to give him credit for some really great work over the last few days.
I am sincerely grateful that Scott Jensen did DFL Governor Tim Walz a solid by holding a news conference that resulted in highlighting a credential that Walz too infrequently spotlights himself – the fact that Walz volunteered for National Guard service for 24 years.
By holding that news conference, Jensen arguably delivered better front-page PR for Walz than Walz’s PR staff ever has. In the process, Jensen exposed Walz’s opponent to be an incompetent hypocrite who refused to enlist as Walz did. I hope Walz sent Jensen a thank you note and some nice flowers.
Here’s hoping that Jensen will continue to similarly publicize other Walz achievements.
Perhaps Jensen could hold a news conference exposing the fact that Walz only dedicated himself to the noble public service career of public school teaching for part of his life, instead of his entire life.
Or Jensen could lambaste Walz for only coaching Mankato West High School to its first ever state football championship, while failing to win the championship every single year.
Maybe Jensen could publicly scold Walz for only being named Outstanding Young Nebraskan and Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year, while totally failing to win those honors in any other state.
Bring it on, Scott! With enemies like Scott Jensen, who needs friends?
Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen proposes to eliminate the state income tax. At first blush, that might sound good to inflation-weary taxpayers. But to balance the state budget, such a change would necessitate $15 billion per year in service cuts and/or increases in other types of more regressive taxes.
Quite irresponsibly, Jensen won’t say what services he would cut, or what taxes he would increase, to balance the state budget. But make no mistake, serious pain would result. Jensen’s plan would necessitate massive cuts in education and/or health care, and/or a huge increase in property taxes, or other types of taxes that are more regressive than the state income tax.
Shifting from the progressive state income tax to the regressive property tax is popular among the wealthiest Minnesotans, because that change would greatly benefit them. The progressive state income tax requires that the wealthiest Minnesotans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than is paid by the poorest Minnesotans. On the other hand, regressive property, sales, and/or excise taxes put more of a burden on lower-income Minnesotans compared to the wealthiest Minnesotans.
Wealthy doctors like Jensen, multi-millionaire professional athletes like his running mate Matt Birk, and the most financially privileged Minnesotans who disproportionately fund Republican candidates don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes. This is a political payoff to them.
Jensen’s proposal not only is a grossly inequitable giveaway to the wealthiest Minnesotans, it’s also dishonest. Jensen only discloses the benefits – no more income tax bill! – without disclosing the costs – crippling school cutbacks, slashed health care services for vulnerable Minnesotans, and/or crushing property tax increases. All of those costs are enormously unpopular with Minnesotans, so Scott Jensen simply refuses to answer that critical $15,000,000,0000 question.
Jensen isn’t explaining the downside of eliminating the state income tax, but reporters should be doing that. Unfortunately, it’s barely happening. Compared to heavy front page reporting on Walz’s actions related to a nonprofit fraud prosecution and the debate over the number of debates, this hugely consequential policy proposal has received relatively scant coverage.
One exception is the Minnesota Reformer. Though the Reformer has relatively light readership, it has done thoughtful and constructive reporting, such as this:
“Minnesota has a steeply progressive individual income tax, meaning households with higher incomes have a higher tax rate as a share of their income compared to lower income households. Eliminating individual income taxes would disproportionately burden low-income Minnesotans while giving huge tax cuts to the state’s wealthiest.
‘Progressive income taxes are integral to having budgets that can meet the needs of all citizens, and they’re also really important in ensuring racial and socioeconomic equity,’ said Neva Buktus, state policy analyst for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. ‘Eliminating the personal income tax would completely throw that out the window.’
Each year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy creates a ranking of state tax systems and how they foster income inequality.
The six least equitable in the U.S. are among the nine states with no individual income taxes. Minnesota’s progressive personal income tax makes it one of the least regressive in the country — 47th out of 50. That means our lowest income earners get a better deal than nearly every other American when it comes to state and local taxes.
‘If you’re going to eliminate the income tax, there’s no way to spin it. It disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Minnesotans by a long shot,’ Buktus said.”
At other major news outlets, my best guess is that reporters are shrugging off the issue relative to other issues because they believe that elimination of the state income tax could never pass the Legislature.
It’s not reporters’ jobs to gauge likelihood of passage. After all, no one knows what the future makeup of the Legislature might be if voters sweep Republicans into office, as historical trends portend. Instead, reporters are supposed to explain the candidates’ major policy proposals and analyze the consequences so voters can make fully informed decisions.
That’s just not happening as much as it should. Whatever the thinking in Twin Cities newsrooms about Jensen’s most radical and reckless policy proposal, their silence on the topic has been deafening.
In the past, one thing that Democrats and Republicans could always agree on is that “cooperating with law enforcement” is a good thing. As near as I can tell at this stage, that’s what the Walz Administration and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison did when they learned of Covid relief funding being misused.
As an aside, this is much more than I can say about Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen who apparently has absolutely no problem with Governor Ron Desantis (R-FL) using millions of dollars Covid relief funds to shamelessly abuse vulnerable asylum-seekers for political purposes. The Washington Post reports:
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appears to have turned to an unexpected funding source to help pay for his plans to fly migrants to liberal-leaning communities: the interest earned on his state’s federal coronavirus aid.
A little-noticed part of Florida’s recent budget dedicated about $12 million to the relocation campaign, an escalating effort that saw the state send two planes filled with dozens of migrants — children included — to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Wednesday.
When Republicans learned about DeSantis’s fraudulent use of Covid funds, they not only didn’t notify the FBI, they cheered on Desantis.
But I digress. Let’s recap the basics of what seems to have happened in the Minnesota case. When the Walz-appointed education officials suspected misuse of funds, they reported it to the FBI. They cooperated with law enforcement.
When the FBI reportedly asked the state education officials to not tip off the investigation by cutting off funds, the Walz education appointees and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s staff again cooperated with law enforcement. Pioneer Press:
“’The FBI repeatedly made it clear to the Attorney General’s Office and MDE that it should not disclose the existence of the investigation in Feeding Our Future’s state court lawsuit so that it could proceed without tipping off Feeding Our Future and the target of the investigation,’ Ellison’s office said Monday.”
(Note: At this point, the FBI can’t publicly verify that they asked the state officials to not cut off funding. As we’ve seen in dozens of cases over the years, the FBI won’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Still, there is no reason to believe that all of these state officials are lying, knowing full well that the FBI could eventually expose them as liars.)
Likewise, when the judge reportedly said that cutting off funds during the investigation could be a problem for the investigation, the education officials didn’t create such a problem for law enforcement. The Pioneer Press’s Dave Orrick explains:
Judge John Guthmann never ordered the state to make payments, according to the court record and Guthmann himself. However, he did, in at least one court hearing held over Zoom, tell an attorney for the state that they could have a “problem” if they didn’t keep making payments.
Why would the FBI not want the Walz Administration to immediately cut off funding? That’s a very fair question. But there is a perfectly reasonable answer. Former federal prosecutor and current University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler explains:
“Think about a drug network,” Osler, who prosecuted cocaine rings in Detroit, said in an interview with the Pioneer Press. “Often, if we want to take down an entire drug network, you have to wait. It’s better to take it down with the whole story known and the key players identified. … I think pretty much anyone who’s worked in law enforcement at a higher level will say that fast isn’t always good and sometimes you do need to hold.”
And yes, Osler said, speaking generally and with no direct knowledge of the Feeding Our Future investigation, that can included allowing money to keep going out the door to suspected criminals. “A lot of the time, that’s done with the confidence of trying to get the money back later, and they’ve begun that process,” he said.
Indeed, federal authorities have said that of at least $250 million they’ve alleged to have been stolen, they’ve recovered some $50 million.
Despite all of this, Walz’s increasingly desperate gubernatorial opponent Scott Jensen, who is consistently trailing the polls, wants to convince Minnesotans that this is the equivalent of the Teapot Dome scandal or, like, you know, “BENGHAZI!” or “HER EMAILS!”
But to me it looks like, yawn, Walz’s education appointees “cooperating with law enforcement” to do what they were told to do in order to prosecute some pretty extensive fraud that they initially uncovered.
As such, the Walz Administration deserve praise, not punishment.
Among campaign professionals, debates continually rage about whether to invest in field organization or advertising.
Advocates for organizing – phone-banking, door-knocking, yard sign placement, volunteer recruitment, helping voters vote, etc. – say that the best way to persuade and activate someone is one-on-one, preferably face-to-face. They make the case that saturation advertising is increasingly tuned out by ad-weary voters and therefore is largely ineffective and a massive waste of limited campaign resources.
Those folks need to pay attention to the Minnesota gubernatorial race between incumbent DFL Governor Tim Walz and challenger Republican Scott Jensen. KSTP-TV explains:
“There could be many explanations for why Republican challenger Scott Jensen has fallen so far behind incumbent Democrat Gov. Tim Walz two months before Election Day, but Jensen’s initial position on abortion and the resulting millions of dollars of TV ads on the issue is likely the biggest factor.
According to our exclusive new KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Walz leads Jensen by 18 points, 51% to 33%. In our May survey, Jensen trailed by just 5 points.
“The results of this current poll are nothing short of stunning,” says Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier, citing the barrage of TV ads criticizing Jensen about abortion and education funding as difficult for the Republican to overcome. “The Jensen campaign has no money for messaging compared to the Walz campaign and the Walz campaign allies.”
As of late July, Walz had 10 times more cash on hand than Jensen, nearly $5 million compared to just over $500,000 for Jensen. Plus, a special interest group supporting Walz, Alliance for a Better Minnesota, pledged millions to run TV ads attacking Jensen.
Walz and his supporters have used advertising to put Jensen in a deep hole with only two months to go. The ads frame Walz as a unifying Governor who managed the state well during a difficult pandemic and is now presiding over a booming economy. They describe Jensen as an extremist whose own words show he wants to ban abortion and cut school funding, which are both unpopular positions in Minnesota.
During the time those ads have been running, there has been a massive 13-point change. Even if that poll is off by half, which is possible but unlikely, that still would be a very significant shift.
Just as importantly, the pro-Walz ad campaign also frames the abortion issue as being about respecting doctor-patient relationships, and difficult, highly personal choices that women face. That is in stark contrast to the “baby-killing” arguments that anti-abortion candidates and groups have used to good advantage over the years.
In other words, progressives are, for once, using their advertising budget to play offense on this issue. It’s working, particularly with women voters who would be most affected if Jensen were elected and was able to ban abortion in Minnesota.
The race in this purple state — the only state in the nation with a divided state legislature — is sure to tighten over the next couple of months, in part because the cash-strapped Jensen will eventually start advertising his own charges and defenses at a time when inflation is high and the Democratic President is unpopular. But the last three months are a strong case study illustrating the power of advertising.
So yes, community organizing warriors, continue to knock on those doors and make those calls! (Just not at this crotchety introvert’s house.) But campaigns also must continue to invest in repetitive messaging through carefully targeted, multi-media advertising. As the beleaguered Scott Jensen will tell you, that still matters, a lot.
Particularly in closely contested purple states like Minnesota, the game for Republican candidates has become to run as an extreme right-winger in Republican primaries, then pretend to be a “moderate” in the general election by walking back much of what you promised in the primary.
This “pivot to the center” is done to appeal to “swing voters,” or voters who tend to swing back and forth between voting for Democratic and Republican candidates. These voters often prove to be key in general elections.
There’s one impediment to politicians’ deceptive strategy–opposition research.
A lot of people tend to think of campaign opposition research, or “oppo” for short, as being unsavory or unethical. They envision political hacks “digging up dirt” about opponents, private investigator style. In reality, opposition research is most often just documenting the opponents’ public statements. Typically, a relatively low-level staffer is hired to catalog news coverage and go to the opponents’ public events to record what the opponent is saying.
Gathering and organizing this information is horribly tedious work — more like an archivist than a private investigator — but the messaging fodder it produces can be decisive in close elections. And it brings more transparency to politics.
For instance, in the Republican primary, Scott Jensen promised Republicans in unequivocal terms that he would try to ban abortions in Minnesota. MinnPost summarizes his position during the Republican primary campaign:
“In March, before Roe was overturned, Jensen told MPR News he would ‘try to ban abortion’ if elected governor. And in a May interview on WCCO radio, Jensen, a practicing family physician, said he wouldn’t support exemptions for rape and incest…”
ABM even says Jensen told the St. Thomas University Young Republicans in December 2021 that he would throw a party if he was able to limit abortions.
“If I get a chance to sign a pro-life piece of legislation, we’re not just going to sign it, we’re going to have a party.”
But alas, abortion banning statements that produce thunderous ovations from ultra-conservative primary voters produce lusty boos from more moderate swing voters. After all, about two-thirds (65%) of Minnesota voters oppose new severe abortion restrictions. Most Minnesotans clearly don’t view abortion banning as party-worthy.
Therefore, once Jensen won the primary, he began frantically trying to walk back his promise, saying he would grant exceptions in the case of rape and incest. (Or as Jensen’s running mate Matt Birk might put it, Jensen “played the rape card.”)
For a while, it felt like Jensen’s flip-flop was working a bit. The news coverage of his flip-flop muddied the waters and made Jensen seem more moderate than he is (e.g. Based on his policy positions, Jensen has a 100% rating from the extremist anti-choice Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life).
But thanks to a behind-the-scenes opposition researcher, a devastating ad is currently being heavily aired by the progressive Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM). The ad is holding Jensen accountable for his primary election promises. (I’d provide a link to the ad here, but ABM inexplicably doesn’t seem to be making it available online.)
The ad captures Jensen’s original promise to ultra-conservative primary voters and plays it back to more moderate general election swing voters. It also includes a chorus of Minnesota women expressing outrage about Jensen’s abortion ban promise. It’s powerful.
Though news media coverage exposed Jensen’s flip-flop on abortion, the ABM ad does several important things that news media coverage can’t. For instance, ads provide brevity for voters who don’t have the patience to dig into detailed news stories. They are carefully targeted to reach persuadable voters who often don’t follow the news closely, or at all. Finally, unlike news coverage, ads deliver message repetition, which makes the issue and the messaging stick in voters’ minds.
So, if Governor Tim Walz ends up being reelected this November because pro-choice suburban voters swing in his direction, don’t give all the credit to the candidate, field organizers, and his big-buck political consultants. Remember to give a little love to the lowly bottom-feeding staffer who captured and shared that audio clip to prevent Jensen from deceiving his way into the Minnesota Governor’s office.
Saint Paul, Minnesota — Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen today called on the Minnesota Legislature to give $2,000 gift cards to eligible Minnesotans who “responsibly refuse” COVID-19 vaccinations for their children. Jensen, a medical doctor and former state senator, says his proposal is the best way to help families without resorting to “sick Nazi-like forced medical experimentation of the Walz regime.”
“We’re putting out a call for patriotic families who agree to keep their children free of tracker chips and DNA mutilation, and instead serve as beautiful little herd immunity enhancers,” said Jensen surrounded by unmasked young children at a news conference held in conjunction with a protest of a community vaccination event. “As a doctor, I know we must end the so-called virus the way we did before humans went soft, by fearlessly facing it maskless and trusting in God and his gift of natural herd immunity.”
The Jensen proposal comes in the wake of a recent announcement by Governor Tim Walz that his administration will provide $200 gift cards to Minnesota families who agree to vaccinate their 12- to 17-year old children. The families of vaccinated children will also be entered into a lottery for $100,000 in tuition for a Minnesota public college of their choice.
Jensen, who is seeking the Republican endorsement for governor in party caucuses that are expected to be heavily populated by vocal Trump loyalists and vaccine opponents, announced that Minnesotans who don’t get vaccinated will get $2,000 gift cards to TrumpStore, the official retail arm of the Trump Organization.
They also will be entered into a lottery for a scholarship to Trump University. Upon questioning, Jensen clarified that the scholarships will be revert to the Trump Organization in the event that the university is unable to serve the children.
In what Jensen called a prudent move to conserve tax dollars, he also indicated that the offer would not be available to citizens in Hennepin, Ramsey, St. Louis, and Cook counties.
On his website, Former President Trump praised Jensen and his proposal as “a beautiful doctor who knows a great store and university when he sees it and is going to be a great pro-Trump governor of the corrupt election-stealing fake state of Minnesota.”
Note: This post is satire, the use of humor and exaggeration to make a point. Jensen did not make this proposal. Only the part about Walz and his proposal is true.
Truth: The non-partisan fact-checking organization Politifact cited Jensen as a major source of its 2020 “Lie of the Year 2020 about coronavirus downplaying and denial. Politifact noted Jensen’s appearances on Fox News claimed that overflowing hospitals were committing Medicare fraud by overcounting COVID-19 cases. Then-President Donald Trump repeated the unsubstantiated claims as he minimized the seriousness of the COVID pandemic while other wealthy countries around the world were implementing effective public health protections.
Experts say the number of COVID deaths are likely under-counted, not over-counted, due to false negatives on tests and a lack of testing.
In May 2021, Jensen also joined U.S. Capitol insurrectionist Simone Gold and others in suing the federal government to prevent children from receiving COVID-19 vaccines. The lawsuit claims that COVID-19 poses “zero risk” to children. The suit indicates that Jensen believes “it would be reckless to subject anyone in that age group to the experimental COVID-19 vaccine” and that he believes recommending that children get vaccinated “would violate his oath as a doctor and place him in an untenable position.”
Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that more than 6 million children have tested positive for Covid since the beginning of the pandemic. While children are less likely to get hospitalized and die than adults, it does happen. Children also help spread the virus to more vulnerable people.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , 77.9% of Minnesota adults (18+) have been vaccinated.
So far, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has largely been a responsive caretaker governor, responding to the crises du jour rather than than actively pushing a progressive agenda and building a legacy for himself.
Governor Walz’s legacy is essentially “pissed off all sides while consumed with thankless pandemic management.” I think he did a reasonably good job managing the pandemic, but he definitely had to make enemies doing it.
One partial break from caretaker mode was his poorly named “ONECare” proposal, which would give Minnesotans the option to buy into MinnesotaCare. MinnesotaCare is a longstanding program serving low-income individuals and families who can’t get employee-sponsored health insurance and don’t quality for Medicaid, which is called Medical Assistance (MA) in Minnesota.
Giving Minnesota health insurance consumers of all income levels this additional option would ensure that every Minnesotan in every county had at least one health insurance option available to them. That’s a big deal. It also would bring more competition to an individual market that sorely needs more competition. Over time, this could result in lower premiums for consumers.
Walz has not pushed his proposal particularly hard. Meanwhile, other states’ Governors are leading their states forward.
Colorado and Nevada this year passed public option plans—government-run health insurance plans—that are set to launch in 2023 and 2026, respectively. They join Washington state, which enacted its law in 2019 and went live with its public option in January.
The early results from Washington state’s experiment are disappointing. In many parts of the state, premiums for the public option plans cost more than premiums for comparable commercial plans.
Many of the state’s hospitals have refused to take part in the public option, prompting lawmakers to introduce more legislation this year to force participation if there aren’t sufficient health insurance options in a geographic area. And consumer buy-in is also meager. In its first year of operation, the state health insurance exchange sold only 1,443 public option plans, representing fewer than 1% of all exchange policies.
Michael Marchand, chief marketing officer for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, the state’s health insurance marketplace, said it’s premature to judge the program by its first year.
During the earlier years of Obamacare, the premiums for many commercial plans were high, he pointed out. Eventually, as insurers became more knowledgeable about the markets, prices dropped, he said.
If Governor Walz would get re-engaged in this issue and actively market his plan, they could learn from the experiences of Washington and avoid it’s mistakes. For instance, in areas where there is insufficient health insurance competition, Walz could require hospitals to participate.
A MinnesotaCare buy-in option is extremely popular — only 11% oppose it, according to a Minnesota Public Radio survey. This is probably in part because it is an option. Any Minnesotan who opposes buying into MinnesotaCare — because of conservative ideology or because MinnesotaCare turns out to be expensive or poor quality — they can vote with their feet, as consumers in the state of Washington are doing.
Fighting for a MinnesotaCare buy-in option makes sense for Walz. The polls consistently show that health care is a top issue for voters, and huge majorities consistently trust Democrats over Republicans on that issue.
Moreover, in the 2022 gubernatorial general election campaign Walz may very well be running against a physician, Scott Jensen. This will ensure that health care is high profile in the race. Therefore, candidate Walz needs to be seen fighting for better health care, and this proposal gives him that platform.
If a MinnesotaCare buy-in option passes, Walz finally has a legacy beyond pandemic management. If Senate Republicans kill it, which seems likely, Walz has a great political argument to make while running for reelection and trying to retake the Senate: “I worked my ass off to give you another health insurance option and bring you some price competition, but Republicans like Scott Jensen opposed it on orders from private insurance lobbyists. If you want to more options and more price competition, vote for me and change the Senate leadership.”
Pushing a public option is a great political option for Walz. So why is he so damn cautious about it?
I like bars as much as the next guy. Okay, maybe more so, depending on who the next guy is. But the most significant error Governor Tim Walz has made in his mostly wise mid-pandemic “reopening” plans was announcing that bars could return to serving customers indoors if they agreed to operate at 50% capacity to allow for adequate spacing.
Under pressure from Republican legislators and bar owners, Walz seemed to be making the decision in haste. He announced on June 6th that indoor bar reopening would begin on June 10. The announcement was made at a time when COVID-19 cases in Minnesota had only plateaued, not decreased.
While Walz has stressed allegiance to experts, national public health officials disagree with his bar opening timing. In April, the Trump Administration recommended that states only begin a gradual reopening process after they experience a “downward trajectory” of reported cases, or a falling share of positive tests. At the time bars opened their indoor spaces, Minnesota had not met that criteria.
In fact, according to covidexitstrategy.com, Minnesota is still not meeting federal guidelines today, because the number of cases has been increasing for the past two weeks and ICU capacity is rated as “low.”
Contrary to popular belief, bars are not essential services, so this is not something we “just have to live with.”
Moreover, bars obviously pose a difficult social distancing challenge. Many, particularly young adults, go to bars specifically to connect with friends and strangers, the precise thing we need to prevent during a pandemic. Even those who arrive at the bar cautious and responsible get more open to a variety of different types of unsafe encounters as alcohol flows and inhibitions subsequently decrease.
Bars are uniquely challenging. They work very hard to become social “hot spots,” which makes them especially susceptible to being pandemic hot spots.
So it’s no surprise that COVID19 spread at bars is swiftly emerging as a major public health problem in Minnesota, as the Star Tribune recently reported:
Outbreaks centered on four bars in Minneapolis and Mankato have contributed to a surge in COVID-19 cases in young adults, which state health officials warned could undermine months of planning and recent progress in managing the pandemic.
Roughly 100 people suffered COVID-19 infections related to crowding over the June 12-14 weekend at Rounders Sports Bar & Grill and the 507 in Mankato, while more than 30 cases have been identified among people who went to Cowboy Jack’s near Target Field and the Kollege Klub in Dinkytown between June 14 and June 21.
While growth of COVID-19 is inevitable until a vaccine is found for the novel coronavirus that causes it, preventable clusters could cause an escalation that could exhaust the state’s medical resources and leave vulnerable people at risk, said Kris Ehresmann, state infectious disease director.
“When you have 56 cases associated with one location from one weekend, that is not managing the rate of growth,” said Ehresmann, imploring businesses and individuals to take precautions “so that even as we open up, we are not putting ourselves in a position to overwhelm the system we worked so hard to strengthen.”
A young person familiar with the situation at Cowboy Jacks told me that the 50% capacity rules seemed to be followed, but customers eventually left their tables and bunched together tightly in one relatively small part of the bar.
Well of course they did. That scene is almost certainly playing out to varying extents in most of Minnesota’s bars.
I have a lot of sympathy for the bar owners. Most want to do whatever it takes to follow the rules so they can stay open. But forcing drunk people to stay 6 feet apart is not merely “difficult.” Unless you use unacceptably heavy-handed enforcement tactics, it’s pretty much impossible. Even for the most responsible owners with the best plans, getting patrons to stay at their tables after the booze has been flowing for hours is just not feasible.
That’s why the Governor needs to shut down bars until Minnesota truly is meeting federal guidelines on a sustainable basis.
From a public health standpoint, these bars are creating a serious public health threat. While young people are at relatively low-risk of dying, they’re at high risk of spreading COVID19, and most are in contact with networks of at-risk people.
I wish there was another way, but I can’t think of one. I understand this would be really hard on bars, so elected officials should find a way to keep them afloat during the pandemic.
But legal mandates are the only way when individual choices significantly endanger innocent victims. That’s why we have enacted legal mandates banning drunk driving, child abuse, driving at unsafe speeds, dumping toxins into water supplies, running red lights, smoking indoors, and many other things that individuals choose to do that inadvertently victimize innocent people.
This may be the least enthusiastic post I have ever written, but the public health logic of it is pretty undeniable. There’s no getting around this fact: In the midst of the worst pandemic in a century, Minnesotans partying inside even half empty bars are significantly endangering innocent people, and there isn’t a way to manage around it.
This won’t be fun for anyone. Taking hooch from people who’ve been quarantined for months will be like taking candy from babies–big, boisterous, beer-bellied babies. But if Governor Walz is truly prioritizing public health over public popularity, and following the public health science, he’ll admit his error and go back to limiting bars to outdoors only.
When it comes to addressing racial equity issues in education, health care, and housing, racism is a barrier. But I would argue that fiscal conservatism is an even bigger barrier.
In Minnesota’s policymaking debates about racial equity, this is the unacknowledged “elephant in the room.” It is what makes all of the hopeful dialogue about addressing racial equity feel hollow to me.
DFL Governor Tim Walz, Speaker Melissa Hortman, and many others deserve a lot of credit for leading on police reform. Despite the failure to pass police reforms during the recent special session, I suspect they’ll eventually enact some police reforms. This is in large part because police reform is relatively inexpensive.
But beyond police reform, I’m pessimistic when it comes to DFLers being willing to address other major forms of systemic racism in society, such as in health care, housing and education.
That’s because most DFLers and all Republicans seem completely unwilling to make the case for higher taxes.
Elected officials need to get courageous and make the case that privileged white people like me need to pay higher taxes in order to build a more equitable state. I’m not naive about this. I’ve worked in and around politics for thirty five years, so I know tax-raising is excruciatingly painful for politicians, particularly in an election year. But if we truly care about making racial justice progress in this agonizing “educable moment,” there truly is no other way.
To cite just one example, Minnesota has long had some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation, gaps that open as early as age one. The roots of k-12 achievement gaps are early education opportunity gaps. Year after year, about 35,000 low-income Minnesota children can’t access the high quality early learning and care programs that they need to get prepared for school. Those 35,000 left-behind low-income kids are the children who are most likely to fall into achievement gaps in the school years and other types of disparities throughout their lifetimes. The lack of new revenue is why our 35,000 most vulnerable children continue to be left behind every year.
Similar tales can be told about many other issues, such as health care and housing. We know what to do in those areas as well, but we don’t do it, because the changes would necessitate requiring Minnesotans to pay higher taxes.
I understand why politicians are afraid of being branded tax raisers. But the inescapable truth is that lawmakers’ long standing insistence on perpetuating the fiscal status quo is perpetuating systemic racism.
So we need to start talking honestly about the fiscal side of these racial justice issues too. Until we do, progressive leaders’ lofty rhetoric about racial justice gains is just idle chatter.
When it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic crisis, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who issued a stay at home order on March 25, has earned 82% approval ratings, compared to 34% for President Trump, according to a Survey USA/KSTP-TV survey. Up until this point, stay at home orders seem to have actually been a political benefit to leaders courageous and wise enough to invoke them, not a burden. For instance as of early May, only about 20% of Minnesotans wanted the Governor’s stay at home order lifted.
But that is almost sure to change over time. In part because of President’s Trump’s constant call to ease restrictions, and calls for the public to resist them, we’re already seeing Americans getting more antsy, as evidenced by a recent Gallup poll that shows the number of people avoiding small gatherings decreasing by four points among Democrats, 10 points among Independents, and 16 points among Republicans.
Also a Unacast report card measuring social distancing activity, which earlier gave Minnesota an “A” grade, has downgraded Minnesota to a “D-” grade, a crushing blow to the earnest promoters of Minnesota exceptionalism.
Picking up on that sentiment, and following their President’s call to “LIBERATE Minnesota” from pandemic protections, Minnesota House Republicans are increasingly criticizing Walz’s stay at home order, and using a bonding bill as ransom to get it lifted. I’m not convinced “we’re fighting to stimulate the economy by blocking job-creating bonding projects” is the most persuasive argument, but that’s what they’re going with.
So, should Governor Walz further loosen distancing rules? As of May 6, the experts at the Harvard Global Health Institute say that only nine states have done enough to warrant loosening restrictions — Alaska, Utah, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oregon, Montana, West Virgina, and Wyoming. The Harvard analysts find that Minnesota is not one of them, another blow to Minnesota exceptionalism. Specifically, experts find that Minnesota needs to be doing more testing and seeing lower rates of infection from the tests.
There might be some modest steps Walz can take to ease the political pressure and help Minnesotans feel like they’re making progress. I’m not remotely qualified to identify them, but for what little it’s worth here is some wholly uninformed food-for-thought anyway:
For those with low risk factors — people who are young and healthy and are not essential workers — maybe the good Governor could allow masked and socially distanced haircuts. (Can you tell my new Donny Osmond look is starting to get to me?)
For the same group, maybe Walz could allow masked and distanced visits with members of the immediate family — offspring, siblings, and parents. (Can you tell I miss my daughter?)
Those two things seem to be particularly stressful to people. While far from risk-free, they aren’t recklessly risky. These kinds of small adjustments might help people (i.e. me) become more patient and compliant when it comes to more consequential rules.
Overall, Walz should listen to experts and largely keep stay at home orders in place until the experts’ guidelines are met. A new spike in infections and deaths will seriously harm consumer confidence and the economy, and that shouldn’t be risked. At this stage, most Minnesotans are not likely to flock back to bars, restaurants, malls and large entertainment venues anyway, regardless of what Walz allows.
I’ve come to realize that I’ve been partially wrong about Governor Tim Walz. Based on what I had seen pre-pandemic, I had him pegged as a politically cautious guy who inevitably gravitated towards a relatively modest “split-the-difference” caretaker agenda. From a progressive’s standpoint, he seemed like a competent Governor, but far from a bold one.
Often Cautious
After all, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Walz had exhibited an abundance of caution that wasn’t comforting to progressives. For instance, Walz came into office proposing an exciting MinnesotaCare Buy-In Option for Minnesotans who can’t get health coverage from employers or the government. Progressives cheered. But Walz didn’t seem to fight particularly visibly or hard for it.
Likewise, Walz has expressed support for legalization of marijuana for adults. Again, progressives cheered. But Walz rarely uses anything close to the full measure of his powerful “bully pulpit” and political influence to move public opinion on that key social justice issue.
In the 2019 session, Walz wanted to raise much more revenue to deliver improved services. Instead, he ended up with lower overall revenue. He caved relatively quickly to Republican demands and walked away without one penny of the gas tax increase he sought, while giving Republicans an income tax cut and a 10% cut in the provider tax, which is needed to fund health care programs.
At a time when DFLers controlled the House and the Governor’s office, the GOP-controlled Senate somehow was given a”no new taxes” outcome that would make Tim Pawlenty proud, and Governor Walz declared victory.
Why has Walz been so cautious? My theory is that he is so infatuated with his “One Minnesota” sloganeering from his 2018 campaign that he has been afraid to challenge conservatives and moderates in rural areas of the state.
Bold On Pandemic Response
However, lately Walz has been under heavy fire from those rural Minnesotans about his wise decision to close bars and restaurants statewide. Since most Minnesota counties still have few or no coronavirus cases, the bar and restaurant closures strike short-sighted rural Minnesotans as overkill, and Republican politicians are always all too happy to encourage rural victimhood and resentment.
“While we understand the necessity of Governor Walz to lead in this time of crisis, that leadership should not be unilateral and unchecked,” (Republican Senate Majority Leader Paul) Gazelka said in a statement.
Several lawmakers, all Republicans, have expressed concerns about the impact of Walz’s orders on small businesses in their towns in Greater Minnesota.
“The governor’s order puts these small businesses in an impossible position,” state Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, said in a statement addressing the closings in the hospitality industry. “These small businesses, and their many hourly wage earners, will undoubtedly suffer because of this order. I urge the governor to reconsider the financial impact of his order on small business owners that concurrently has the potential to make them criminals for simply trying to earn a living.”
To his credit, on pandemic response issues Walz has consistently put public health above politics. He understood that ordering closures on a partial county-by-county basis would be unfair and ineffective. After all, irresponsible citizens in counties were restaurants and bars were closed would simply travel across county borders to eat and drink out, which would create new pandemic hot-spots in previously uncontaminated Minnesota counties.
Thanks to Walz’s leadership, on March 24 Minnesota ranked in the top ten of states with the most aggressive policies for limiting the rapid spread of coronavirus. A lot has changed since these rankings came out, but Walz seems very likely to issue a shelter-in-place order sometime this week, which should keep Minnesota relatively high in the rankings.
It would be tempting for Walz to view restaurant and bar closing through a short-term political lens, as the Governors in red states such as Wyoming, Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Missouri seem to be doing. It would be easier to keep some or all of Minnesota’s bars and restaurants open, and let other states leaders do the heavy lifting when it comes to pandemic management.
But Walz isn’t taking that politically expedient approach, and the economic and political fallout from all of this could potentially cost him his political career.
I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, it’s a relatively small price to pay to prevent Minnesota hospital patients from suffering the kind of horrific meltdowns being seen in Italy, where physicians are reportedly forced to deny care to suffocating people over 60 because of lack of medical capacity.
Trying to avoid scenes like that are well worth whatever political price Walz pays. Here’s hoping that the newly self-quarantined Governor stays healthy, and that a plurality of Minnesotans will eventually appreciate his impressive display of political courage at this crucial moment in Minnesota history.
Minnesota public health authorities are close to concluding that the leading culprit in the rash of serious cannabis vaping injuries is an additive called vitamin E acetate, which apparently is used by elicit street producers to thicken and dilute the THC in illegally produced vaping cartridges. The Star Tribune reports:
“The state’s findings were circulated nationally on Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has monitored the outbreak nationally and has reported 2,290 cases of vaping-associated lung injuries this year and 47 related deaths.
‘We now have evidence of vitamin E acetate in the lungs of Minnesotans and in illicit THC products from Minnesota during the outbreak,’ said Jan Malcolm, state health commissioner. ‘We have more work ahead, but every bit of evidence gets us closer to a resolution.'”
Assuming that Vitamin E is in fact the culprit, the obvious solution is to regulate the product to ensure that additive is no longer used. Easy, right?
Not so fast. The problem with that obvious solution is that cannabis prohibition makes it impossible to regulate the safety of these illicit street products.
If we want to regulate marijuana-based products to keep consumers safe from dangerous additives like Vitamin E acetate, pesticides, molds, and fungus, we need those products to be legal so that they can be controlled by public regulators, just as we control other legal consumer products.
A while back, Republican Senate leader Paul Gazelka looked at this dangerous situation and somehow came to the opposite conclusion.
“Opponents of legalizing marijuana in Minnesota are seizing on the recent outbreak of vaping-related illnesses and teen nicotine addiction to urge caution on the cannabis front — even as advocates of legalization ramp up their campaign ahead of next year’s legislative session.
‘I hope this slows down the rush by [Gov. Tim Walz] and House Democrats on recreational marijuana,’ said state Sen. Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, the majority leader. ‘If they see the correlation, that might at least slow down the process.'”
Sen. Gazelka seems like a sincere, decent guy, but that logic makes no sense. After all, if Sen. Gazelka learned that we have dangerous types of vehicles, insulation, ethanol, or stents harming consumers, would he back prohibition of vehicles, insulation, ethanol, and stents? Of course not. Instead, the sensible response would be to keep those products legal, but have public regulators monitor the products and require them to be safer. Likewise, we need to make marijuana legal, so marijuana-based products can be regulated, tested, and required to be safer.
So in addition to the social justice, fiscal, and logical reasons to end marijuana prohibition, we need to add another to the list. Public health.
Disclosure: In my public relations business, I have done work for one of two companies licensed in Minnesota to treat patients with cannabis-based medicines. However, I’m not currently doing work for that company, and that company’s legal, regulated medicines aren’t a subject of these stories. I have never helped any clients advocating the end to marijuana prohibition.
Give leaders in the state of Washington a lot of credit. Governor Jay Inslee and the Washington Legislature recently passed legislation to create a public health insurance option that will save Washingtonians an estimated 5 percent to 10 percent compared to private health plans. Starting in 2021, the privately administered “CascadeCare” plan will be available to Washingtonians in the “individual market,” those under age 65 who can’t get insurance through their employers or another public insurance plan.
That’s significant progress, much more progress than Minnesota Governor Walz and the Minnesota Legislature made during the 2019 session when they failed to even seriously consider a plan to give Minnesotans in the individual market the option of buying into MinnesotaCare. President Trump and his followers are working overtime to sabotage and try to repeal popular Affordable Care Act (ACA) health protections, while Inslee is strengthening the ACA.
We need that kind of leadership in Minnesota. In the 2020 session, champions of the popular MinnesotaCare buy-in option should hold critics accountable for trying to block an initiative that could save consumers at least 10 percent of their health insurance costs.
The Fatal Flaw With Washington’s Law
I say “at least 10 percent,” because Washington leaders caved to medical lobbyists in order to get the law enacted. In the process, they sacrificed significant consumer cost-savings.
One of the primary reasons to give consumers a public option is because public health insurance programs with a huge pool of patients are in a relatively strong position to leverage lower medical costs. You know, like Medicare does. Here’s what a recent Urban Institute study found about Medicare’s ability to control medical costs.
“…average spending on private health insurance per enrollee grew 4.4% per year between 2006 and 2017—faster than the growth of spending per enrollee in Medicaid and Medicare, and faster than the growth of the gross domestic product per capita, which grew an average 2.4% each year.
Per-enrollee spending in Medicare grew an average 2.4% per year while per-enrollee spending in Medicaid grew 1.6% each year. Holahan said Medicare and Medicaid experienced slower spending growth than private insurance because public programs have more leverage over provider payment rates, helping them to keep costs down. Private payers end up paying higher hospital and physician prices.”
In the face of such findings, what do Washington leaders do? They guarantee reimbursements at a rate that is much higher than Medicare. The Seattle Times explains:
The (Washington) law will require health plans to reimburse medical providers and facilities at up to 160% of the federal Medicare rate. That is a higher rate than the original version of the bill, which capped the reimbursement at the Medicare rate.
CascadeCare champions had it right in their original bill. The reimbursement rate for the MinnesotaCare buy-in option should be set at the Medicare rate to allow savings to be passed on to Minnesotans. Washington leaders apparently were spooked by lobbyist threats that caregivers would deny care to patients if they got paid Medicare reimbursement rates.
Physicians Can’t Be Sacred Cows
We will never be able to significantly control health care costs until we demand savings from every part of the healthcare system — pharmaceuticals, medical devices, unnecessary procedures, administrative overhead, and, yes, caregiver reimbursements. American physicians, particularly specialists, are being paid more than physicians around the world, so controlling that cost-driver also must be in the mix. American doctors can no longer be treated like political sacred cows.
As long as lobbyist-cowed legislators keep carving out these kinds of special interest exceptions, medical inflation will continue to skyrocket and keep Americans from accessing health care. Minnesota legislators need to pass the MinnesotaCare buy-in option in 2020, and they should do it without caving to any of the interests driving medical costs making health care unaffordable and inaccessible for millions.
I’m a big fan of Governor Walz’s proposal to give Minnesotans a new MinnesotaCare (MNCare) buy-in option. If it passes, it would be a signature part of his legacy as Governor. But he has a lot of work to do before he gets it passed, and he should start by wiping the slate clean and dropping the name “ONECare.”
To be clear, the name ONECare is hardly the biggest problem Walz faces. The much bigger problem is an army of well-connected health care lobbyists and industry-employed donors pushing legislators to stick with a status quo that reimburses the industry at higher rates than MinnesotaCare, an argument that legislators who are serious about cost-containment must reject.
To pass this proposal, the Governor is going to need to use his political capital and get a lot more personally engaged in the fight than he has been so far.
But the name ONECare certainly doesn’t help the cause, a cause I’ve been supporting over and over, and it’s easy and painless to fix.
When selling ideas and policies, words matter a lot. Think “estate tax” versus “death tax.” “Tort reform” versus “lawsuit abuse reform.” “Medicare-for-all” versus “single payer.” We’ve seen it over and over: Words impact clarity and emotions, and clarity and emotions impact voting behavior.
For three primary reasons, the brand ONECare doesn’t help Walz to convince anyone to enact perhaps the most important policy proposal on his agenda, and instead inadvertently hurts it a bit.
ONECare DOESN’T DESCRIBE, OR DISARM MOST DAMAGING CRITICISM. I prefer the very boring, literal name “MinnesotaCare buy-in option.” I know, I know, it obviously isn’t very lyrical or concise, but it instantly explains the patient benefit, and that’s the most important advocacy need.
This is a concept that almost no one understands, so they need a concise description. ONEcare is not the least bit descriptive. If a Minnesotan heard ONECare come up in a shorthand way, they would have no idea what is being discussed, and very likely would assume you were talking about a corporate health plan.
After 27 years in existence, “Minnesota Care” has a bit of brand equity, and “buy-in option” explains the concept much more clearly than “ONEcare.”
Even more importantly, “MNCare buy-in option” also shines a bright spotlight on that key word “option.” The word “option” disarms the most potent critique of the proposal, the false claim that Minnesotans will be forced to use “government-run health care” against their will.
In a year when Medicare-for-All is being lambasted on the national stage for being mandatory and coercive, it’s critically important to be repeatedly stressing the disarming key message that this is merely another “option” for Minnesotans to take or leave. Stressing that selling point in the name is the best way to achieve that kind of repetition.
ONECare SOUNDS VERY CORPORATE, WHEN IT’S THE ANTITHESIS OF CORPORATE. Also, ONEcare sounds very much like a corporate health care brand. In fact, if you search the internet for “onecare,” numerous private health ventures pop up.
Adopting a corporate-sounding brand name confuses and sullies an initiative that’s actually all about providing an option for relief from corporate insurance. That makes no sense.
ONECare IS TOO WALZ-CENTRIC AND PARTISAN IN TONE. Finally, ONEcare politicizes the proposal by using a derivative of Walz’s 2018 campaign theme “One Minnesota.” ONEcare comes across like a partisan advertisement, as opposed to a sincere effort to help Minnesotans get cheaper and better health care coverage.
Governor Walz likely intended ONEcare to be unifying – “we’re ‘one Minnesota’ and this gives everyone the same option in all parts of the state, including areas where there are few options.” I get that. But the fact that the “One Minnesota” sloganeering was so central to Walz’s recent election campaign makes ONEplan feel like it belongs to one political tribe only, instead of something that people of all political stripes should support.
Again, dropping the ONECare name obviously isn’t going to guarantee passage. For that to happen, legislators are going to need to have more courage, and Governor Walz is going to need to really use his political capital to fight for this. But dropping “ONECare” will help make their explanation of this excellent idea feel a bit more clear, direct, disarming, and apolitical.
Why can’t the Minnesota Legislature give consumers a MinnesotaCare buy-in option so that they have a guaranteed health insurance coverage option, more doctor choices, and much better price competition? An army of corporate lobbyists say it’s because reimbursements to the health care industry would be lower under that approach, an argument that froze legislators into inaction during the 2019 legislative session.
To be clear, if that argument prevails, Minnesota lawmakers will never contain health care costs.
To contain costs, policymakers have to lower the amount of money going to the major cost drivers — insurance overhead, doctors, nurses, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. If politicians reject a reform every time lobbyists for those cost-drivers object about getting lower reimbursements, they will never contain consumer costs.
Let’s look at one of those cost-drivers, physicians. Politicians like to complain about insurance overhead and pharmaceuticals, for very good reasons, but that’s too easy. Let’s look at the most sacred of health care’s sacred cows. Doctors have an abundance of fans, campaign donating power, and lobbyists, so politicians are especially afraid to direct cost-control efforts at them.
When you look at the long list of developed nations where physicians are paid less than in the U.S., paying less for doctors seems reasonable and doable. For example, the average specialist in the U.S. earns $230,000 per year, while the average specialist in other industrialized nations receives less than half that amount, $107,000 per year.
Remember that the next time you hear physicians and their lobbyists complaining about reimbursements being too low.
Oh and by the way, the health outcomes in those developed countries with modestly paid physicians are better than in the U.S. So don’t buy the claim or inference that better pay automatically leads to better care. It doesn’t.
And about those pharmaceuticals. American patients pay much more for pharmaceuticals than patients in many other developed nations around the world. Remember that the next time you hear lobbyists complaining about Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements being too low.
(On this front, the Minnesota Legislature needs to pass legislation to allow importation of Canadian pharmaceuticals, as I argued a while back. Florida recently passed such a bill, but Minnesota politicians remain frozen by health care lobbyists.)
A Minnesota Care buy-in option — branded as “ONECare” in Minnesota by Governor Tim “One Minnesota™” Walz — would ensure that every Minnesotan always has at least one health insurance option available to them, which is particularly important in remote rural areas. It would give them broader networks of caregivers, which again is important to Greater Minnesota residents. It would provide comprehensive benefits and a service that gets good consumer reviews. It would bring better price competition to hold down the health insurance costs. Those all would be huge benefits for hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans.
But not if Minnesota politicians get cowed into inaction every time corporate health care industry lobbyists complain about receiving lower reimbursement rates. If this group of legislators won’t do the right thing on a MinnesotaCare buy-in option, we should elect a new group who will.
