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WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and his campaign say they are serious about making a play for Minnesota, but the Harris-Walz camp has outspent the Trump-Vance ticket nearly three-to-one when it comes to television advertising in the state.
A MinnPost analysis of Federal Communications Commission reports on political advertising shows the Harris-Walz campaign has spent more than $700,000 on TV ads on major stations in Minnesota while the Trump-Vance campaign has spent about $210,000 on general election ads in the state.
Nearly all that money was spent in the Twin Cities media market, whose major stations broadcast into swing state Wisconsin, too.
The Harris-Walz campaign also spent a little money, about $31,000, on ad buys on Duluth’s WDIO, an ABC affiliate that also broadcasts into the Iron Range and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Campaigns routinely book advertising time far in advance, and both the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance campaigns have reserved a lot more advertising time through Election Day.
And that’s not counting the independent groups that usually finance attack ads that run just before the election.
So that barrage of ads will keep on coming.
New poll gives Craig a boost
Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, received some encouraging news this week as a KSTP poll showed likely voters in her district favored her 49%-41% over her GOP rival Joe Teirab.
Craig, a centrist Democrat who takes pride in her independence from her party on policing and immigration issues, had a 21-percentage point lead over Teirab when it came to independents, the KSTP poll showed.
The Craig-Teirab matchup is considered the most competitive race in the state and could help decide which party controls the U.S. House next year.
But Craig, who has represented the 2nd Congressional District since 2019, should not be overly confident. Polls of congressional districts, largely because of their limited populations, have large margins of error and the KSTP poll is no exception. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 5.4 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Teirab, whose candidacy is strongly supported by Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, and other GOP leaders, was invited to an event with Sen. JD Vance this week outside the shuttered Third Precinct police station in Minneapolis. The station was set afire in 2020 during the unrest over George Floyd’s murder.
It was the second time Teirab was part of a campaign event at the police station with a major GOP player. Like Vance, Teirab was invited when House Speaker Mike Johnson recently used the station as a prop to vilify Walz, whom they said let the city burn during the unrest.
The visit and Vance’s comments about Minneapolis riled Rep. Dean Phillips, D-3rd District, who got into a social media tussle with Vance.
In a post on X, Phillps said “Shame on you @JDVance for coming to our community and calling us a city in decline. George Floyd’s murder and COVID destruction occurred under your emperor’s reign, and you have done NOTHING to help. Take your fear-mongering freak show back to lovely Cleveland.”
Vance retorted to Phillips that he never said Minneapolis was a “city in decline,” that it was a misdescription of his comments by a reporter who wrote about the senator’s visit to the Third Precinct police station.
“What I did say: Minneapolis has suffered greatly. And not because of ‘George Floyd’s murder,’ but because politicians like you allowed rioters to loot and burn, causing $500 million in damage,” Vance snapped back on X.
There is one thing Phillips clearly got wrong. Vance lives in Cincinnati, not Cleveland. (Although he also has homes in Washington, D.C., and Virginia.)
Walz watch
Gov. Tim Walz campaigned in the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week.
During a stop in rural Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, Walz unveiled a new rural health initiative that would recruit 10,000 health care professionals in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and new grant programs.
The plan also calls for extending telemedicine under Medicare, a benefit initiated during the pandemic that is set to end at the end of this year and re-establish a program that helped pay for internet access for low-income households.
As part of the push to reach out to GOP-leaning rural voters in the final stretch of the election, the Harris-Walz campaign has also unveiled a new radio ad featuring the governor that will run in more than 500 rural stations in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
“In a small town, you don’t focus on the politics, you focus on taking care of your neighbors and minding your own damn business,” Walz says in the ad. “Now Donald Trump and JD Vance, they don’t think like us. They’re in it for themselves.”
Walz also participated in several interviews on rural radio stations this week.
And he continued his furious fundraising pace, flying to Washington, D.C., to attend money raising events at the tony Jefferson Hotel and two private homes.
Then it was off to another swing state, North Carolina, where he appeared with former President Bill Clinton in Durham and also held a rally in Winston-Salem.
In case you missed it:
- Reporter Winter Keefer found a committed Republican official who lives in a deeply Democratic neighborhood of Minneapolis (and does not discuss politics with his neighborhood). Meanwhile, reporter Ava Kian also has a fish-out-of-water story about a sportsman in Houston County who supports Vice President Kamala Harris.
- A gender divide between Democrats and Republicans that has grown wider in this year’s presidential election has focused political attention on “What do men really want?” Gov. Tim Walz has been deployed in Democratic efforts to win over male voters who favor Trump, but a pheasant shoot may not be enough.
- And Peter Callaghan wrote about an analysis of legislative battleground states — including Minnesota — by a Democratic-aligned organization that worries that something it calls “down-ballot roll-off” could be the difference between winning control of legislative bodies in purple states or losing them.
Your questions and comments
A reader reacted to a story about the possibility that the U.S. Senate may change hands, from Democratic control to GOP control, in the Nov. 5 election and the U.S. House may flip the other way. That would change the status and roles of all of Minnesota’s members of Congress.
“How will Tom Emmer cope with being just another backward-thinking Republican congressman? Amy Klobuchar won’t be happy if she loses her committee chairmanship… Their personal adaptations aside, my own bias is that the government functions better when it is NOT divided….”
The reader added: “Gosh. If that double flip actually happens, a number of public figures will have to adapt to a new role at work, poor things — much like millions of other Americans whose job duties and perks get shifted around all the time without their consent.”
Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to respond.
Ana Radelat
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
