Minnesota Democrat Ken Martin declared his candidacy for chairman of the Democratic National Committee this month. In doing so, he and Minnesota Democrats would have you believe they are the model for the future of the Democratic Party that is licking its wounds from an electoral thumping.
Outlining how his party must reconnect with the working class, Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party, offered up the Gopher State as a beacon of hope. Never mind that, despite an enormous spending advantage in the state, his party just lost control of the state House after six years and saw President-elect Donald Trump secure the highest vote share for a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years.
The problem with Minnesota Democrats is the same problem as Democrats across the country. They masquerade as moderates while governing from the hard Left. But voters saw through this schtick and thoroughly rejected it.
Take, for example, Minnesota’s bloated budget.
Coming out of the pandemic, Minnesota’s balance sheet was on sound footing. Then Democrats took complete control of the state government in 2022. After acquiescing to bipartisan compromises forged by a divided legislature during his first four years, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) took a hard left over the last two years.
Once in complete control, Democrats went on a spending spree unprecedented in state history. In their first six months in charge, Walz and Democratic lawmakers increased state spending by $19 billion, raised taxes by $10 billion, and drove the state from a record surplus to a deficit.
Contrary to claims of only taxing the rich, these tax hikes hit working people the hardest. Higher gas taxes, higher sales taxes, higher car registration fees, a massive payroll tax increase, and a highly regressive fee on home deliveries made up the bulk of the new taxes.
Minnesota Democrats will tell you every dime of the splurge was worth it, but they’re probably less likely to mention that the state is rife with organized fraud.
In fact, our state was home to the largest pandemic fraud scam in the country. The notorious Feeding Our Future scam, in which unsophisticated fraudsters cost taxpayers more than $250 million, happened in part because state regulators simply didn’t do their jobs.
Walz, however, said there wasn’t any malfeasance, so nobody lost their jobs and there was no accountability for the state employees who let the fraud happen. Taxpayers will be lucky to recover a fraction of the money lost, a good chunk of which ended up overseas.
At the same time as the food fraud scandal was unfolding, the Walz administration was mismanaging another program intended to provide bonuses for workers who stood on the front lines of the pandemic. Nurses, grocery store workers, janitors, and others who kept showing up for work were eligible for cash payments — a welcome bump for many working families just as inflation was setting in.
This should have been a simple task for Minnesota officials: distribute half a billion dollars to people in specific lines of work who could prove they worked in those jobs during the first years of the pandemic. Instead, a state audit found 40% of the money, $200 million, went to people who were ineligible or couldn’t prove they qualified.
These are not isolated incidents — it’s the price of doing business in Democratic-run Minnesota. There are dozens more episodes of fraud and abuse totaling hundreds of millions of dollars more.
Then, there’s the radical social agenda shoved down our throats by these left-wing politicians. First, Minnesota Democrats passed the most radical abortion law in the country. It allows elective abortions up until the moment of birth.
Democrats also did away with common sense bipartisan laws such as requiring parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion.
Voters made a smart move returning Walz to sender, but Minnesota Democrats are clearly struggling to cope with the rejection of their leader-in-plaid. The problem with the Harris-Walz ticket wasn’t that Democrats didn’t market their agenda better, it was that voters didn’t like their agenda.
Democrats around the country may want to look a little deeper before taking Mr. Martin’s advice.
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Kelly Fenton is a former Minnesota state representative (2015-2019) and former deputy chairwoman of the Republican Party of Minnesota (2011-2014).