Federal agents searching the home of a sitting member of Congress just three weeks before an election should be an extraordinary moment in American politics. And yet, the response to Monday’s raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (MN05-D) Washington, D.C., home followed a depressingly familiar script.

Democrats condemned the action as political intimidation. The Trump administration defended the investigation. President Donald Trump continued attacking Omar. News outlets examined the legal questions, political motivations, and implications for the upcoming midterms.

All of that scrutiny is warranted. But the most troubling question may extend beyond this particular investigation. What happens when Americans become so accustomed to extraordinary exercises of government power that even the extraordinary begins to feel ordinary?

The raid on Congresswoman Omar’s home raises serious questions about the political misuse of federal authority. But the broader threat to American democracy lies in how quickly potential abuses of that authority are becoming normalized.

The danger isn’t necessarily that Americans have stopped recognizing political overreach – it’s that we have become accustomed to recognizing it, condemning it, and moving on.

The Normalization Trap

There was a time when the federal government searching the home of an opposition lawmaker weeks before an election would have dominated the national political conversation for months. Today, it risks becoming another controversy competing for attention in an already exhausting political environment.

That doesn’t mean Americans approve. It doesn’t even mean they’re indifferent. It means something potentially more consequential: Our expectations of what constitutes extraordinary government conduct may be changing.

Consider the circumstances surrounding Omar’s case.

Federal investigators searched her Washington residence as part of a criminal investigation reportedly involving immigration documents completed when she was a child. The search followed years of personal attacks by Trump and public allegations of wrongdoing by senior administration officials. And it occurred during the final weeks of an election in which Omar herself is a candidate.

The Justice Department says agents obtained a judicially authorized warrant. That matters. A warrant is an important constitutional safeguard, and elected officials are not entitled to immunity from legitimate criminal investigations. But a warrant does not independently settle questions about political motivation, investigative discretion, or whether the timing of a search was appropriate.

These circumstances deserve extraordinary scrutiny. They also illuminate a broader vulnerability in the American political system: the consequences of normalization aren’t limited to how Americans react. Over time, changing public expectations can also weaken the informal restraints that shape how government officials exercise their authority.

Each extraordinary action risks making the next one seem less exceptional. Normalization doesn’t require approval. Sometimes it requires only resignation.

Beyond Outrage

The response to the raid on Congresswoman Omar’s home illustrates another weakness in American political accountability – condemnation is abundant, consequences are considerably harder to identify.

House Democratic leaders immediately denounced the search. Congresswoman Omar accused the administration of political intimidation. Legal experts questioned the timing and the implications of the investigation.

To be clear, those responses matter. Public opposition is an essential component of democratic accountability. But statements of outrage cannot substitute for the institutional mechanisms needed to establish what happened and whether anyone acted improperly.

Consider the Justice Department’s longstanding practice of avoiding overt investigative actions involving political candidates close to an election. Often described as the informal 60-day rule, the practice reflects a basic principle: Federal law enforcement should not become an instrument of electoral competition, nor unnecessarily create the appearance that it has.

The convention is not an absolute legal prohibition. But the Justice Department’s written policies also prohibit investigative actions timed for the purpose of influencing an election and require consultation when an action could raise concerns about electoral interference.

The search of Omar’s home occurred just 22 days before Election Day.

That timing does not independently establish wrongdoing. But it raises legitimate questions about how investigators applied those safeguards.

• What justified conducting the search at that particular moment?

• What consideration was given to the approaching election?

• How effectively did the department insulate its decision-making from political pressure?

According to reporting, senior Justice Department officials approved the search after consultation with the department’s Public Integrity Section — an office whose staffing and authority have been substantially reduced under the Trump administration.That makes independent scrutiny especially important.

Internal approval does not necessarily resolve questions about whether the appropriate standards were followed. Congress should seek answers through legitimate oversight, while respecting the confidentiality of evidence in an ongoing investigation.

The objective should not be to shield Members of Congress from legitimate scrutiny. It should be to ensure that federal law enforcement remains independent of political retaliation. Determining whether those standards were honored requires something more substantial than another round of political condemnation.

When Guardrails Become Suggestions

The danger of allowing extraordinary government conduct to pass without meaningful scrutiny extends beyond the immediate controversy.

Every time an institutional safeguard is tested without an expectation of accountability, something changes. Not necessarily in the law, but in the practical understanding of what government officials can get away with — and what the public can reasonably expect them to refrain from doing.

That is how unwritten norms erode.

A longstanding tradition of prosecutorial independence does not disappear because one administration challenges it. A practice of exercising restraint around elections does not cease to exist because investigators make one controversial decision.

But when departures from those expectations become easier to defend, easier to overlook, and less likely to invite consequences, the safeguards themselves begin to lose their practical force.

And the consequences are not limited to the officials exercising government power. They extend to the public’s expectations of government.

Americans can recognize an action as troubling, condemn it, and still gradually come to accept that nothing meaningful will happen in response. What once would have triggered demands for institutional accountability becomes another controversy to endure.

That is the real cost of getting used to it: Not that Americans stop caring about government overreach, but that they stop expecting anyone to prevent it.

Over time, the distance between what Americans believe their government should do and what they expect it will do grows wider. The larger that gap becomes, the easier it is for extraordinary conduct to become ordinary practice.

Constitutional norms do not become meaningless the moment someone violates them. They become meaningless when violations no longer generate an expectation of consequences.

Bottom Line

The raid on Congresswoman Omar’s home should prompt serious questions about the conduct of federal law enforcement, the integrity of politically sensitive investigations, and the safeguards intended to protect Americans from government overreach.

But it should also prompt a broader examination of how Americans respond when those safeguards are threatened.

The danger isn’t that we’ve stopped recognizing political overreach. It’s that we’ve become accustomed to recognizing it, condemning it, and moving on — without expecting, much less demanding, that anything change.

Outrage has an important place. So does disagreement over the facts. However, preserving constitutional norms ultimately requires something more durable: independent scrutiny, meaningful accountability, and principles strong enough to survive the next election.

The raid is the occasion for the conversation. Whether Americans continue getting used to incidents like it is the larger story.

BNB Note:

Below, is a guest editorial from Erik Osberg, the DFL candidate running to represent Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District.

My name is Erik Osberg, and I’m running for Congress because I believe we can do better.

When you run for office, you receive no shortage of advice. As an outsider and not a career politician, I got a lot. When we started this campaign on March 11 of 2025, I was told by several “political experts” that we should focus on three main issues. This is the “tried and true campaign strategy that everyone uses.” Our three main issues were agriculture, education, and healthcare – three areas that are vitally important to me personally, and to the district as a whole. So many people who live in this district have a job related to one of these areas, and even if they don’t, we are all greatly impacted by each of these issues. So, off we went, focused on fighting for our agricultural community, working to improve healthcare, and fully funding education.

Over the past nineteen months, talking to voters has repeatedly validated the importance of these three issues. And I’ve talked to a lot of voters. In fact, since this campaign began, I’ve put on over 48,000 miles, and held over 320 public events. We’re currently in the midst of a “Fish Fry Town Hall” tour, holding a town hall in each of the 38 counties in this district. At these town halls, we invite everyone, regardless of political persuasion, and I answer any and all questions that people have. More importantly, we listen.

As our campaign started to grow, so too did the current administration’s level of power in our political system. Everywhere we went, people were suddenly talking about the Constitution. No longer do we have three “co-equal branches of government.” Instead, we’ve seen an executive branch that controls everything, and legislative and judicial branches that have become little more than a rubber-stamp for the President. As a constitutionalist, I believe this is a dangerous precedent to set and that no president, regardless of party, should wield that kind of power in our democracy. Our Constitution was created, in part, to combat exactly that. People are very concerned right now about affordability, and that too is a constitutional issue. Much of the uncertainty we’re seeing in our economy is a direct result of tariffs and a war that nobody wanted. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse, which includes tariffs. Declaring war is also supposed to be something only Congress has the power to do. Over the past 19 months, our Constitution has been treated as a suggestion box instead of what it’s intended to be – the law of the land. And so defending the Constitution became our top priority.

The second thing that changed our campaign priorities was the growing realization that money controls everything in our political system. The reason we make so little headway on issues like education, agriculture, and healthcare, is that societal progress often conflicts with personal and corporate greed. Corporate money that dominates our political system has essentially turned our elections into auctions. We need to overturn Citizens United and return the power to the people. And so getting corporate money out of politics became our number two priority.

One of the mantras of this campaign has been that we need to pave a different path to achieve a different outcome. And so we decided to forgo the conventional wisdom about only having a “top three issues” platform, and instead created a five-point plan, a plan that was developed by listening to you, the people of Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District.

Once again, my name is Erik Osberg, and I’m running for Congress because I believe we can do better.

Last week, the Minnesota Department of Commerce released final health insurance rates for 2027.

About 203,000 Minnesotans who buy their own coverage will see average increases of 9.9% to 21.1%, depending on their insurer. About 184,000 people in small-business plans face increases of 10.6% to 21.4%. Commerce puts the average increase at 17.4%. That follows an average 21.5% jump in individual-market rates this year.

That is bad news. But the more important number is further down the press release. Without the state’s reinsurance program, Commerce says, the average increase insurers proposed would have been 57.9%.

Seventeen percent is what Minnesota’s individual market looks like with reinsurance. The program that holds it there expires after next year, and Minnesota needs both a plan and the leadership to save it.

Why Premiums Keep Climbing

Most of this year’s increase reflects forces Minnesota shares with every state.

Insurers nationally are seeking a median increase of about 15% for 2027, driven mainly by the rising cost of hospital care, physician visits and prescription drugs. Small-business plans, which reinsurance does not cover, are rising by similar amounts here, a reminder that underlying costs are the main driver. The Commerce Department pointed to the same drivers, while also noting heavier use of care and more for-profit companies in the system.

Washington made it worse when Congress let the enhanced federal premium tax credits expire at the end of 2025. As a result, MNsure enrollment fell 12% in a year, from about 143,000 to about 126,000.

When healthier people leave a market, the people left behind cost more to cover. Minnesota’s uninsured rate rose from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.8% in 2025, the highest in six years.

The Reinsurance Program Holding the Market Up: Minnesota Premium Security Plan

The individual market is where farmers, early retirees, the self-employed and people between jobs buy coverage. It is small, and a few very expensive patients can swing everyone’s premiums.

Reinsurance, formally the Minnesota Premium Security Plan, picks up part of the bill for the most expensive patients, so insurers don’t load those costs onto every policy. The federal government helps fund it through a waiver: it sends Minnesota part of the tax-credit money it saves when premiums are lower. The state covers the rest.

A Republican Legislature created the program in 2017; then-Governor Mark Dayton (DFL), skeptical of subsidizing insurers, let it become law without his signature. Later, Governor Tim Walz (DFL) and a divided Legislature extended it in 2022.

Commerce credits it with cutting premiums 15% to 20% a year from 2018 through 2022, and says 2026 rates would have risen nearly 70% without it.

The 2028 Reinsurance Cliff

The federal waiver and the state law behind reinsurance run through plan year 2027. Minnesota Management and Budget’s February forecast shows no reinsurance payments after that.

However, even the 2027 bill has been deferred. Lawmakers funded it with a one-time assessment of about $272 million on group health insurers – to be collected in 2028. Starting in 2029, those insurers can claim a state tax credit equal to what they paid. The state is still paying for reinsurance. It has just pushed the bill into the next budget.

The federal share going toward Minnesota’s reinsurance program is shrinking, too: it is tied to the tax credits Washington would otherwise pay, so smaller credits mean less help. MMB projects 2027 reinsurance payments of about $387 million, roughly $266 million of it beyond federal funds. Its February forecast showed a balance of just $377 million for the entire 2028–29 budget.

Republicans have been more united in support of the program while there has been reluctance among some DFL legislators to support its extension. Though, generally speaking, the program has enjoyed bipartisan support over the years.

Opponents have argued that reinsurance subsidizes insurers rather than patients and that a MinnesotaCare buy-in, or public option, is the durable fix. That is a serious argument. But no public option is ready for 2028, and ending reinsurance first would leave buyers with nothing in between.

The calendar is tight. Insurers build 2028 rates next spring, and a federal waiver takes time to approve. The 57.9% figure is a one-year comparison; Commerce’s longer-run estimate is that a lapse would add about 25% on top of normal annual increases.

A program that has held premiums down every year since 2018 is set to end not because anyone decided to end it, but because no elected leader has built the plan and mustered the political will necessary to save it - yet.

Bottom Line

Minnesota cannot control federal subsidies or national medical inflation but it can control whether its own premium protection survives. Reinsurance lowers the sticker price for everyone, including people who get no subsidy at all.

The next governor and Legislature should:

• Commit to extending reinsurance for 2028 and beyond

• Fund it in the budget, up front, instead of through deferred tax credits.

• Put a price tag and eligibility rules on any new state premium credit.

• Treat hospital and drug prices as the cost driver they are.

• Keep the public option debate going, on a timeline that doesn’t leave buyers stranded.

Holding premiums to 17% is not a victory. Letting them climb toward 58% would be an irresponsible and harmful choice.

Senator Klobuchar has the most developed health care agenda in the gubernatorial race, which includes a commitment to “extend and strengthen Minnesota’s bipartisan reinsurance program.” She also has the skill this problem needs most: getting a divided legislature to yes.

If elected, Klobuchar will need to wield the legislative prowess that made her one of the Senate’s most productive members to extend Minnesota’s reinsurance program and keep premiums from increasing even more.

This outlet is betting she’ll find a way.

On Monday, President Trump announced what the White House is calling the largest steel plant in American history: a $15 billion integrated mill, built by Nashwauk-based Mesabi Metallics, that is projected to employ at least 1,750 people.

The mill will run on Minnesota iron. It will be built in Lee County, Iowa.

The ore will come from Mesabi’s new $3 billion mine and pellet plant on the Iron Range, the first new taconite mine on the Mesabi Range in half a century. That mine is expected to support about 350 jobs.

The President put the arrangement plainly: Minnesota’s Iron Range gets “unleashed,” the ore goes down the Mississippi, and Iowa gets to build the steel plant. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added that the deal was “great for Minnesota.”

It is good news for the Range, and every one of those 350 jobs matters. But it is worth being clear-eyed about the shape of the deal: Minnesota is supplying the raw material for someone else’s industrial boom.

The Industry’s Pitch

The announcement landed just as Mining Minnesota, a group of industry leaders advocating for safe and responsible mining, is on the air with its Minnesota Mines It Better campaign.

Their pitch is that responsible mining means good jobs, American-made critical minerals and a cleaner energy future, all “made right here in Minnesota.” The campaign touts the state’s copper-nickel reserves, more than 140 years of mining experience and what it calls the world’s strictest environmental standards.

That case deserves a fair hearing.

Julie Lucas, Executive Director of Mining Minnesota, told Blue North Beacon in a recent interview, “I’m a water resources scientist by training. I have yet to meet a watershed that I don’t think should be protected.” Asked what gives her confidence that mining can meet that standard, she pointed to three layers of accountability: mining companies and their local employees, state regulations and regulators, and outside watchdog organizations.

As she put it, “nothing is going to just get permitted overnight and not have oversight.”

For Range families, “mining matters” is a statement of fact, not a slogan. “Made right here in Minnesota” is the right goal. Monday’s announcement shows it is not automatic.

The Mine-to-Mill Test

Minnesotans will hear plenty of mining promises between now and November. Every candidate’s mining and economic development pitch should answer five questions:

1. How many jobs stay in Minnesota, and what do they pay? A mine without downstream processing and manufacturing captures only a fraction of the payroll.

2. What tax base does the project leave behind? Mills, plants and suppliers generate property and income taxes for decades.

3. Who bears the risk? Communities and taxpayers should know who pays for reclamation, cleanup and the next downturn.

4. Can the state permit it predictably, whatever the answer is? Investors can live with a rigorous “no” more easily than an endless “maybe.”

5. Does the investment keep the next plant here? Success isn’t one ribbon-cutting. It is the second and third project choosing Minnesota.

What the Budget Can’t Afford to Lose

Economic development is not a side issue to Minnesota’s budget. It is part of the budget.

Minnesota Management and Budget’s February forecast projected a $3.7 billion balance for the current biennium. That balance falls to just $377 million in 2028–29, because ongoing spending is projected to grow faster than revenue.

That constraint binds both parties. Democrats cannot count on growth that hasn’t happened to fund new commitments. Republicans cannot count on tax cuts to magically produce investment.

What reliably widens the tax base is employers who put down roots here: a mill, a battery plant, a magnet manufacturer and the supplier networks that follow. Each one generates payroll, income taxes and local property wealth for decades.

Losing them to neighboring states is not just an economic loss. It is a fiscal one for Minnesota’s budget.

Expansion, Not Exodus

Minnesota’s problem is rarely companies packing up and leaving. It is quieter than that.

A Minnesota Chamber study of business retention found that site selectors and executives consistently praised the state’s workforce and quality of life, which is one reason firms rarely relocate outright. Instead, they add capacity somewhere else. A meaningful subset said they chose other states because of preventable headwinds to investing here.

Mesabi is a Minnesota company making its biggest bet across the border. We don’t know whether Minnesota was a serious contender for the mill or what determined the site selection. Regardless, Minnesota does not want that pattern to become familiar, particularly as copper, nickel and critical-minerals processing comes up for siting in the years ahead.

The question for the next governor is how to put Minnesota in contention for the next projects coming down the pyke.

Klobuchar’s Blueprint

Klobuchar’s policy plans were published long before the Mesabi announcement, but they read like they could be a response to it. Much of what she proposes is about making Minnesota the easier place to say yes to:

• Permitting with a clock. She has proposed refunding license and permit fees when state agencies miss their promised timelines. That puts the state’s own credibility on the line.

• One recruitment team. She has proposed coordinating the Minnesota Trade Office within DEED, the IRRRB and federal partners like the SBA to open markets and recruit new businesses to Greater Minnesota.

• Shovel-ready land. She would create a clear process for cities to acquire state-owned and tax-forfeited land for commercial and industrial development.

• The infrastructure plants need. She has pledged to modernize rural roads, bridges, rail, ports and water systems, the backbone any mill site requires.

• The workforce behind it. Her pledge of 10,000 new apprenticeship and training opportunities explicitly includes mining and manufacturing. (BNB previously covered that plan in A Better Blueprint for the Middle Class.)

Klobuchar has also ruled out raising taxes and pledged to make starting and growing a business in Minnesota easier. That is a DFL economic development agenda that treats growth as part of the solution, not a concession.

Bottom Line

Minnesota doesn’t have to choose between its mining heritage and its economic future. But it has to stop settling for the dig-and-ship end of the supply chain.

The next governor needs to turn Minnesota’s mineral wealth into lasting investment: predictable permitting, coordinated recruitment, prepared industrial sites and a workforce ready for the jobs. Every incentive should come with a clear price tag and measurable results in jobs, wages and tax revenue.

Minnesota shouldn’t just be where the ore is dug. It should also be where the mill gets built.

BNB Note:

Below, is a guest editorial from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Ellison has served as Minnesota’s Attorney General since 2019. From 2007-2019, Ellison represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representative. Prior to that, he also served for four years in the Minnesota House. Ellison is seeking reelection to a third term this November.

My Republican opponent, Ron Schutz, thinks it is “preposterous” for Minnesota’s Attorney General — that’s me, Keith Ellison — to help make life more affordable. “Who does he think he is?” he asked on video. “The chairman of the Federal Reserve?”

I am not the chairman of the Federal Reserve. I am the lawyer for the people of Minnesota. Minnesota law gives the Attorney General the responsibility to go after the unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practices that drain money from families who are already stretched thin.

Mr. Schutz can mock me all he wishes. But he cannot wish that duty away enshrined in Minnesota Statutes section 8.31. And if he thinks it shouldn’t be a top priority, he’s just wrong.

What the law says

Start with the statute. Minnesota law says the Attorney General “shall investigate violations of the law of this state respecting unfair, discriminatory, and other unlawful practices in business, commerce, or trade.” The word is “shall,” not “may.” The Legislature did not make this optional.

The statute then lists the laws the Attorney General must enforce, including the Consumer Fraud Act, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, false advertising law, and Minnesota’s antitrust law. It gives the office tools to do the work: the power to investigate, to demand documents and testimony, to go to court to stop unlawful conduct, and to seek civil penalties and other relief.

Look at what those laws cover: Consumer fraud. Price-fixing. Monopolies. Hidden fees. False promises. Each one is about money taken out of the pockets of Minnesotans through unfair dealing. When a company inflates prices by crushing competition, families pay more. When a landlord piles on junk fees, rent goes up. When a lender hides the true cost of a loan, a household falls further behind. Stopping those practices is affordability work. Section 8.31 says so, even if it doesn’t use the word.

Affordability is about the price of a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas, but it’s more than that. It’s also about whether a diabetic can pay for insulin, or whether a family is overcharged at a moment of emergency. It’s about whether a renter gets gouged by fees no one disclosed. Whether a worker loses wages to an employer who cheats, or whether a student is sold a worthless degree and a mountain of debt.

These are real cases that I have brought and won for Minnesotans — and Ron Schutz ridicules me for it. Every dollar recovered, every illegal fee stopped, and every scheme shut down is money that stays with the people who earned it. That’s not a campaign slogan. That’s my mission and my burning passion. It’s the plain purpose of the laws the Legislature directed my office to enforce.

Affordability must be the priority

Ron Schutz didn’t misspeak. He’s just echoing what Donald Trump has already said. During a speech at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas, Trump explicitly labeled Americans’ focus on the affordability crisis as “fake” and a political hoax. So, Trump and Mr. Schutz agree.

Mr. Schutz is not ignorant. He’s been a lawyer for years. He’s just on the side of these concentrated monopolies and politicians, like Trump, who are driving the cost of living up right along with their profits. ExxonMobil recently reported doubling its second-quarter profits to $14.53 billion, driven by a spike in global oil prices following the start of the conflict with Iran. According to his Statement of Economic Interest (SEI), Ron owns a chunk of ExxonMobil. By the way, I am suing ExxonMobil for climate deception.

Mr. Schutz and I aren’t just reading the same statute differently. We view the world differently. I believe the Minnesota Attorney General should use the Office to protect your family in this deeply unfair and unequal economic environment. It should protect you and your family from an aggressive and overreaching federal government. On the other hand, Ron Schutz is saying the struggles of working Minnesotans aren’t the Attorney General’s concern.

I believe the Minnesota Attorney General should enforce the rules of fair dealing in Minnesota. In hard economic times, the need for that enforcement grows. People with little room in their budgets are the ones hurt most by fraud and price-gouging. They are also the least able to hire a lawyer and fight back. That is exactly why the Legislature gave the fight to the Attorney General. An Attorney General candidate who shrugs at affordability is someone who plans to leave those families to fight on their own.

So when Mr. Schutz calls it “preposterous” for the Attorney General to fight for families’ economic livelihoods, the voters should hear what he’s really saying: “Affordability ain’t my job.”

Well, section 8.31 says it is the Attorney General’s job. A candidate who rejects the core duty of the office, spelled out in state law, has disqualified himself from holding it.

In releasing another detailed policy proposal, this time on health care, Senator Amy Klobuchar has shown why she is the most qualified candidate to be Minnesota’s next Governor. Here again, Klobuchar deserves credit for doing something voters should expect from anyone seeking the governor’s office: putting forward policies and explaining how they could improve people’s lives.

Klobuchar’s health care agenda gives Minnesotans specific proposals to consider, challenge and help strengthen. That willingness to make choices publicly is a meaningful part of preparing to govern -- and more importantly, it creates commitments that survive the campaign speeches.

The contrast with Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth could not be more clear. While Klobuchar has put specific policy proposals before voters, Demuth’s “comprehensive health care platform” (along with other policy areas) remains forthcoming.

Responding to Klobuchar’s policy rollout, Demuth’s campaign blamed Klobuchar for the problem of national rising health care costs — without explaining how Demuth would replace the support Minnesotans lost when enhanced Obamacare subsidies expired at the end of last year. Notably, Demuth has also been unwilling to acknowledge, much less confront, the negative health care consequences brought on by policies championed by Trump and supported by Demuth herself -- a vulnerability the Klobuchar campaign will not be shy about reminding voters about in the final stretch.

Families facing higher premiums deserve a clear answer about what their next governor will do to address the ongoing health care affordability crisis. To date, Klobuchar has given families a far fuller account of how she would actually address their costs.

Making insurance more affordable

Klobuchar’s plan includes a state credit through MNsure if enhanced federal premium assistance remains unavailable, along with a credit for small employers providing health coverage.

This proposal responds to a real loss of help. Enhanced federal credits expired after 2025 and Medicaid was cut as a result of President Trump’s signature legislation - the Big Beautiful Bill. Ordinary credits remain, but some households receive less assistance and others no longer qualify. For eligible households, state assistance could mean a smaller monthly payment and more room for groceries, housing or other necessities. Helping small employers cover workers addresses another place where health costs press on family budgets.

Both candidates have expressed their support for reinsurance, which helps cover expensive claims and holds individual-market premiums below what they otherwise would be. That shared ground warrants recognition.

However, it is Klobuchar’s additional assistance proposals that keep the policy discussion moving forward -- and Demuth who supported the Big Beautiful Bill that cut Medicaid and health care.

Klobuchar’s proposals identify a way Minnesota could respond when existing help falls short. Eligibility, benefit amounts and sustainable funding details will still need to be fleshed out further but putting the proposal on the table makes that work possible—and gives voters a clear question to ask Demuth: what additional relief would you offer?

Taking on prescription costs

Klobuchar proposes expanded state drug purchasing, greater use of generics and biosimilars, and requirements that pharmacy benefit managers pass along savings.

The appeal is popular, in part, because it is so practical. Klobuchar is identifying purchasing tools and industry practices her administration would address. Voters can examine those choices and ask how the benefits would reach the pharmacy counter.

That is a useful contribution to an affordability debate too easily reduced to expressions of frustration. A promise becomes more valuable when the candidate explains what government would actually do. Savings will depend on implementation, but naming a path toward them is the necessary first step.

The 340B drug-discount dispute adds a concrete legislative question. A bill strengthening Minnesota’s enforcement of drug-delivery protections passed the Senate 42–24 but was not given a vote in the House.

Klobuchar supports protecting the discounts and has correctly pointed out that Demuth prevented the vote on the bill as House Speaker. The record clearly establishes the legislation stalled in the House. However, Demuth is yet to adequately explain her position or respond to why the legislation did not get a vote in the chamber she controlled.

Keeping care close to home

A cheaper insurance premium offers limited comfort when getting care requires a long trip or an unavailable appointment. Klobuchar’s proposal rightfully places travel and time away from work in the affordability conversation.

On this front, her proposals include rural-facility grants, emergency medical support and workforce recruitment and training. Demuth has identified rural access and medical training as “priorities” for her forthcoming platform but again, the details, and the plan itself, remain to be seen.

Klobuchar’s plan deserves credit for connecting the cost of coverage with the availability of care. Facilities need staff, and communities need services they can reach. Treating those needs together reflects a more useful understanding of what families experience.

The next step will be to attach resources, staffing goals and timelines to those commitments. Her proposals give that discussion a place to begin.

Protecting health care dollars and patients

When talking about her health care plan, Demuth regularly turns to talking about fraud. Demuth’s fraud proposals include provider visits, forensic accounting and cross-program checks. Those ideas merit consideration. Klobuchar also proposes provider screening and payment monitoring and has emphasized rooting out fraud as a top priority, releasing a detailed fraud plan several months ago, with support from former U.S. Attorney Andy Luger.

But fraud prevention alone is not a sufficient strategy to bring down health care costs.

Of course, protecting public money and helping people afford care are compatible responsibilities. Klobuchar’s approach recognizes both. Enforcement should prevent theft while preserving legitimate services; affordability measures should come with credible financing.

Neither campaign should count uncertain fraud recoveries as guaranteed money for ongoing commitments. But fiscal scrutiny should help turn worthwhile proposals into workable policy. It should not become a reason to abandon the effort to help families.

Bottom Line

Klobuchar’s health agenda sits alongside published proposals on housing, workforce development and government accountability. Each deserves scrutiny, but the willingness to put a detailed policy agenda before the public deserves praise too.

Public policy choices expose a candidate to criticism. They also reveal priorities, invite improvement and give voters something concrete to expect after inauguration. That is the preparation we should not only encourage but expect of our elected leaders.

On health care affordability, Klobuchar has given Minnesotans more reason to believe she would enter office with a clear agenda for helping families. While a plan cannot guarantee delivery, it can demonstrate that a candidate is taking the responsibility seriously.

Klobuchar is doing the hard work of designing policy specifics and articulating their impact to voters. Ultimately, Minnesota families will be well served because of it.

BNB Note:

Below, is a guest editorial from State Senator Mary Kunesh (SD39-DFL). Senator Kunesh is the Chair of the Senate Education Finance Committee and a lead author of the legislation that placed the Permanent School Fund constitutional referendum on the ballot for voters to answer this November.

On the November 3, Minnesotans will face a simple question on their ballots:

Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to increase the funding going to all school districts from the permanent school fund, which is a fund that supports school districts without raising individual income or property taxes, effective July 1, 2027?

Ought we update the way our state’s Permanent School Fund (PSF) supports public education? The answer should be a resounding YES! This amendment is not about raising taxes or creating new bureaucracy—it’s about unlocking the full potential of a 165‑year‑old trust to meet the needs of today’s and future students.

Every child in Minnesota deserves a fair shot at a quality education, no matter where their school district might be. Yet our state’s Permanent School Fund—grown from $675 million to $2.5 billion over the past ten years—operates under outdated restrictions, thus limiting its impact. The proposed constitutional amendment is a chance to align our values with our policies, ensuring that this public trust truly serves the public good of every public-school student in Minnesota.

In 1858, when Minnesota became a state, our founders set aside millions of acres of land to generate income for public schools. That foresight created the Permanent School Fund, a trust that has quietly supported generations of learners – making every child in Minnesota a “trust fund baby”. The rules governing the fund were written 165 years ago – written for a different century. This 2026 constitutional amendment offers a rare chance for Minnesotans to bring those rules into the modern era.

The Department of Natural Resources manages these lands—historically through timber sales, mineral leases, and other activities—and invests the proceeds. The earnings are distributed annually to public school districts on a per‑pupil basis, twice a school year.

Since the establishment of the PSF, the Minnesota Constitution imposes strict limitations on how the fund is managed and how its earnings are calculated. These rules were designed in the 19th century to protect the fund’s principle, but unfortunately, they also prevent modern investment strategies that could yield higher, more stable returns.

This amendment, passed with bipartisan support in the Legislature, will make a positive impact for our schools – distributing an increase from 2.5 % of interest and dividends to 4.5% of interest, dividends, and capital gains. For some districts this adjustment will add hundreds of thousands of much needed financial support to school districts, for other districts, millions. While we know this will not fill all of the holes in the education bucket, it will make a difference to every school district in some way. We know that the PSF is not the answer to all of our prayers, but it is a stable, dedicated revenue source that can help cushion districts against economic swings.

These are no nonsense changes that do three things:

1. Modernizes investment authority by allowing the State Board of Investment to use contemporary portfolio strategies, similar to those used by other large public trusts.

2. Adjusts distribution formulas, thus ensuring more predictable and potentially larger annual payments to schools.

3. Preserves the fund’s principle while maintaining constitutional safeguards to ensure the fund remains a perpetual source of support.

Importantly, the amendment does not raise taxes. It simply changes how the existing fund is managed and how its earnings are distributed.

Under current rules, the fund’s growth is artificially constrained. Other states with similar trusts—such as Texas and North Dakota—have adopted modern investment policies that have significantly increased their annual distributions to schools. Without approval of this amendment, Minnesota risks leaving millions of dollars on the table each year by clinging to outdated formulas. That’s millions of dollars not reaching our students every year.

What we are doing is more than dollars and cents. It’s about honoring the intent of Minnesota’s founders while adapting to the realities of the 21st century. The PSF was created to ensure that every generation of Minnesota’s children benefits from the state’s natural resources. By updating its management, we can fulfill that promise more effectively, ensuring that legislators fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to not only students of today, but for generations to come.

We all know that Minnesota’s public schools face mounting challenges: transportation and inflationary costs, teacher shortages, and widening achievement gaps. As the Chair of Education Finance in the Senate, I hear from Superintendents, Administrators, teachers, and parents about the current educational struggles. They’re reminiscent of the twenty-five years that I worked as a public-school Library Specialist, and this ballot question is just one of our efforts to turn these trends around. This amendment has been vetted by education leaders, lawmakers from both parties, and fiscal experts. It reflects a consensus that the current system is outdated and that change is both safe and beneficial for public schools, today and far into the future.

So, make your voting plan this year, join me in filling in the YES bubble on your November ballot – and be aware - anything other than a yes is counted as a no.

We can do this, vote yes for our students!

The Protect College Sports Act has picked up a crucial first down in the U.S. Senate.

This week, Senators voted 74–24 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed, clearing a procedural obstacle to taking up the legislation. The vote advanced the process; it did not pass the bill.

That margin gives supporters substantial bipartisan momentum to build on. It also makes the central question more immediate: does the institutional authority Congress would protect come with sufficient athlete power and accountability?

The Protect College Sports Act offers a consequential bargain. Athletes would receive federal guarantees involving scholarships, medical care and participation in governing bodies while institutions would receive legal protection for enforcing specified rules governing compensation, transfers and eligibility. Those provisions belong in the same conversation.

The bill’s protections deserve real weight. So does the power Congress would give institutions to set and enforce the rules. A fair bargain requires athletes to have a meaningful voice in those decisions and a practical way to challenge violations of their rights.

The case for moving the ball

The strongest argument for this legislation begins with what athletes could gain.

Under the legislation, schools could not reduce or revoke athletic aid because of performance, injury or roster-management decisions, subject to specified exceptions. The medical provisions include sport-related out-of-pocket expenses, independent second opinions and, for the athletes covered by the provision, five years of post-competition coverage for sport-related injuries or disease. These are practical protections for people whose education and health can depend on decisions made far above them.

The bill also requires at least one-third of the membership and voting power on specified governing bodies to consist of current athletes or qualifying recent former athletes. It also provides rights to sue over enumerated violations.

An honest assessment must acknowledge those valuable provisions first before asking whether they go far enough.

There is a persuasive case for accepting an imperfect agreement that makes protections enforceable in federal law. Athletes have short college careers → waiting for a more comprehensive reform carries costs → Congress cannot guarantee a better outcome simply by rejecting the deal before it.

That is the strongest case for final passage: concrete protections now, with further reform still possible. It deserves a substantive answer from critics.

But assessing that case requires comparing the bill with existing protections and examining how athletes would enforce the guarantees. A list of benefits does not, by itself, establish that the overall bargain is a good one.

Who writes the rules—and who can challenge them?

Athletes can already receive direct institutional benefits under the House litigation settlement. What Congress is deciding now is how to govern a system that has already changed, including the boundaries of compensation and the power to enforce them.

The proposed antitrust exemptions matter because antitrust law ordinarily constrains anticompetitive agreements. The bill would protect specified institutional conduct involving compensation, eligibility and other rules from that liability. This is substantial authority, though it is not immunity from every lawsuit.

The practical questions follow: Can athletes independently influence those rules? Can they challenge a violation without costs or delays that exhaust their college careers? What remedy is available when the institution enforcing the rule gets it wrong?

The AFL-CIO and its Sports Council have opposed the legislation saying it would protect institutional rulemaking without requiring collective bargaining with athletes. Their preferred route to stability is a negotiated agreement in which athletes exercise bargaining power.

Supporters can reasonably answer that board representation, statutory benefits and legal remedies are meaningful forms of protection. They are. But a minority of seats is not the same as negotiating authority, and a right to file suit is only part of the answer about practical enforcement.

Precision matters here: the legislation, as currently written, expressly leaves athlete employee or nonemployee status unchanged. This should not be described as declaring athletes nonemployees or explicitly banning unions. Instead, the question is whether the institutional powers Congress would protect are adequately balanced by the rights it gives athletes.

What exactly is being protected for athletes?

The provisions for women’s and Olympic sports offer a concrete test.For covered institutions, the bill establishes floors for total scholarship opportunities and roster spots in defined non-revenue sports against a 2024–25 baseline.

Coverage depends on revenue thresholds, and the provisions include exceptions and time limits. The legislation measures these protections in total scholarship opportunities and roster spots while also preserving minimum sport-sponsorship requirements.

An aggregate floor can provide meaningful protection. Still, athletes choosing a school deserve to know what it means for their particular program. Congress should require a clear explanation of how the totals, sponsorship minimums and exceptions work together before presenting them as assurance that a team is safe.

For Minnesota, the question reaches beyond whether Gophers football can remain competitive. University officials should explain which opportunities would be protected, how the baseline would be disclosed and what athletes could do if a promised protection were violated. Those answers belong alongside the views of conference leaders.

Bottom Line

The Senate has moved the legislation forward. Congress now has an opportunity to turn important athlete protections into law.

The favorable case for this bill is strong enough to deserve negotiation, not dismissal. Its proposed institutional powers are consequential enough to demand scrutiny, not deference.

Before final passage, lawmakers should clearly establish that athlete representatives can act independently, that remedies are accessible and timely, and that schools explain exactly what their program protections preserve.

Where the bill meets those tests, give it credit. Where it falls short, strengthen it.

Protecting college sports should mean athletes can depend on the rules, help shape them and hold institutions accountable. They should have more than a place on the roster when Congress decides who controls the game.

Pay better teachers more. As campaign promises go, it practically sells itself.

It sounds fair. It sounds demanding. It offers an appealing answer to a difficult problem: If Minnesota wants better results from its schools, reward the people who deliver them.

But who counts as a better teacher? Who decides? What would that teacher receive, and what would happen to someone who falls short? Most importantly, what would students gain?

Those questions separate a catchy slogan from a workable policy. Lisa Demuth has offered the former without explaining enough of the latter.

At her September 10 education announcement, Demuth proposed teacher performance pay because “better teachers deserve better pay,” unfortunately however, she could not identify a single metric that would determine the additional compensation.

While her plan offers a broad ambition to return Minnesota to the national top ten. It does not lay out a performance-pay formula, a funding amount or a measurable improvement attributable to changing teacher compensation. A statewide aspiration is not an explanation of what this particular policy would accomplish.

That omission matters because performance pay has a mixed record at best. The evidence includes failures and successes, depending on the intervention and setting. That mixed bag gives voters no reason to accept the pay-for-performance label as a guarantee for better results.

Minnesota Has Already Tried Performance Pay

Minnesota also has something more useful than a slogan to start with: experience.

The state’s Q Comp program dates to 2005. It allows districts and teachers’ bargaining representatives to develop voluntary plans combining performance pay with professional development, evaluation and career advancement. As a result, Minnesota has already spent years working through the relationship between compensation and teaching.

Demuth therefore owes voters an explanation of what she would change. Expand participation? Replace the existing approach? Change its measures? Make a voluntary arrangement mandatory? The available proposal does not answer those questions.

That is not proof Q Comp is sufficient. An existing program can need improvement. But a candidate promising reform should identify the shortcomings she intends to fix.

What the Research Shows

The research makes that obligation more pressing.

For example, in Nashville’s Project on Incentives in Teaching, middle-school math teachers could earn bonuses of up to $15,000 for student achievement gains. The experiment did not produce consistent, lasting improvements. Offering a substantial reward did not, by itself, reliably produce the hoped-for result. RAND’s account of the experiment

It would be convenient for critics to stop there but that would also be somewhat misleading.

A federal evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund found small positive reading and math effects from performance bonuses within a broader compensation system. The comparison schools had similar systems but paid a uniform bonus instead. That is evidence that incentives can make a difference under some conditions.

More recent research also provides a favorable case for compensation targeted at attracting and retaining effective teachers in disadvantaged schools. Of course, that is a different mechanism from expecting the same teachers to produce better results after announcing a bonus.

Minnesota’s own research further complicates the conflicting findings above. Researchers studying Q Comp adoption found modest reading gains, with less precise math findings. Perhaps most notably – they could not isolate which elements of the program produced the improvement as compensation was bundled with changes to teachers’ professional support and working practices.

In reality, the conclusion is more demanding than either side’s preferred talking point. Performance pay is not one policy with one predictable result. Its design determines what claim a candidate can reasonably make for it.

The Measure Is the Policy

Start with the measurement problem.

Imagine one teacher whose students arrive well prepared and mostly finish the year above a proficiency threshold. Another teacher’s students start much further behind, improve substantially, but remain below that line. A system rewarding proficiency could favor the first teacher. A system rewarding growth could reach a different conclusion.

Neither example tells us which teacher deserves a bonus. It shows why choosing the measure is the policy itself.

Then consider special education, kindergarten, music or career instruction. A compensation system needs a defensible way to recognize those teachers’ contributions, too. Classroom observations introduce their own questions about evaluator training and consistency. Statistical estimates do not eliminate uncertainty: the American Statistical Association has warned about the limitations of using value-added measures in consequential judgments about teachers.

The consequences require equal clarity. Would a low rating mean no bonus, slower salary growth or a reduction in pay? Demuth has not established those answers in the materials released to date. It would be wrong to claim she has announced pay cuts but it is entirely reasonable to demand that she explain the stakes before asking teachers and voters to embrace the idea.

Better Teaching Takes More Than a Bonus

And what would help a teacher improve? A reward can identify a destination without providing a route.

Time to plan, useful feedback, instructional materials and opportunities to learn from colleagues belong in the discussion. Q Comp’s results cannot establish that those supports always make incentives succeed. They do establish why a candidate cannot simply borrow a favorable finding about a comprehensive program and treat it as validation of an unspecified bonus.

Demuth’s broader plan does discuss instruction and tutoring. The missing explanation is how her compensation proposal would connect to that work—and what she would fund to make the connection real.

Someone also has to pay for the rewards and the system administering them. Would districts receive additional recurring money? Would evaluation take resources from other instructional work? Would bonuses compete with base salaries?

A modest benefit might justify its cost. A positive result alone does not establish that a proposal is the best use of the money.

Bottom Line

No candidate needs to arrive at a press conference carrying finished legislation. But the essential choices cannot all be deferred.

What changes? How is performance measured? What are the consequences? What improvement should families expect, by when, and at what cost?

Those are reasonable demands of anyone who wants to run Minnesota’s schools. Democrats defending existing programs or offering reforms of their own should meet them, too.

Demuth’s pitch asks voters to associate her with rewarding excellence. The policy she has explained does not yet earn that association. Teachers deserve fair compensation, students deserve effective instruction, and taxpayers deserve evidence that a reform can deliver.

“Better teachers deserve better pay” is an attractive line. Minnesota deserves to know whether there is a better policy behind it.

At the State Fair, the candidates for state auditor kept returning to a question that reaches well beyond an accounting office: How can Minnesotans trust government to use their money well?

DFL nominee Zack Filipovich emphasized accounting: the people who maintain local financial records, the safeguards that prevent mistakes and the expertise needed to make oversight work. Republican nominee Scott Jensen emphasized a more forceful public watchdog, one willing to expose wrongdoing and challenge officials. Forward Independent nominee Jay Reeves argued for better data systems that could flag problems sooner, paired with independence from the two major parties.

The competing emphases in the WCCO debate deserve attention because oversight helps determine whether public commitments become dependable services. Money appropriated for a purpose still needs to be tracked, contracts need scrutiny, and someone needs to act when the records do not add up.

For Minnesotans who believe in strong public schools, reliable infrastructure and responsive local government, that work belongs at the center of the argument for public investment. Accountability gives communities a better chance of receiving what they paid for and a way to identify what needs fixing.

What oversight means for Minnesota communities

The every day work of the auditor’s office demands serious attention, expertise, and leadership.

The auditor’s office oversees more than $56 billion in local government financial activity through auditing, reviewing information and reporting. Those are public dollars tied to services people use close to home. The figure describes the scale of the office’s oversight, not a budget the auditor controls.

Consider a recent example. In February, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) reported that Windemere Township in Pine County had paid $297,076.25 on a right-of-way clearing contract with a $175,000 limit. The office also identified weaknesses in contracting procedures and recommended changes. The findings illustrate a practical obligation: residents should be able to see what their government authorized, what it paid and whether the required safeguards were followed.

The office’s responsibilities also reach beyond local government. The auditor conducts Minnesota’s statewide federal single audit under an agreement with Minnesota Management and Budget. Questions about federal program oversight therefore belong in the campaign and candidates should explain which actions their office could take and which depend on other authorities.

Filipovich: Build the capacity to get the numbers right

Filipovich emphasized the office’s accounting and local government oversight responsibilities, drawing on his professional background and experience in local government.

He discussed retaining staff, helping local finance officials and strengthening the checks that prevent errors and misuse. His published platform similarly emphasizes staff capacity, training and support for communities. His credentials are strong as a certified management accountant and having previously served on the Duluth City Council.

Filipovich makes a strong substantive case: the quality of oversight depends in part on whether the people doing the work have the expertise and support to do it well. For a small community, help with financial reporting can be a practical form of protection.

His next task is to make sure voters understand how he plans to deliver that support. Which positions will he prioritize? How will he improve retention? What will he change for a small community that struggles to complete its financial reporting?

For what it’s worth, Filipovich’s political communication skills were impressive on the debate stage at the fair. In a political environment where fraud and oversight will be at the forefront, the DFL is lucky to have a candidate with the experience and skillset of Filipovich.

Jensen: Make accountability visible

Jensen offered a different emphasis: an auditor whose public voice would force attention onto failures.

That is a legitimate part of the job. A finding has limited value if residents cannot understand it or the responsible officials never address it. Public communication should make the evidence and the need for corrective action clear.

Jensen’s campaign also cites experience chairing a bank audit committee and serving on a school board, as well as his time in the Minnesota Senate. His published priorities include internal controls, ongoing audits and work with local governments on best practices.

The test is how he would connect his public pressure to the office’s work. Specific allegations need specific evidence. Promises to expose wrongdoing need a method for investigating concerns, distinguishing mistakes from misconduct and explaining what happens next. That discipline is essential to an office whose findings must remain credible across party lines.

My instinct is that come November, Scott Jensen will once again prove to be the political gift that keeps giving to DFLers when he ultimately loses his third consecutive statewide campaign – in a race that was ripe for the picking for Republicans no less.

Reeves: Use better information to catch problems earlier

Reeves raises another useful challenge: whether financial information could arrive sooner and be easier for the public to use. His platform proposes dashboards, streamlined reporting and expanded analytics, while acknowledging that the auditor cannot freeze payments.

Those proposals raise practical questions. Which local systems can share information? How quickly can records be validated? Who reviews an alert, and who acts on it? Technology can help direct attention, but someone still needs to establish what happened and secure a correction.

Here, too, further explanation is needed on what Reeve would improve exactly. OSA already offers a city-finance comparison tool and reported updating it in March. A proposal for greater transparency should identify what residents would gain beyond the information already available.

What voters should expect from the next auditor

These approaches overlap. Filipovich discusses modernization, Jensen proposes controls, and Reeves wants to help local officials. A capable auditor’s office needs accounting expertise, clear public communication and useful information.

The choice is about how each candidate would organize and lead that work.

To earn voters’ trust, and govern effectively, candidates should clearly identify their first priorities, the staff and funding required, and what they would report after a year. Timely audit completion, fewer recurring findings and documented follow-up are among several data points that could help voters assess performance.

They should also explain how they would handle evidence that damages an ally. An accounting credential, a forceful public persona or a third-party affiliation cannot answer that question by itself.

And as Albus Dumbledore remarked, “it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

Bottom line

The political stakes are especially clear for Democrats, who have held the auditor’s office for 20 years.A party that asks Minnesotans to invest in public services also owes them a persuasive account of how those services will be managed.

Filipovich is wise to insist on qualified staff, sound controls and independent scrutiny, as well as willing to acknowledge failures when the evidence establishes them.

That gives Filipovich an opportunity to connect his accounting background to something larger than a résumé: a government capable of keeping its promises. It also gives voters a reason to press Jensen and Reeves on how their proposed changes would improve the services and institutions they would help oversee.

The State Fair debate introduced those choices – the campaigns must now make them concrete.

Minnesotans deserve an auditor who helps ensure public money reaches its intended purpose, makes problems understandable and follows through on correcting them. Strong public services depend on that work.

Labor Day is when politicians celebrate the workers Minnesota already has. So the days after are as good of a time as any to ask how they plan to train the workers Minnesota will need next.

Senator Klobuchar’s workforce plan answers that question in a way that aims to reframe how we approach post secondary education and training.

Notably, her plan is not an argument against four-year college but rather an argument against treating four-year college as the only respectable and dependable path to good-paying jobs and careers – a message (and policy) too often underappreciated by Democrats in recent years.

The Democratic candidate for governor is promising to add 10,000 apprenticeship and skills-training opportunities across Minnesota, expanding the earn-while-you-learn model beyond its traditional home in the building trades and into fields such as health care, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and precision agriculture.

The number is important. But the larger idea behind it may be more consequential: Minnesota should treat apprenticeships, technical credentials and other workforce programs as first-class routes into the middle class—not some consolation prizes for people who chose not to pursue a four-year degree.

The Old (and Outdated) Default

For generations, students have been sold a familiar bag of goods when it comes to the right recipe for career/occupational success: graduate from high school, enroll in a four-year college and earn a degree before beginning a career.

For many Minnesotans, that remains an excellent path. A college education can open doors, increase earnings and prepare students for jobs that require years of specialized study. Klobuchar’s plan appropriately includes proposals to expand community college, university and credential pathways.

But college is not the only serious route to a good life—and treating it that way has carried consequences.

Students can take on substantial debt before knowing whether their degree will connect to a job. Adults supporting families may not be able to leave the workforce for several years. Meanwhile, Minnesota employers struggle to replace retiring workers and fill jobs that require significant training, but not necessarily a traditional bachelor’s degree.

The better goal is not to steer students away from college. It is to stop telling them that every other path represents settling.

Earn While You Learn

Registered apprenticeships offer a fundamentally different bargain.

Participants are employees. They earn wages while receiving structured classroom instruction and supervised training on the job. Their pay typically increases as their skills develop, and completing the program leads to a recognized occupational credential.

That makes apprenticeship an education model and an affordability policy at the same time.

Instead of paying for years before beginning to earn, apprentices earn while they prepare. Instead of hoping that classroom instruction eventually connects to an employer, the employer is part of the training from the beginning.

The model also has evidence behind it.

A 2026 evaluation prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor found that registered-apprenticeship participants experienced significantly higher employment and earnings after enrollment than comparable participants in community-college and employment-service programs. The study found positive results not only in construction, but also in health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing—the same types of fields Klobuchar wants Minnesota to emphasize.

Minnesota Already Has the Machinery

Klobuchar is not asking Minnesota to invent an apprenticeship system from scratch. She is proposing to scale and connect machinery the state already has.

Minnesota had 11,674 active registered apprentices as of July 2025, according to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Apprenticeship Minnesota already registers programs, enforces standards and works with employers and labor-management sponsors. Union training centers have decades of experience preparing painters, electricians, plumbers, pipefitters and other skilled workers. Technical colleges provide classroom instruction. Regional workforce boards connect training strategies to local employers.

The state has also experimented with moving apprenticeship into nontraditional fields. The original Minnesota Apprenticeship Initiative targeted agriculture, advanced manufacturing, health care, information technology and transportation. Existing grants help employers create programs, prepare workers to enter them and provide supportive services that improve completion.

Klobuchar’s plan would build on that foundation. It proposes bringing workforce and apprenticeship programs scattered across state agencies into one easier-to-navigate system, strengthening career matching and helping participants overcome barriers such as child care and housing. It would also create a public-private Skilled Workers and Trades Fund for debt-free short-term training in high-demand occupations.

That is a more credible starting point than another workforce initiative built around a new office, a new website and a new acronym. The task is not to manufacture a system – it is to make the existing system easier to enter, large enough to meet demand and accountable for results.

Why Minnesota Needs It Now

Minnesota’s workforce challenge is not simply about creating new jobs. It is increasingly about replacing the workers who already perform essential ones.

The Department of Employment and Economic Development projects nearly 749,000 job openings between the second quarters of 2025 and 2027. Only about 49,000 reflect net job growth. The rest are largely positions that will open as workers retire, leave the labor force or move into other occupations.

Health care alone is projected to account for roughly half of the state’s gross job gains during that period. Construction, education, skilled maintenance and production will collectively need tens of thousands of replacement workers even where total employment grows slowly—or contracts.

That makes the expansion of career pathways particularly important in Greater Minnesota, where a shortage of nurses, teachers, technicians or skilled tradespeople can determine whether a hospital, school, manufacturer or construction project can continue serving the community.

The 10,000 Test

The ambition deserves credit. The headline number still requires scrutiny.

Klobuchar’s published plan promises 10,000 new “apprenticeship and skills training opportunities.” Those terms are not interchangeable. A registered apprenticeship comes with employment, structured learning, wage progression and enforceable standards. A skills-training opportunity could describe something much shorter—and much less connected to a job.

Specifics still need to be fleshed out on how many of the 10,000 opportunities would be registered apprenticeships, how quickly they would be created, what the expansion would cost or whether Minnesota would count available seats, enrolled participants or completed programs.

Those details will determine whether the plan produces economic mobility that working families so desperately need in the end.

Minnesota should measure completion, job placement, wages, benefits and worker retention as reforms are implemented and evaluated for success. Labor should have a meaningful role in establishing standards, especially as apprenticeships expand into new industries. And funding should follow credentials that workers can carry with them, not narrowly tailored training that benefits only one employer.

The Bottom Line

Minnesota does not need to choose between supporting four-year colleges and supporting apprenticeships. It needs to stop pretending that only one of them represents a valuable and reliable path to a good middle class job or career.

A four-year degree can be transformative. So can a registered apprenticeship that provides rigorous instruction, a recognized credential and a paycheck from the beginning. Technical colleges and shorter career programs can connect people directly to work their communities need.

Those pathways deserve more than occasional praise whenever employers face a shortage. They deserve the same seriousness, investment and expectations Minnesota attaches to a college degree.

Klobuchar’s plan recognizes that reality—and Minnesota already has much of the machinery needed to carry it out.

This summer, Minnesota Democrats took an important first step toward defining what they would do with governing power in 2027: they put affordability at the center of the agenda.

In July, Democratic leaders unveiled their Minnesota Values Project Policy Agenda 2027. The agenda begins where voters are living—inside household budgets squeezed by health care, child care, housing, groceries and energy. That is both substantively sound and politically smart.

Minnesotans do not experience affordability as an abstract inflation rate. They experience it when rent rises, a prescription becomes harder to afford, a child-care slot costs as much as a second mortgage or a rural hospital cuts services.

But identifying the problem is only the beginning. With the August primary behind us and the fall campaign underway, the next task for DFL legislative candidates is to turn an expansive catalog of worthwhile priorities into a short, credible and measurable contract with Minnesota voters.

**(Note - State Senator Liz Bolden, Co-Chair of the Minnesota Values Project, recently penned a BNB guest editorial discussing the MVP Policy Agenda which can be found HERE).**

What’s in the MVP Agenda

Released by House and Senate DFL lawmakers, the nine-page agenda is organized around three promises:

1. Making life more affordable

2. Keeping Minnesotans safe and protecting their rights

3. Building a fair society where everyone can get ahead.

Wisely, its affordability section is the strongest.

Among other items, it proposes:

• Expanding public health-care options

• Confronting prescription-drug costs and insurance denials

• Increasing housing construction

• Restricting abusive corporate practices in housing and grocery pricing

• Lowering utility burdens and building low- or no-cost child-care access.

The policy agenda also reaches beyond household costs to include:

• gun-safety measures

• reproductive-rights protections

• labor standards

• school investments

• infrastructure, protections against AI-related job displacement

• additional fraud-prevention resources.

The breadth of the agenda gives DFL candidates across Minnesota something to champion. Their next step is to explain which commitments are firm first-year priorities, which are longer-term ambitions and which could survive a closely divided or split Legislature.

The Real Affordability Divide (and Opportunity)

Republicans and Democrats alike have recognized the affordability angst facing Americans and are working to convince voters that the issue is their top priority.

The more revealing disagreement between the parties is over what is making life expensive—and therefore what government should do about it.

Minnesota Republicans have generally emphasized reducing taxes, fees and regulation. Their theory is that government itself is adding too much to the family bill. Democrats increasingly argue that families are being squeezed in markets they cannot avoid—health care, housing, energy, groceries and child care—and that concentrated corporate power and insufficient public investment require a public response.

There is room for both arguments to contain truth - families can be burdened by government-imposed costs while also being exploited by opaque pricing, excessive consolidation or a shortage of essential services.

The DFL’s political opportunity is to make its case concrete: identify the practice driving a cost upward, describe the policy that would change it and estimate what a typical family could save.

“Affordability” cannot become a label attached to every Democratic priority – it needs to function as a test.

A Statewide Agenda—If Candidates Localize It

The agenda also gives Democrats a chance to campaign as a genuinely statewide coalition.

Rural clinics, long-term care, manufactured housing, child-care shortages, beginning farmers, school staffing and infrastructure are not niche concerns. They determine whether urban, suburban, and Greater Minnesota communities alike can retain workers, support employers and give young families a reason to stay.

But statewide relevance will not emerge automatically from statewide language.

A candidate in Minneapolis may emphasize rent, transit and health-care access. A suburban candidate may focus on child care, housing supply and utility bills. A Greater Minnesota candidate may lead with rural hospitals, senior care, farm families and workforce housing.

While the best examples may be different in each community, the common thread should be the same: Democrats want to make the essentials of a stable life less expensive and more dependable.

Ambition Requires Discipline

The harder question will be whether Democrats can match ambition with governing credibility in voters’ eyes.

Minnesota’s February budget forecast projected a $3.7 billion balance for the current biennium and just $377 million for 2028–29, while warning that spending growth continues to outpace revenue growth and that a significant structural imbalance remains. The MVP Agenda does not attach price tags, revenue estimates or implementation schedules to its largest commitments.

That omission is understandable in a values document, but the more detail Democrats provide, the stronger their governing mandate will be.

Between now and November, DFL leaders and campaigns should answer three questions:

1. Which three or four proposals would receive first priority?

2. How would the largest commitments be funded without worsening the long-term imbalance?

3. What measurable results should voters use to judge whether the agenda worked?

Those measures could include child-care costs as a share of family income, housing units produced, prescription savings delivered, rural health facilities stabilized and utility charges eliminated.

Competent Government Is Part of the Promise—Face Fraud Head On

The agenda’s good-government and oversight priorities need greater weight. Minnesota has created a new statewide Office of Inspector General, and tougher Medicaid-fraud penalties took effect August 1. Those are meaningful steps, but they do not erase the damage that program-integrity failures have done to public confidence—or the need to show voters that the new safeguards will work.

Democrats cannot treat administrative competence and government oversight as a defensive concession to Republicans—it is a prerequisite for durable progressive government.

Public programs retain support when benefits reach the people they were designed to help, fraud is identified early and taxpayers can see results. Every major expansion should therefore include an implementation plan, independent oversight, transparent performance measures and clear lines of accountability.

That is not an obstacle to an ambitious agenda—it is how an ambitious agenda becomes reality.

Bottom Line

The Minnesota Values Project gets the biggest strategic judgment right: affordability should define both the DFL’s 2026 campaign and its governing agenda for 2027.

Now Democrats must hone the list, show their math, and tell Minnesotans exactly what will change in their daily lives.

A values statement explains what a party and its candidates believe—but a credible governing contract must explain what comes first, how it will work and how voters will know whether it was delivered.

I believe Democrats can deliver on these promises—so they must. And to do so, they must start by winning legislative majorities in November.

BNB Note:

While politics is often analyzed from the outside, BNB’s Guest Editorial Series aims to flip that perspective by highlighting the firsthand experiences of those working inside the political and policy arena. This includes lawmakers crafting and ushering legislation, candidates navigating the campaign trail, career civil servants implementing public programs, and political operatives shaping strategy behind the scenes.

The goal is not to litigate every claim or endorse every position, but to provide readers with direct insight into how decisions are made, how institutions function, and how power operates in practice.

Below, is a guest editorial from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Communications Director Courtney Rice.

The Midwest is the beating heart of America, especially its politics. And fittingly, Democrats’ road to winning the House majority this fall runs squarely through the country’s heartland.

We know voters’ top issue this election is the cost of living. For hardworking families across the country, everything has gotten more expensive – from gas and groceries, to health care and housing. Yet Republicans, after making grand promises to make life more affordable, have - at best - greenlit actions that have only caused costs to rise and - at worst - have mocked, downplayed, and dismissed voters’ concerns.

In 2024, President Trump came close to winning Minnesota (nearly breaking a 48-year Democratic winning streak at the presidential level) and swept the rest of the Midwest on the promise they would “lower costs on day one.” Now, more than 500 days into complete Republican control of Washington and costs are skyrocketing.

At every opportunity, D.C. Republicans have betrayed Midwesterners and sided with special interests. By voting for Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill, Republicans like Brad Finstad (MN-01) ripped away health care and food assistance from millions of Americans, all so they could pay for permanent tax cuts benefitting their billionaire donors. Republicans have lined up to support Trump’s price-hiking tariffs, which have jacked up the costs of everyday essentials ranging from groceries to cars. This all while the President wages a reckless foreign war which has sparked ever-rising gas prices – with Minnesota’s average fuel prices hitting upwards of $4.00 a gallon this past summer, and spikes in fertilizer and diesel prices making it even harder for farmers to stay in the black.

In the Midwest, in particular, voters feel the effects of Republicans’ betrayal profoundly. Farmers are struggling to stay afloat as tariffs spark increased production cost and cut farmers off from key markets. Factories that are the beating heart of many local economies are closing – despite Republicans claiming they’ll bring about a ‘golden age of manufacturing’. Rural health clinics are shuttering due to Republicans’ cruel health care cuts – in MN-01, whose largest employer is the Mayo Clinic and where nearly one quarter of workers are employed in health care and social services, these cuts are devastating local economies. For these reasons and more, there is an opening for Democrats to speak directly to voters’ concerns and win in areas that in recent elections have voted Republican.

Democratic House candidates are leading the way in doing just that by presenting an authentic, forward-looking vision that will address the affordability crisis hardworking families are facing, while being an independent-minded fighter for their district, not corporate bosses or billionaires.

Look no further than Jake Johnson running for Minnesota’s First Congressional District. Jake is running on those very issues that voters care about: bringing down costs, rooting out corruption in government, and investing in the small towns that make the Midwest the incredible place it is to live.

Jake is emblematic of the type of candidates that are stepping up to run for Congress this year. Jake grew up the son of a garbage collector and meter reader, and he – along with his 10 siblings – have worked hard to achieve the American Dream. He understands firsthand the struggles that hardworking Minnesota families are facing right now because he’s lived them himself. Having grown up in Stewartville and working for the past twenty years as a public school math teacher, he’s deeply rooted in his community. Jake’s commitment to southern Minnesota is exemplified in his 21-county tour across the district; his campaign is centered on showing up and listening to Minnesotans who feel left behind by a broken political system.

Compare that to Jake’s opponent, Congressman Brad Finstad, who represents the worst of Washington; instead of owning up to his terrible record in Congress, Finstad has refused to hold public town halls and instead says constituents who wanted him to hold a town hall were just throwing a “hissy fit.”Against his constituents’ interest, Finstad voted eight times to greenlight the President’s tariffs, and five times to continue the President’s war unchecked. And, without a hint of shame, Congressman Finstad recently claimed it was a misconception that Minnesota farmers would pay high diesel prices caused by the war.

Minnesota deserves better.

Because of high-quality candidates like Jake who are speaking to the issues that matter and are grounded in the communities they are running to represent, Democrats this cycle are competing in districts that in recent years have voted for Republicans. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which is the only political committee in the country whose principal mission is to elect Democrats to the House, has made it a priority to compete (and win!) in districts across the Midwest, like MN-01, and the country that other national Democrats have overlooked in recent elections.

This is personal for me. When Democrats stop investing and organizing in communities because we think “we can’t compete,” we lose entire swaths of the country. Take it from me, an Ohio native, who watched her state slide from swing-state status to one dominated by corrupt Republicans who care more about holding power than good governance. It’s why the DCCC is investing and organizing in districts in every part of the country, and especially in the Midwest. In Ohio alone, we’re competing in three Republican-held districts as prime flip opportunities this November. In fact, if we sweep our competitive races in the Buckeye State, Democrats would hold a majority of congressional seats in what is (incorrectly, I think) considered a ‘red state.’

America’s heartland is the birthplace of populist politics. From Minnesota to Ohio and everywhere in between, hardworking Midwesterners banded together to put everyday Americans first. Democrats can re-earn the support of heartland voters who feel their voices are not being represented in Washington – we need to be willing to look beyond conventional wisdom and communicate with voters in every corner of the country. The Midwest deserves honest and hardworking representatives in D.C., and Democrats are going to deliver.

Big Picture

The Minnesota State Fair is officially underway.

That means 12 days of livestock, crop art, politicians pretending they enjoy being photographed while eating and Minnesotans voluntarily waiting 45 minutes to purchase something that has been battered, deep-fried and placed on a stick.

But the Great Minnesota Get-Together also arrives at an unusually appropriate moment in Minnesota politics. The primaries are over. The general election is beginning. And after months of endorsements, debates, conventions and campaign advertisements, Minnesota voters are finally getting a clearer sense of what each candidate is serving.

So Blue North Beacon decided to answer the obvious question: If Minnesota’s major political candidates were State Fair foods, what would they be?

Our selections were determined through an exhaustive methodology involving political analysis, culinary judgment and absolutely no peer review.

Amy Klobuchar: Sweet Martha’s Cookies

There was really no other choice. Sweet Martha’s isn’t the newest or flashiest thing at the Fair. Nobody walks onto the fairgrounds wondering whether people have heard of it.

It is simply an institution. That can be said of Klobuchar as well. For the last twenty years, she has been the highest profile institution in Minnesota politics and produced meaningful legislation at the clip that Martha’s pumps out cookies.

Klobuchar entered the governor’s race with near-universal name recognition, enormous institutional support and an electoral track record that would make most Minnesota politicians jealous.

And like Sweet Martha’s, her greatest political advantage may simply be that an enormous number of Minnesotans already know exactly what they’re getting.

Critics can complain that there are newer and more interesting things available. Then somebody walks past carrying the bucket – and you want one (or four) anyway.

Lisa Demuth: The Pronto Pup

Traditional. Straightforward. Reliably conservative. But not quite the same thing as the corn dog next door.

That feels appropriate for Demuth.

The House speaker emerged from a Republican primary containing a Trump-endorsed Mike Lindell and GOP-endorsed Kendall Qualls by offering Republican voters something recognizably conservative without necessarily offering the most MAGA version available. That distinction could become her entire general-election challenge.

Demuth needs Republican voters to recognize that she’s one of them while persuading swing voters that there is a meaningful difference between her and the national Republican brand.

Which brings us back to the eternal Minnesota State Fair question: What’s actually the difference between a Pronto Pup and a corn dog?

Demuth may spend the next two months trying to convince voters the distinction matters.

Peggy Flanagan: The Apple Donut Ham Grinder

You recognize most of the ingredients but you probably haven’t seen them put together quite like this.

The Apple Donut Ham Grinder takes Minnesota-grown apples, batters and deep-fries them like donuts, then stacks them with ham, arugula, hot honey and whipped ricotta on a hoagie roll. Which, strangely enough, isn’t a bad metaphor for Peggy Flanagan’s candidacy.

Flanagan isn’t running away from the DFL tradition. She’s arguing that familiar ingredients can be assembled into a different version of it - more progressive, more diverse and more explicitly rooted in the coalition that increasingly defines the party’s activist base.

There are also recognizable pieces of the old DFL recipe: labor, working families and an economic populism that would sound familiar to generations of Minnesota Democrats. Flanagan has combined them with a newer progressive politics - and a coalition of progressives, labor, younger voters and traditional DFL constituencies - that may look unconventional on the ingredient list but has an internal logic once assembled.

Sweet, savory, spicy, creamy: the primary demonstrated that Flanagan could turn disparate ingredients into a winning coalition. The result isn’t exactly traditional State Fair fare. But that’s the point.

Flanagan’s argument in the primary was essentially that Minnesota Democrats didn’t need to abandon the DFL recipe. They needed to update it. And voters ordered it.

Now comes the bigger test: It worked at the DFL table but will the rest of Minnesota want a bite in November?

Michele Tafoya: Deep-Fried Ranch Dressing

You probably had a reaction just reading those words.

Deep-fried ranch dressing debuted at the State Fair as exactly the kind of food the Great Minnesota Get-Together does best: bold, attention-grabbing and virtually guaranteed to make people immediately declare themselves either intrigued or appalled.

There aren’t many neutral reactions and that feels about right for Michele Tafoya.

Tafoya enters the general election with something most first-time candidates would desperately want: people already know who she is. Years as one of the country’s most recognizable sports broadcasters gave her a public profile that most political newcomers spend millions trying to manufacture.

But high name recognition comes with a catch – people may already have opinions.

Since leaving the sidelines, Tafoya has developed a decidedly conservative public persona — weighing in on politics, culture and some of the country’s most divisive political debates. Now, as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, she has to determine whether that visibility is an electoral asset or a ceiling.

Because Tafoya’s challenge isn’t getting Minnesotans to notice her, they’ve noticed. It isn’t even getting people to talk about her, they’re talking. Her challenge is persuading enough of the people who took one look and decided “not for me” to reconsider.

Deep-fried ranch dressing understands the problem.

Keith Ellison: Cheese Curds

A Minnesota staple. Loved passionately by its constituency. Viewed considerably less enthusiastically by some people outside it. And after all these years, still drawing a crowd.

Keith Ellison has been a fixture of Minnesota DFL politics for two decades - from the Legislature to Congress to the Attorney General’s Office - and remains one of the most recognizable progressive politicians in the state.

Republicans have spent years trying to make him politically indigestible, Minnesota voters keep ordering another basket.

That durability matters. Ellison has survived millions in negative advertising, close elections, and repeated Republican efforts to turn his political profile into a liability.

And yet, election after election, the cheese curds remain on the menu.

Steve Simon: All-You-Can-Drink Milk

Reliable. Inexpensive. Not particularly flashy. And that’s pretty much the point.

Secretary of State Steve Simon has spent more than a decade overseeing Minnesota elections while maintaining one of the decidedly less theatrical political brands in a state increasingly filled with theatrical politicians.

You don’t hear much about him when everything is working. Then election season arrives, conspiracy theories start circulating and suddenly everyone remembers why the booth is there.

Simon has built his political identity around essentially the same proposition as the State Fair’s all-you-can-drink milk stand: It isn’t new. It isn’t flashy. Nobody is going to put it on a list of the Fair’s craziest attractions. It just reliably does what it says on the sign.

Tim Walz: Turkey Leg

Big. Messy. Impossible to consume gracefully. And after eight years, undeniably part of the scenery.

Walz isn’t on the ballot anymore, but he remains unavoidable in the campaign to succeed him.

Klobuchar will inherit questions about the DFL’s record. Demuth will try to make the election a referendum on it. Fraud, spending, taxes, mining and the legacy of the Walz years will all remain on the menu.

So while the governor may be leaving, the turkey leg is still sitting on the table.

Angie Craig: Cheese-on-a-Stick

Familiar. Substantial. Dependable. And perhaps overshadowed this year by something newer on the menu.

Craig entered the Senate primary with many of the ingredients that ordinarily make for a formidable statewide candidate: a competitive-district electoral record, strong fundraising, significant labor support and a political brand built around winning voters Democrats sometimes struggle to reach.

Then Peggy Flanagan won the nomination.

But losing one contest doesn’t suddenly make Craig politically irrelevant. She remains a member of Congress from one of Minnesota’s most consequential swing districts and a leading voice for the more moderate, suburban and labor-oriented wing of the DFL.

Sometimes the new food gets all the attention.

That doesn’t mean people stopped liking cheese on a stick.

Mike Lindell: Deep-Fried Twinkie

You know exactly what you’re getting. It’s loud. It’s excessive. It isn’t pretending to be good for you. And nobody has ever encountered one and thought: I wonder what the subtle version of this would be.

That’s Mike Lindell.

The MyPillow founder entered the governor’s race with Donald Trump’s endorsement, enormous name recognition and perhaps the most unmistakable political persona of anyone on Minnesota’s ballot. There was no triangulation. No careful repositioning. No attempt to become something more digestible for a broader audience.

Lindell offered Republican voters the full thing. They took a bite and decided to order something else.

Tina Smith: Fresh-Squeezed Lemonade

Not everything at the State Fair needs to be deep-fried, covered in hot honey or engineered to go viral. Sometimes you just want a good lemonade.

That’s Tina Smith.

Smith arrived in the U.S. Senate under unusual circumstances, appointed to replace Al Franken before winning the seat twice in her own right. She never became Minnesota’s loudest politician. She didn’t seem particularly interested in trying.

Instead, Smith built a reputation as a thoughtful, progressive, and pragmatic legislator with a particular focus on health care, mental health, reproductive rights, rural communities and the economic issues affecting working families. In an era of politics increasingly designed to generate attention, there was something refreshing about a senator who often seemed more interested in doing the work than getting credit for it.

Now, after choosing not to seek another term, Smith is preparing to leave the Senate. And perhaps that’s when you appreciate the lemonade most.

It wasn’t the flashiest thing at the Fair. It wasn’t supposed to be. Minnesota was simply lucky to have it (and her) while it was here.

Bottom Line

State Fair foods and political candidates ultimately confront the same unforgiving test.

You can have terrific marketing. You can generate enormous buzz. You can convince people to stand in line. You can even get everyone talking about you.

Eventually, somebody has to take a bite. Minnesota voters get their turn in November.

Minnesota’s first post-primary poll contains good news for Democrats—and a warning they should not ignore.

KSTP/SurveyUSA shows Amy Klobuchar leading Lisa Demuth 52% to 36% in the governor’s race. The Senate contest is closer, with Peggy Flanagan leading Michele Tafoya 46% to 41%. It is one early survey rather than an election forecast, but its issue findings are unmistakable: 35% of voters identify inflation and the cost of living as Minnesota’s most important issue, more than twice the share selecting fraud and more than three times the share choosing health care.

Minnesota’s general election will be an affordability election — and winning it will require more than simply promising to “lower costs.”

The candidates are offering fundamentally different explanations for why life has become expensive. Democrats emphasize housing shortages, medical and child-care expenses, inadequate wages and concentrated corporate power. Republicans emphasize taxes, regulation, government spending and fraud.

Each diagnosis contains some truth. Neither should escape a governing test.

Every affordability proposal should answer five questions:

1. Who saves—and how much?

2. What does the proposal cost, and who pays?

3. Does the office being sought possess the authority to deliver it?

4. When would families notice a difference?

5. How will Minnesotans determine whether it worked?

Measured against that standard, of the four major statewide candidates only Senator Klobuchar has come close to presenting a complete affordability contract to voters.

The preliminary scorecard

Amy Klobuchar: Most specific policy plans involving health premiums, housing and rural development that have been announced to date. Plans address costs, financing and the state’s role for the most part.

Lisa Demuth: Proposing easily understood tax and fee reductions. The complete revenue cost, distribution of benefits and corresponding spending tradeoffs remain unidentified.

Peggy Flanagan: A clear working-family theory centered on wages, benefits and corporate accountability. Many proposals require congressional majorities, and her administrative record remains tied to the Walz administration.

Michele Tafoya: A recognizable tax-cutting and deregulatory philosophy. Her agenda is the least Minnesota-specific, and her support for Trump’s trade and Iran policies complicates her affordability message.

Families experience costs—not economic abstractions

It cannot be said enough — Minnesotans do not experience affordability through a monthly economic report. They experience it when rent is due, a child-care bill arrives or an insurance premium increases.

Minnesota Housing estimates that the state will need 182,000 new homes through 2035. Only 24% of renter households earning no more than 30% of their area’s median income occupy housing they can afford. The agency also estimated that the monthly payment on a median-priced Minnesota home increased from approximately $2,500 in 2021 to $3,200 in 2024 as prices and borrowing costs rose.

Child care presents an equally difficult equation. Child Care Aware estimates that care for an infant and a preschooler consumes approximately 26% of the median income of a Minnesota married-couple family—more than its typical mortgage or rent burden. Providers simultaneously face labor, insurance, food and facility costs that make substantially lower prices difficult without public support or structural change.

Health-insurance costs are also increasing. After enhanced federal premium tax credits expired, MNsure materials showed average individual-market rate increases of approximately 21% for 2026, with increases varying substantially by plan. Separate MNsure projections cited by Minnesota reporting estimated that approximately 89,000 residents could experience net premium increases around 50% because they lost enhanced assistance as well as confronting higher underlying rates.

These are distinct problems. A tax reduction might improve a family’s balance sheet, but it does not create a child-care opening or starter home. A subsidy can provide immediate relief, but it may leave the underlying price structure intact.

A serious agenda must help families now while confronting the systems producing the costs.

Democrats focus on targeted regulatory relief, labor protections, and public investment

Klobuchar’s gubernatorial agenda combines direct assistance with efforts to expand supply.

She has proposed a state tax credit targeted toward farmers, self-employed workers and small-business owners facing higher individual-market health premiums if Congress does not restore enhanced federal assistance. Her housing agenda seeks to put Minnesota on a path toward producing 100,000 homes, including through a rural housing loan fund, tax credits, infrastructure assistance and regulatory changes. She has also emphasized child-care access, rural health care and workforce development.

This approach begins with expenses families actually pay. It also recognizes that Greater Minnesota’s affordability problems include housing for workers, medical access and too few child-care providers—not simply income-tax rates.

But some important questions remain to be resolved. The premium credit does not yet have a complete public cost or detailed eligibility rules. The housing pledge is a statewide production goal, not a promise that state government would directly build 100,000 homes. Its success will depend on private developers, local governments, interest rates, construction costs and legislative cooperation.

Klobuchar has suggested that a top-to-bottom state audit could identify savings to help finance premium relief. An audit is worthwhile buts savings should not be spent on paper before they are found.

Flanagan offers a more explicitly populist affordability theory. She supports a $17 federal minimum wage indexed to inflation, stronger labor protections, expanded health-care access, housing investment and tighter constraints on corporate power. Her argument is that families are struggling because wages have not kept pace while concentrated economic power allows corporations to raise prices, suppress competition and weaken worker security.

That analysis gives Democrats a compelling working-family message, but Flanagan must distinguish what she could accomplish as one senator from what she supports as a national goal. She also cannot separate public investment from administration. As lieutenant governor, fairly or unfairly, she will likely share the political consequences of Minnesota’s program-integrity failures even when she did not directly manage the agencies involved.

Both Democrats regularly link higher Minnesota costs to Trump administration tariffs and the Iran war.

It is important for Democrats to also remember that fraud belongs inside the affordability debate because it diverts resources intended for families, weakens support for useful programs and creates pressure for indiscriminate cuts. Progressive government earns public confidence only when benefits reach the people they were designed to serve.

Republicans offer sexy slogans of “tax relief and smaller government” but insufficient details

Demuth begins from a different premise: Minnesota government is itself making life more expensive.

She has proposed reducing the state’s two lowest income-tax brackets, reversing vehicle-registration fee increases and eliminating the remaining state taxation of Social Security benefits. She also connects affordability to lower spending, reduced regulation and fraud prevention.

These ideas are straightforward. But Demuth has not published a complete fiscal estimate for the agenda nor has she identified the programs, services or positions she would reduce to offset permanent revenue losses.

Tax reductions can increase disposable income. They do not automatically resolve shortages of homes, doctors or child-care providers. If Demuth believes regulation is restricting supply, she should identify which rules she would change, how prices would fall and which protections would remain.

Tafoya similarly emphasizes federal tax reductions, deregulation and preserving major elements of Trump’s economic program. She argues that trade conflicts will eventually produce better agreements and that high Minnesota taxes and fraud contribute to economic pressure. Her record creates a difficult tradeoff to explain. Tafoya supports the Iran war despite the absence of a defined exit strategy. Fighting that disrupted petroleum shipments through the Strait of Hormuz contributed substantially to higher crude-oil and gasoline prices.

Tafoya previously advised consumers strained by fuel prices to consider one fewer trip to Starbucks and accept temporary sacrifice. That is not logically inconsistent with supporting the war, but it reveals who she expects to absorb its economic costs.

Minnesotans are entitled to demand a fuller answer than personal belt-tightening.

Minnesota cannot finance promises with imaginary money

Every candidate must confront the state’s fiscal outlook.

Minnesota Management and Budget projects a $3.7 billion balance for fiscal years 2026–27. Under current-law planning assumptions, the remaining balance falls to $377 million in 2028–29 because ongoing spending is projected to grow faster than revenue. The estimate is uncertain and does not mean Minnesota faces an immediate deficit, but it does reveal a structural problem that the next governor and Legislature must address.

That constraint applies equally to both parties.

Democrats cannot assume that audits, economic growth or future taxes will effortlessly finance every credit and public investment. Republicans cannot claim that fraud recovery and unidentified spending reductions will finance permanent tax cuts.

New programs require funding. Permanent tax cuts require offsets. Regulations should demonstrate benefits that justify their costs. Deregulation should identify the consumer, worker or environmental protections that would be affected.

That is what competent government looks like before an election.

Bottom Line

Minnesota does not need artificial symmetry between every proposal. It needs candidates that can articulate what competent government looks like before an election that can then demonstrate that competence afterwards.

Candidates should prioritize policies most likely to reduce essential costs while preserving fiscal stability:

• Expand housing and child-care supply in metropolitan and Greater Minnesota communities.

• Provide targeted health-premium relief while confronting underlying medical and insurance costs.

• Protect wages, paid leave and labor standards that strengthen household security.

• Remove permitting and regulatory barriers that demonstrably restrict useful production without sacrificing essential protections.

• Attach cost estimates, performance measures and anti-fraud controls to major public investments.

• Reject permanent tax reductions that lack identified offsets or deliver their largest benefits to households least affected by the affordability crisis.

Democrats and Republicans will continue disagreeing about the proper size and role of government. But neither should be allowed to substitute philosophy for arithmetic.

Minnesota voters deserve to know who benefits, what each promise costs, when relief arrives and how success will be measured.

The candidates who provide those answers will offer more than an affordability message, they will offer an affordability contract — and win in November.

BNB Note:

While politics is often analyzed from the outside, BNB’s Guest Editorial Series aims to flip that perspective by highlighting the firsthand experiences of those working inside the political and policy arena. This includes lawmakers crafting and ushering legislation, candidates navigating the campaign trail, career civil servants implementing public programs, and political operatives shaping strategy behind the scenes.

The goal is not to litigate every claim or endorse every position, but to provide readers with direct insight into how decisions are made, how institutions function, and how power operates in practice.

Below, is a guest editorial from Phill Drobnick. Drobnick is an Iron Range native, community leader, and currently serves as USA Curling’s Director of Coaching and Competitions. A four-time Olympic coach, Drobnick helped lead the U.S. men’s curling team to its historic gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

I’ve spent enough time around competition to know something simple: when you’re losing, you don’t blame the scoreboard. You figure out what you’re doing wrong. Minnesota Democrats should take that lesson to heart when it comes to the Iron Range.

For generations, working families across northeastern Minnesota were the backbone of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Miners, union members, teachers and small-business owners believed Democrats understood that a good job could hold together a family, a school and an entire town.

Many of those voters no longer believe that.

The question Democrats in Minneapolis and St. Paul should be asking isn’t, “What happened to the Iron Range?” It’s, “Why did people who voted for us for generations stop believing we were listening?”

This year offers an opportunity to change that.

The Range is telling us what it needs. Communities want good paying jobs. They want strong unions. They want schools with enough students and resources to thrive. They want young people to have a reason to stay rather than leave home looking for opportunity somewhere else.

Mining remains part of that equation. Iron Range communities know mining employment is directly connected to local businesses, municipal services and public schools. Organized labor has also made clear that new mineral development can mean family-supporting union careers.

That doesn’t mean abandoning environmental protection. It means trusting science.

Minnesota can protect its water, forests and outdoor heritage while giving proposed mining projects a fair, rigorous scientific review. A permit is not a blank check. If a project cannot meet tough environmental standards, it shouldn’t be built. But if engineers, scientists and regulators determine that a mine can operate responsibly, Democrats should be willing to say yes.

That used to be a pretty Democratic idea: trust science, protect workers and build things in America.

There are legitimate environmental concerns surrounding copper-nickel mining, and they deserve serious consideration. But Minnesota also has some of the strongest environmental standards and most experienced regulators in the country. If our state’s regulators, applying those rigorous standards, determine that a project can be developed safely and responsibly, then we as Democrats should trust the science, trust the scientists and respect their conclusions.

And that brings me to Governor Walz’s executive order regarding mining in the Boundary Waters watershed. I strongly oppose using executive authority in this way. Decisions this consequential should be made through Minnesota’s established legislative, scientific and regulatory processes not by executive order.

We also shouldn’t stop at the science. Our review process will only protect Minnesota if the standards that come out of that process are enforceable. A rigorous review means little if the requirements attached to a permit cannot be effectively monitored and enforced.

Our review process is only as valuable as the enforcement that follows.

I understand that even a low-probability failure could result in extraordinarily high consequences for the Boundary Waters watershed. That is precisely why the state should focus on enforcing rigorous standards and preparing for the worst-case scenario. That includes strong financial assurance requirements sufficient to address cleanup or remediation if the worst were ever to happen. We can acknowledge the potentially devastating consequences of a failure without abandoning a fair, science-based process.

Simply telling communities that depend on natural-resource jobs what they cannot do is not an economic strategy. Democrats have an opening this year to rebuild a coalition that once connected Minneapolis, Duluth, the Iron Range and working people across Minnesota.

Start by listening. Stand with organized labor. Invest in rural schools. Fight for good jobs. Demand world-class environmental standards. Make those standards enforceable. Hold projects accountable after permits are issued. And trust science enough to follow it wherever it leads.

The Iron Range hasn’t stopped caring about working families. Democrats need to show the Iron Range that they haven’t either.

Governor Tim Walz presented Executive Order 26-10 as an act of environmental courage. Politically, it exposes a fracture Minnesota Democrats have spent years trying to manage.

The party’s coalition includes metropolitan environmental activists who want copper-nickel mining stopped before review begins, northern communities seeking high-wage industrial opportunity, labor allies whose members build and operate mines, and statewide voters who expect the Boundary Waters to remain protected.

Walz’s order does not reconcile those interests; it chooses one faction’s preferred method—a top-down halt—and leaves the rest to defend it. That split is neither hypothetical nor abstract as evidenced by the immediate pushback from local legislators and Labor allies - (including LiUNA, Minnesota AFL-CIO, MN Pipe Trades, IUOE Local 49, Teamsters Joint Council 32, and the Minnesota Building Trades, among others).

These are longtime Democratic allies whose organizing strength and political support have helped sustain the party. Their objection is about more than one mine: it is about whether projects promised a rigorous, science-based review can instead be stopped by executive action before the evidence is assembled.

This presents Democrats with two tests they cannot easily dodge.

1. If they mean “trust the science,” they must explain why Minnesota’s scientists should not finish the review.

2. If they mean what they say about standing with labor, they must explain why workers were asked to absorb the consequences of a decision they had no meaningful role in making.

What Executive Order 26-10 Actually Does

The Executive Order directs DNR and MPCA to stop environmental review and permitting work on nonferrous mining proposals in the Rainy River Headwaters Watershed until litigation over the state’s mine-siting rule and related rulemaking are finally complete. DNR must also withdraw from cooperative participation in federal environmental review, stop offering new state mineral and surface leases, review existing leases for strict compliance and prepare legislation for a permanent ban.

Calling this merely a pause understates it. The combined effect is to strand proposals indefinitely while building a path to prohibition. Importantly, there is a serious question as to whether this is a legally durable path.

Process Matters

There is a respectable case for maximum protection of the Boundary Waters. It is an irreplaceable wilderness and an economic engine for outfitters, resorts and communities. Moreover, treaty rights and downstream resources demand care. But none of that answers the institutional question Walz has created: Why should Minnesota fear its own environmental review process?

A rigorous review does not approve a mine – it asks whether the mine can comply. It develops baseline data, tests water models, examines tailings and waste-rock management, evaluates alternatives, quantifies cumulative effects, establishes monitoring and forces the applicant’s claims into a public record. Permitting then adds enforceable limits, financial assurance and the possibility of denial.

Environmental advocates should want that record. State officials should want Minnesota scientists at the federal table. By ordering DNR not to cooperate in federal review, Walz gives up influence while claiming to protect it.

The Hauschild Challenge (aka DFL Senate majority)

State Senator Grant Hauschild does not have the luxury of ambiguity. He represents mining communities and won as a DFLer in territory where his party’s brand has deteriorated.

To his credit, Hauschild promptly said he strongly disagreed with the order, argued that a decision this significant should not be made by a governor leaving office in months, and noted that no mining ban had moved through the Legislature during his four years in the Senate.

He is right to focus on method. Northern Minnesotans have heard promises that their voices matter; the order tells them the decisive conversation will occur inside the executive branch. Hauschild’s predicament is the party’s predicament. Democrats need candidates who can compete outside the Twin Cities, yet statewide leaders repeatedly place those candidates between their districts and the party’s activist base.

A senator can defend strong standards. He can defend a project denial based on evidence. It is much harder to defend refusing to collect the evidence.

Walz’s order makes every DFL candidate (especially those on the Range) answer for a process they did not design and a permanent ban they were never allowed to vote on.

The Economic Stakes

The economic stakes explain why process matters. Twin Metals projects more than 750 direct permanent jobs and 1,500 spinoff jobs. Those figures come from the company, certainly should not be taken as gospel, and deserve independent testing. So do claims about the project’s tax base, mineral royalties, construction activity and local purchasing.

Yet these are not abstract numbers in Ely or across the Iron Range. Mining positions pay wages that sustain families, schools and small businesses. Copper, nickel and cobalt are essential to electrification, computing infrastructure and defense. A party that wants more clean energy and domestic supply-chain resilience should be able to say where the materials will come from.

Mining opponents counter that the Boundary Waters supports a nearly $1 billion outdoor recreation economy and that contamination could damage livelihoods that already exist. That claim also deserves serious analysis. The right answer is a transparent comparison of risks, benefits, mitigations and alternatives—not dueling press releases followed by an executive veto.

A credible review may determine the location is unsuitable. If so, the record should demonstrate why. Evidence-based denial is stronger, more durable and more legitimate than a decision designed to avoid reaching a decision.

The Authority Question

Walz’s legal footing is not unlimited. He controls executive agencies and likely has broad discretion over their priorities and the leasing of state property. Minnesota Statutes section 4.035 sets the mechanics for executive orders and provides that this order will generally expire 90 days after Walz leaves office.

But the statute does not itself create substantive power. An executive order must rest on constitutional or statutory authority, and Walz’s order cites only authority in general terms.

A governor may supervise the execution of law; he may not amend the Legislature’s policy by announcement. Whether a categorical refusal to perform permitting work conflicts with statutory agency duties is exactly the sort of question a court will likely be asked to resolve.

Why Now?

The order’s timing invites another question Democrats will struggle to answer.

Walz took office in 2019, the year Twin Metals submitted its mine plan. The litigation cited in the order has been pending since 2020. DNR’s review of the siting rule has unfolded for years. If a freeze was essential, why did it become essential only after Congress overturned the federal withdrawal in 2026 and near the end of Walz’s governorship?

The environmental facts did not change recently, but the federal politics did. That may make the order look more retaliatory than deliberative.

Democrats can still choose another path. For example, Klobuchar can defend the Boundary Waters while insisting on competent review. Hauschild should continue pressing for a legislative debate and a recorded vote.

DNR and MPCA should be allowed to assemble the scientific record, with tribal consultation and public scrutiny, and deny any proposal that fails Minnesota standards. Lawmakers can separately debate whether to enact a permanent watershed prohibition. Those positions recognize both the sensitivity of the place and the legitimacy of democratic institutions.

Bottom Line

Walz may win applause from some corners for his order. However, based on responses from many longtime Democratic stalwart organizations, he is getting as much pushback from within the party as praise.

Beneath it all Walz has made trust the real issue: trust in regulators, trust in science, trust in legislators and trust that Democrats mean what they say about commitments to Labor and checks on executive power.

A party cannot rebuild its standing (much less fight for) Northern Minnesota (much less all of Minnesota) by telling its communities that their jobs are negotiable but its conclusions are not.

By now, plenty of people have watched Mayor Frey’s enthusiastic, albeit somewhat stiff, dance performance at the Black Entrepreneur State Fair. Frey does not seem to have mistaken himself for a gifted dancer, nor does it appear as if he’s headed to Dancing with the Stars after leaving City Hall.

In that exchange, he simply accepted his constituent’s invitation, joined the celebration and risked looking like a goof in public—which is exactly what happened. There is something endearing about that, but there is also something instructive in it.

Frey’s dancing and his proposed 2027 budget have almost nothing to do with each other as matters of policy. But they both reveal the invaluable characteristics of Mayor Frey’s leadership: a willingness to enter uncomfortable territory, to participate rather than watch from a safe distance, and to absorb ridicule without retreating into the cautious choreography that governs so many other figures in public life.

The stakes of the budget, of course, are vastly higher. Frey is proposing an 11.3% property-tax levy increase, the elimination of around 100 city positions and more than $20 million in spending reductions. For the owner of a median-value home, the increase would amount to approximately $409 a year. None of that is funny, and none of it should be minimized.

But there were easier ways for the Mayor to present this budget. They would have required optimistic assumptions, predictable expenses left conspicuously underfunded, permanent programs supported with temporary money, or difficult decisions postponed until another year. To his credit, Frey instead chose to put more of the city’s real bill in front of residents now.

His proposal deserves support not because every provision is beyond debate, but because it replaces fiscal wishful thinking with an honest account of what Minneapolis’ core services cost—and asks elected leaders to make the difficult choices that account requires.

An Honest Budget That Admits What Things Cost

In his budget address, Mayor Frey described a budget problem exceeding $60 million. Roughly $33 million is needed to fully fund existing services, with more than $30 million in additional pressures across departments. Inflation, higher labor and operating costs, the expiration of one-time federal pandemic relief and falling downtown commercial property values have all contributed.

Those declining commercial values matter beyond downtown. When office buildings account for a smaller share of the tax base, homeowners inevitably shoulder more of the burden. An 11.3% levy increase will therefore land at a moment when many residents already feel squeezed by housing, food, insurance and utility costs.

That is the proposal’s hardest fact—and the reason its supporters should resist describing it as painless or merely technical. An additional $34 a month is real money for a working family.

But the relevant comparison is not between Frey’s proposal and a city that delivers the same services without collecting additional revenue. That option does not exist. The administration says that without spending reductions and the correction of chronically imbalanced budgets, Minneapolis would need a levy increase exceeding 19%.

Frey’s proposed $2.3 billion budget, including $753 million in General Fund expenditures, attempts to split the difference between two irresponsible poles: taxing residents as though every existing commitment must remain untouched, or cutting as though the city can abandon its basic obligations without consequence. The proposal raises substantial revenue while reducing spending by more than $20 million through program and contract reductions, operating consolidations and the elimination of roughly 100 positions across the City enterprise.

Notably, the Mayor stated that eliminating roughly 100 positions does not necessarily mean 100 layoffs; vacancies, departures and planned retirements could absorb some reductions. But current employees and city services may still be affected, and the council should scrutinize those consequences closely.

Underbudgeting is NOT Saving

The most controversial piece of Frey’s fiscal argument is the Minneapolis Police Department’s overtime budget. His proposal adds $13.1 million to align the overtime line with the costs the city expects to incur, along with $4.3 million for police recruitment and $3.1 million for external contracts.

Critics have an obvious response: MPD has repeatedly overspent, and increasing its budget can look like rewarding weak management. They are right to demand better controls. However, underbudgeting police overtime does not reduce police overtime. It merely obscures the cost until the bill arrives.

Minneapolis cannot responsibly pretend that officers will stop answering emergency calls or conducting necessary investigations when an artificially low overtime line is exhausted. But recognizing the likely expense must come with enforceable controls, transparent authorization practices and measurable plans to reduce overtime dependence (as noted by Mayor Frey in his address). If the expense is recurring and reasonably foreseeable, it belongs in the adopted budget, where residents and council members can see it and hold the department accountable for it.

Honest budgeting and rigorous oversight are not competing principles. Minneapolis needs both. Putting the real number on the page is the beginning of accountability, not the end of it.

What the Budget Proposal Protects

This is not an austerity budget masquerading as reform. Even while proposing cuts, Frey maintains investments that matter to a progressive city.

The plan would bring total 2027 funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to $15.5 million, provide $1.5 million through Minneapolis HOMES to expand affordable homeownership and continue Stable Homes Stable Schools. It also maintains $25 million for downtown vitality, small businesses and cultural and commercial districts.

Those choices matter because fiscal discipline should not become an excuse to withdraw from the city’s future. Housing affordability, commercial corridors, downtown recovery and public safety are not separate challenges. They reinforce one another. A city that cannot reliably provide services will struggle to attract residents and investment; a city that becomes unaffordable will lose the people whose work and community ties make recovery possible.

The best case for Frey’s proposal is therefore not that Minneapolis should expect less from government. It is that residents can expect more only when government distinguishes durable investment from temporary experimentation and pays honestly for the commitments it intends to keep.

Leadership & the Courage to Disappoint

Political courage is an overused phrase, often awarded to elected officials simply for doing something their supporters already wanted. This budget presents a more credible test - Frey is asking property owners to pay more while asking departments and employees to operate with less.

“Fiscal conservatives” will attack the levy increase. “Progressives” will attack program and staffing cuts. Police critics will condemn the overtime allocation, while police supporters will object that rebuilding remains too slow. There is no large constituency organized around the proposition that its taxes should rise and its preferred program should be examined more closely - but that may still be what’s best for the City.

Elected leaders reveal themselves partly through the discomfort they are willing to accept when leadership requires it. Frey could have produced a document engineered to generate friendlier headlines and left the next shortfall to the next budget cycle. Instead, he proposed visible taxes, identifiable cuts and more realistic baselines.

Again, that approach does not guarantee every judgment is above reproach or without pain, but it does demonstrate the courage and willingness to be judged on the real choices.

Bottom Line

A budget is a statement of values, but it is also an operating plan. If the numbers depend on services costing less than everyone knows they will cost, the values printed beside them do not matter much.

Minneapolis does not need its mayor’s dance moves to improve. What it needs is elected leaders willing to risk an awkward moment, an angry constituency and an ugly headline in order to tell residents the truth — Mayor Frey’s budget proposal does that admirably.

At the Black Entrepreneur State Fair, Frey stepped onto the dance floor knowing—or at least learning quickly—that he could not control how he would look. In the budget debate, he has done something more consequential: surrendered control of the political optics in order to put the city’s real choices on the table.

The City Council should avoid the temptation to engage in political grandstanding and work to improve Frey’s proposal where it can. They can change the steps, but they should not dance around the central truth: Minneapolis cannot sustain core services by underbudgeting predictable costs and postponing difficult choices.

Whatever final version of the budget emerges should preserve the honesty, discipline and political courage at the core of Mayor Frey’s proposal.

BNB Note:

While politics is often analyzed from the outside, BNB’s Guest Editorial Series aims to flip that perspective by highlighting the firsthand experiences of those working inside the political and policy arena. This includes lawmakers crafting and ushering legislation, candidates navigating the campaign trail, career civil servants implementing public programs, and political operatives shaping strategy behind the scenes.

The goal is not to litigate every claim or endorse every position, but to provide readers with direct insight into how decisions are made, how institutions function, and how power operates in practice.

Below, is a guest editorial from State Senator Liz Boldon (SD25). Senator Boldon serves as the Co-Chair of the Minnesota Values Project (MVP) which recently announced its 2027 policy agenda. The MVP 2027 policy agenda can be found HERE.

It’s more clear than ever that corporations and ultra-rich billionaires have rigged the system. They collude with the federal government to move wealth from the bottom to the top through tax breaks, private contracts, and cuts to programs that hurt the rest of us. At the same time, they’re accumulating monopolisitc power over our economy, hoarding our resources, suppressing wages, polluting our neighborhoods, and destroying our laws that prevent corruption. It’s not a free market anymore; it’s their market. this crisis not only undermines our democracy, but it’s making it harder and harder for working class Americans to survive day-to-day life. The rich get richer, and the rest of us are left fighting for the scraps. Cost of the essentials continue to rise as corporate greed eats away the fabric of our society. Minnesotans deserve better, and our elected representatives have the responsibility to act accordingly.

As a Co-Chair of the Minnesota Values Project (MVP), I’m proud of the legislation we’ve passed in recent years to make Minnesotans’ lives better - Universal School Meals, Paid Family Medical Leave, consumer protections against corporate greed, reining in health insurance companies, and more. All of these things have save Minnesota money, time, and peace of mind. But our work is never finished. Whether it’s health care, housing, child care, food, energy bills, Minnesotans are getting price gouged by insurance companies, Big Tech, Wall Street private equity firms, grocery monopolies, and private utilities - it’s unacceptable and unsustainable.

This year, with extensive public outreach and feedback from constituents, MVP has released a new set of priorities to address our neighbors’ most urgent needs, and build on past successes - meeting people where they’re at and delivering for working class Minnesotans.

A fair, resilient state budget: “Trickle-down economics” has been a failed experiment for decades. It turns out that when you lower taxes on the ultra-wealthy, they don’t invest that money back into our communities - they just keep it for themselves and hoard as much wealth as they can. It’s time we ended this cycle of abuse. Instead of giving tax breaks to corporations, we need to close loopholes that allow them to avoid paying into the system that they profit from. With the added revenue from the wealthy paying their fair share, we can provide services Universal No-cost or Low-cost Child Care for Minnesota families. Right now, families are struggling to cover these expenses. Not only would Universal Child Care take these costs off their plate, but every child in Minnesota could receive a head start on their education - which has been shown around the world to be an economic boost. At the same time, we need to continue to empower our state’s new Office of Inspector General to root out fraud against our state programs, and ensure our support programs serve those who need them.

A health care system that works for you: For too many Minnesotans, health care is a luxury. Too many folks forgo seeing a doctor entirely because of the cost. Health care is a human right, and wee have a duty to keep our constituents healthy. By establishing Universal Primary Care and expanding publicly available health care options, we can guarantee that every Minnesota can get the health care check-ups that they need, helping prevent further health complications down the line. Additionally, private insurance companies and their CEOs shouldn’t be able to come between you and your doctor-prescribed care. By reining in our prior authorizations and denied claims, we can hold insurance companies accountable for covering the cost of your care. While the federal government is destroying our health care system, we have an opportunity to build one that centers care for people instead of profits for insurance companies.

A place to live that doesn’t break the bank: It’s essential that we not only invest in building more housing for our growing population, but we must also ban corporations from buying up our supply of singly-family homes, exploiting our neighbors who live in manufactured home parks, and using AI algorithms to increase rents and maximize their profits. Homes are for families to create and enjoy cherished memories; they are not meant to be cash cows for Wall Street private equity firms. At the same time, we must address and restructure our regressive property tax system. Seniors and those on fixed incomes shouldn’t be burdened with tax increases. Instead, we could tax the ultra-wealthy and corporations who have more than enough, so that we can keep our neighbors in their homes.

Keeping Minnesotans safe: Gun violence is the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 18. It wasn’t always this way, and we can absolutely make changes to save lives. By banning semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, we can reduce the number of deaths from firearms and mass shootings. We can save lives with common-sense solutions that are fully compatible with second amendment rights. It’s not an option to do nothing when kids’ lives are at stake.

In addition, we must safegurad Minnesotans’ Constitutional rights and freedoms. We’ve seen the federal government enact a campaign of “retribution” against our state, simply because of the President’s grudge against us. The consequences of that resentment were on full display when ICE occupied our state and kidnapped, disappeared, assaulted, racially profiled, harassed, and killed our neighbors during “Operation Metro Surge.” It was a gross violation of our civil liberties, and those who were responsible must be held accountable. We can and must allow Minnesotans the ability to sue federal agents for violations of their Constitutional rights. At the same time, we must fortify protections in state law, and protect Minnesotans from warrantless intrusions and extrajudicial searches, seizures, and arrests.

While it’s a non-exhaustive list of our Minnesota Values Project priorities, these categories encapsulate our main goals: a better deal for Minnesotans, so that everyone has the ability to thrive and live the American Dream.

Perhaps the most important aspect of our country is that nothing is set in stone. Every day, we strive to that “More Perfect Union” envisioned by those who lived long before us. There is no challenge too big for the American people to overcome. History teach us this, and generations before us have proven that we can make monumental changes for the better. Each movement was built on the one that came before it - Abolitionists, Labor Unions, Suffragettes, Civil Rights activists, the movement for LGBTQ+ rights. All of these and more have yielded equitable advancements in our country’s history. Each one required immense strength, solidarity, and sacrifice, and there were certainly setbacks and obstacles, but We the People and our unrelenting desire for that “More Perfect Union” would prevail each time. I’m confident that we can rise above these challenges in the same way that our ancestors proved it was possible.

On August 11, Minnesota Republicans and Democrats will vote to decide which candidates represent their party on the ballot in the November general election.

The two most high-profile races are the Republican gubernatorial primary and the U.S. Senate DFL contest, but there are also competitive U.S. House primaries and a consequential county attorney’s race in Minnesota’s largest county on the ballot.

While party delegates have endorsed candidates at each party’s respective conventions, the primary will give a broader group of voters the opportunity to decide which candidates will carry each party’s banner into November. The primary contest presents voters with competing ideas and choices about political leadership and governing philosophies.

Candidates have spent months highlighting their political endorsements, party support, governing experience, previous electoral success, grassroots enthusiasm, and campaign strength – now they are asking voters to decide which qualities best prepare someone to win in November and govern thereafter.

All of these credentials are necessary, but none alone are sufficient. Tuesday’s primary results will show which candidates were able to turn their political advantages into voter confidence – and make the most convincing case for the work ahead.

Governor Race: 3 Republican Power Centers - 1 DFL Power House

Minnesota Republicans face a choice among three candidates with different sources of political strength.

Kendall Qualls carries the state GOP endorsement, secured after a ten-ballot convention fight. House Speaker Lisa Demuth offers institutional experience as a legislative leader who has managed a caucus and negotiated at the Capitol. Mike Lindell touts President Trump’s much-coveted endorsement and his strong connection to the MAGA base.

Each candidacy rests on a different claim to leadership.

• Qualls is asking primary voters to respect the judgment of party activists and preserve the influence of Minnesota’s endorsement process.

• Demuth’s case is grounded in governing experience: she can point to the relationships and practical knowledge developed while leading House Republicans through a closely divided Legislature.

• Lindell offers neither argument. His candidacy is built around personal loyalty to Trump, national prominence and an ability to connect with the populist energy reshaping the Republican Party.

The result will therefore say something larger about where power now resides within the Minnesota GOP.

• A Qualls victory would reaffirm the party organization’s role in choosing its standard-bearers.

• A Demuth win would suggest that Republican voters value state-level experience and governing credibility.

• A Lindell nomination would demonstrate that Trump’s endorsement and the MAGA brand can outweigh both the party’s formal process and experience at the Capitol.

Ultimately, whoever emerges victorious will have earned the worst political prize in all of Minnesota politics - the task of taking on Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has defeated Republicans in four statewide races since first being elected to the Senate.

Senator Klobuchar will enter the general election race with a large cash advantage (approximately $4.5 million cash on hand as of late July) and an even greater perception advantage among voters who have largely, and increasingly, supported her from across the political spectrum during her time in Congress.

If Klobuchar goes on to win in November, as most political observers (including this author) believe will happen, she will have cemented her place on Minnesota’s political Mount Rushmore alongside Fritz Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, and Paul Wellstone.

Premier Race: DFL U.S. Senate Primary

The U.S. Senate DFL primary between U.S. Rep. Angie Craig (MN02-D) and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan has been the most hotly contested, and at times personal, race of Minnesota’s primary season. The race has offered the primary’s clearest contrast between two visions for Democratic political leadership and governing strategy.

Both candidates claim that their skill set and experience give Democrats the surest chance to hold retiring Senator Tina Smith’s Senate seat. Craig’s case begins with electoral survival and success highlighting her experience repeatedly winning the politically competitive 2nd Congressional District. Flanagan’s case rests on statewide executive experience, the DFL endorsement, and her support among progressive activists/voters.

Their disagreements over immigration enforcement, fraud oversight and party strategy turn those biographies into competing theories of how Democrats should campaign and govern.

Craig has had the larger financial machine. Through July 22, she had raised approximately $12.75 million and spent $9.18 million, compared with roughly $6.52 million raised and $5.46 million spent by Flanagan – but the money surrounding the race extends well beyond the candidates. By August 6, outside groups had spent about $9.35 million directly supporting Craig and $1.10 million directly supporting Flanagan. Counting ads attacking the other candidate, Craig-aligned groups had spent roughly $16.6 million and Flanagan-aligned groups about $3.4 million.

That spending proves the stakes but will not necessarily determine the outcome.

DFL voters are choosing between Craig’s battleground-tested electability argument and Flanagan’s claim to represent the coalition and direction of the party. Either candidate would be history-making, but the more immediate question is what kind of senator Minnesota Democrats want.

MN02 - Minnesota Race with National Consequences

Craig’s departure to run for the Senate created a DFL primary in a district that remains central to Democrats’ hopes of controlling the U.S. House. The choice is between State Rep. Kaela Berg, State Senator Matt Klein, and former State Senator Matt Little.

Klein emphasizes his work as a physician and legislator while making a pragmatic, Craig-style electability case. Little combines local executive and legislative experience with the DFL endorsement. Berg, a union flight attendant and labor-backed lawmaker, offers the clearest working-class and organized-labor claim.

Through July 22, Klein had raised about $1.22 million and spent $927,000. Little had raised roughly $923,000 and spent $796,000, while Berg had raised about $391,000 and spent $343,000. Those gaps affect each campaign’s ability to communicate, but again, the nomination is not a fundraising award.

From an ideological perspective, Klein has sought to occupy the “pragmatic/moderate” lane while Little and Berg have set out to dominate the more “progressive” lane. It is very plausible that Little and Berg will split the left flank of the electorate, allowing Klein to emerge as the winner.

DFL voters must decide whether the best defense of this battleground seat is Klein’s general-election positioning, Little’s endorsement/progressive stances, or Berg’s labor-centered politics/progressive positions.

MN08 - Building a Credible Challenge

The MN08 DFL primary presents a quieter political test. Trina Swanson and Luke Gulbranson are competing for the right to challenge U.S. Pete Stauber (MN08-R) in a district the DFL once held but has struggled to reclaim.

Here, money is less a measure of dominance than of whether a campaign can build a credible districtwide operation. Through July 22, Swanson had raised about $317,000 and spent $226,000, while Gulbranson had raised roughly $198,000 and spent $181,000. Swanson’s DFL endorsement and financial edge give her the strongest visible infrastructure while Gulbranson brings celebrity from reality television and a northern Minnesota identity.

But the larger challenge begins after the primary: rebuilding DFL credibility across Duluth, the Iron Range and a geographically vast district where trust must be earned community by community.

Minnesota’s Largest County - Hennepin County Attorney Race

The five-way race to succeed Mary Moriarty may be the primary season’s most direct test of public confidence - and voters are not simply choosing between preserving or reversing Moriarty’s record. The two leading candidates are Cedrick Frazier and Anders Folk.

Cedrick Frazier has the DFL endorsement, legislative experience and support from reform-minded leaders. Former acting U.S. Attorney Anders Folk has highlighted his federal prosecutorial experience and endorsements from local institutional figures including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and former U.S. Attorney Andy Luger.

The choice will be consequential for those living and visiting Minnesota’s largest county. Hennepin County’s next attorney will manage a roughly $92 million office while making decisions about violent crime, juvenile prosecution, police accountability, federal-agent misconduct and the future of reform.

More cooperation and more accountability are easy campaign promises; the primary asks which candidates voters trust most to deliver both.

Bottom Line

Endorsements can confer credibility. Experience can demonstrate readiness. Money can amplify a message, and celebrity can command attention.

But none of those advantages casts a ballot.

On August 11, Minnesota voters will decide which candidates have turned their political strengths into something more important: confidence that they can represent their coalition, compete in November and govern effectively.