This story was originally published by MinnPost.
WASHINGTON — The rematch in Minnesota’s 8th District between Republican Rep. Pete Stauber and DFLer Jennifer Schultz is playing out in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but both candidates are using their playbooks drafted in Washington, D.C.
While local issues, including mining and protections of the Boundary Waters, crop up as candidates stump across the district, University of Minnesota-Morris political science professor Tim Lindberg said the race for the seat is a case study of how nationalized American politics have become.
“It may not have worked well in the old days, but it does now,” Lindberg said of the political trend.
Stauber has been favored for re-election since he defeated Schultz two years ago by a margin of nearly 15% of the vote. But there are indications that the race is tightening.
Prospects for all Democrats running for Congress have risen since President Joe Biden announced last month that he would not run for re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Things continued to improve when Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
And Schultz, 53, has name recognition from her run against Stauber in 2022 and her campaign has raised more than $750,000, a respectable amount for a challenger. Stauber’s campaign, meanwhile, has raised more than $1.1 million.
Jennifer Schultz’s fundraising had an uptick after Biden dropped out of the presidential race and many more of her campaign contributors come from Minnesota compared to Stauber’s donors. A MinnPost analysis of reports to the Federal Election Commission shows that Schultz’s fundraising had an uptick after Biden dropped out of the presidential race and many more of her campaign contributors come from Minnesota compared to Stauber’s donors.
Schultz may have another advantage.
Poll aggregator 538 shows that, in a generic ballot, Democratic candidates for Congress are ahead of Republicans by 1.5 percentage points. Not a huge gap, but before Biden’s exit from the presidential race, Democrats and Republicans were running neck-and-neck in generic ballots.
Yet the race for the 8th District congressional seat is not generic. The Cook Political Report has determined the district is “solidly Republican.”
Still, Schultz thinks she has a chance at unseating an incumbent who has held the seat since 2020.
“People are motivated and engaged and volunteering in the campaign,” she said. “We did not see that much in 2022.”
Schultz said having Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a popular elected official who is running for re-election, on the ticket in November’s election will help her. And so would Walz’s bid for the vice presidency, which she said would drive Democrats and others who might support her to the polls.
“(Minnesotans) take great pride in having one of their own at the top of the ticket,” she said.
Stauber, meanwhile, said he doubted Walz would help Democrats like Schultz. That’s because he said “the Minnesota media” shielded the public from revelations of what he said were the governor’s missteps and deceptions, including an incident in 2006 in which Walz incorrectly said he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
“The things that have surfaced about Tim Walz have been very disappointing,” Stauber said.
Crushing the middle class
Bordering Canada and stretching as far south as Washington County, the huge 8th Congressional District includes Democratic-leaning Duluth and Twin Cities exurbs as well as the GOP-leaning Iron Range and other vast, rural areas.
It is the poorest congressional district in Minnesota, with a poverty rate of more than 12%. One in 10 district residents receive food stamps.
And 8th District residents are the oldest in the state, with a median age of 42.6 years, while the Minneapolis-based 5th District – represented by Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar – is home to the state’s youngest population with a median age of 34.7 years.
Stauber, 58, who has been endorsed by former president and current presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is an enthusiastic booster, adopting the Trump-Vance campaign’s focus on inflation, illegal immigration and the “overreach” of federal regulations on businesses.
“The economy is crushing the middle class,” he said.
Stauber blamed the “Biden Harris agenda” and Biden administration spending for inflation that has bedeviled the economy for several years and only recently been tamed.
But the causes of inflation are diverse. They include government spending, which grew tremendously when the Trump administration responded to the pandemic with expanded and increased unemployment benefits, stimulus checks and other costly measures. Biden continues some of these massive spending programs and also spent money on a huge infrastructure bill and other priorities.
Inflation was also caused by volatility in energy prices, increases in wages, supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, low interest rates that induced Americans to spend and other issues.
Schultz, too, is focusing on the harm inflation has caused. But she is pushing the national Democratic prescription of reducing costs through affordable housing, childcare, health care and other programs that could lower costs, but increase government spending.
She has also adopted Harris’s attacks on “price-gouging,” and on her party’s concerns about voter suppression by the GOP.
“People are worried about their right to vote,” she said.
‘Not about flipping a district’
Since he was elected to Congress, Stauber has focused on defending mining rights and supporting agriculture and the forestry and energy industries.
Using his position on the House Natural Resources Committee, Stauber has held hearings on legislation that would end the federal moratorium on copper, nickel and cobalt mining in the Superior National Forest, a watershed for the Boundary Waters. He’s also introduced a bill that would remove the gray wolf and the northern long-eared bat off the endangered species list.
However, a Democratic-controlled Senate ignored the legislation, thwarting many of Stauber’s initiatives.
Stauber was drafted out of college by the Detroit Red Wings, then served as police officer in Duluth for 22 years before entering politics.
He said “the yearning to help people” pressed him into seeking a seat on the Hermantown city council. He then ran successfully for St. Louis County commissioner, ousting an incumbent that failed to support a proposed copper mining project.
Stauber then turned his attention to a congressional seat that was made vacant by the retirement of former Rep. Rick Nolan, a Democrat.
He lives in Hermantown with his wife, Jodi, and the couple’s six children, one who has Down syndrome and two – the youngest – who are adopted.
Schultz, meanwhile, earned a Ph.D. in health economics and served eight years as a member of the Minnesota House, where she was the chair of the House Human Services Finance & Policy Committee. She also served on the Great Lakes Commission where she advocated for the protection of those lakes and the restoration of habitat.
Schultz said she ran for the state legislature because she was urged to do so when a legislator she had collaborated with decided to retire. She said she was very green when it came to politics and had no fundraising base or campaign organization.
“I just did it because I wanted to move health care forward,” she said.
Schultz said the same motivation drives her race for Congress.
“It’s not about flipping a district, it’s about getting things done,” she said.
Schultz lives in Duluth with her husband Rob, who is a criminologist, and two teenage sons.
The Walz factor
Schultz was at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this past week trying to raise campaign cash and drum up other help for her campaign.
She was frustrated that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has not offered help in her effort to oust Stauber.
The DCCC is aimed at wresting control of the House from the Republicans, who have a slim majority in the chamber, and are focused on helping strong Democratic challengers in swing districts and vulnerable incumbents like Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District.
Stauber is only the second Republican elected to represent the district since 1946. The district voted for Obama in 2012 then by a larger margin for Donald Trump in 2016.
Lindberg said the 8th is the district that has shifted the most in the state to the GOP. One reason, he said, is redistricting has made it “redder” by adding Republican-leaning areas like Brainerd and Bemidji.
Lindberg also said a national shift by rural voters who embraced Trump’s populist message to the Republican Party and the reduced political clout of unions were also factors, as were the lack of population growth and aging of the district’s population.
Despite Stauber’s view that there is no “Walz factor,” Lindberg said the governor’s new prominence – and popularity – would help Schultz.
“I think he recognizes there’s been a shift in the last few weeks and taking Schultz seriously is smart,” Lindberg said.
But Schultz is still an underdog.
“I’d be very surprised if she didn’t’ do better against Stauber this time,” Lindberg said. “But I’d be more surprised if she won.”
This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.