MINNESOTA
State Profile
The following data and information about this state is taken from the 2006 Almanac of American Politics. The 2006 Almanac can be ordered online, or by phone at 1-800-356-4838.

State At A Glance  •  Key Elected Officials  •  Political History & Analysis

“While commercially and culturally Minnesota has never been stronger, its recent political history has been unusual.”

At A Glance

• Size: 86,939 square miles
• Population in 2000: 4,919,479; 70.9% urban; 29.1% rural
• Population in 1990: 4,375,099
• Population Change: Up 12.4% 1990-2000; Up 7.3% 1980-1990
• Population Rank: 21st of 50; 1.8% of total U.S. population
• Most Populous Cities: Minneapolis (373,188); St. Paul (280,404); Rochester (92,507); Duluth (85,734); Bloomington (83,080)
• Registered Voters: No party registration
• State Senate: 38 D 29 R
• State House: 68 R 66 D
• State Legislative Term Limits: No

Key Elected Officials

• Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R)
• Sen. Mark Dayton (DFL)
• Sen. Norm Coleman (R)
• Representatives: (4 D, 4 R):

Gil Gutknecht   (R-01) John Kline   (R-02) Jim Ramstad   (R-03)

Betty McCollum   (DFL-04) Martin Olav Sabo   (DFL-05) Mark Kennedy   (R-06)

Collin Peterson   (DFL-07) James Oberstar   (DFL-08)

About Minnesota

Minnesota has long been a distinctive commonwealth, set far in America's frozen North, a state which in commerce, culture and politics has set one example after another for the rest of the nation. It is the node of transcontinental railroads that linked the winter wheat fields of the northern prairies to the greatest grain-milling center in the world and the great Pacific ports of Puget Sound. It is also the birthplace of Scotch tape, Betty Crocker, Target and the Mall of America, the home base of dyspeptic chroniclers of small town America from Sinclair Lewis to Garrison Keillor. Politically, Minnesota over the last half century provided the nation with some of its most articulate and honorable leaders--Harold Stassen, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale--and with traditions of probity, civic-mindedness and innovation which are second to none. Yet while commercially and culturally Minnesota has never been stronger, its recent political history has been unusual. For more than a decade, two political parties, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor and the Republican--have been dominated by activists of left and right stubbornly out of touch with ordinary voters. At least partly in response, voters in 1998 elected a former professional wrestler and suburban mayor, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, as governor. What had been one of the nation's more heavily Democratic states became a polity very much up for grabs. In 2002 Republican Tim Pawlenty was elected governor and Republican Norm Coleman was elected senator. In 2004 Minnesota moved toward the DFL. This battleground state was carried by John Kerry by a 51%-48% margin, and Republicans lost 13 seats and nearly lost their majority in the state House. Which way will Minnesota turn in 2006 and 2008? No one is sure.

Minnesota's distinctive traditions come from a distinctive history. The far northern states were ignored by most Yankee immigrants, who headed straight west into Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. But others saw opportunity in Minnesota's icy lakes and ferocious winters. James J. Hill, the builder of the Great Northern Railroad ("You can't interest me in any proposition in any place where it doesn't snow"), and others operating out of Minneapolis and St. Paul--already twin cities by 1860--worked to attract Norwegian, Swedish and German migrants who would find the terrain and climate congenial. By 1890, the Twin Cities--rivals that year in a Census competition--were the nerve center of a sprawling and rich agricultural empire stretching west from Minnesota through the Dakotas and into Montana and beyond. Minneapolis and St. Paul became the termini of its rail lines and the site of its grain-milling companies.

The Twin Cities also became the center of a three-party politics and an economic radicalism reminiscent of the politics of Scandinavia. For our American regions seem a mirror image of the geography of Europe, with the East Coast resembling the British Isles and France, the industrial Midwest reminiscent of Germany and Poland, the relatively poor and always hawkish South a Baptist Mediterranean, and the Upper Midwest of Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota as North American versions of Scandinavia. The Scandinavian flavor of life lives on: You can get lutefisk (smelly lye-soaked cod) around Christmastime in Minneapolis restaurants (though you probably don't want to). It extends also to politics. Like Scandinavia, these Upper Midwestern commonwealths pioneered their continent's welfare states, with an effect on public policy far out of proportion to their numbers. Alarmed by the unprecedented concentration of economic power and wealth into the hands of just a few identifiable millionaires who lived on St. Paul's Summit Avenue or the hill above Minneapolis's Hennepin Avenue, the immigrants drew on their native traditions of cooperative activity and bureaucratic socialism.

As in Wisconsin and North Dakota, a strong third party developed here in the years after the Populist era. This Farmer-Labor Party elected senators in the 1920s and dominated state politics in the 1930s. Hurt by their ties to Communists, the Farmer-Laborites were beaten by Harold Stassen's Republicans in 1938. But this was still a New Deal state, and by 1944 the bedraggled local Democrats were merged with the anti-Communist faction of Farmer-Laborites to form the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. A key role was played by Hubert Humphrey--mayor of Minneapolis in 1945, and the dazzling advocate of the civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Humphrey's DFL--clean, idealistic, closely tied to labor, backed by many farmers--attracted dozens of talented politicians, including Eugene McCarthy, Orville Freeman and Walter Mondale. In 1948 Humphrey's speech helped put the Democrats on record for civil rights, and he was elected to the Senate at age 37.

In the years that followed, the DFL dominated Minnesota politics, while a series of progressive companies led the development of a strong, diversified economy. The DFL stood for a generous, compassionate government, for strong labor unions and high wages, for an expansionist fiscal policy to encourage consumer-led economic growth, for civil rights, and for an anti-Communist, but not bombastic, foreign policy. Its base was among blue-collar workers in the Twin Cities, in Duluth and the Iron Range, and among farmers of Scandinavian origin. Minnesota's business leaders were conservative politically and innovation-minded in their work. New entrepreneurs rose in the 1990s, and Minnesota's incomes rose to 11th in the nation; the slowdown after 2000 was less severe than in many other states. It is part of a long pattern: Minnesota's economy hums along, growing robustly in prosperous years and not falling behind in recessions, and squeaky-clean if sometimes eccentric Minnesota has levels of crime, divorce and aberrant behavior most states should envy. From 1990 to 2004, Minnesota's population grew by 17%, significantly more than any other Midwestern state.

Minnesota has more social connectedness than any other large state, Robert Putnam notes in Bowling Alone, and this spirit of civic participation is echoed in the party precinct caucuses and party conventions. The early DFLers were proud of this system, which allowed plenty of political participation and ended control by party bosses. But by the 1980s the conventions came to be dominated not by laborite Humphrey followers or the wives of management Republicans, but by left-wingers and counterculturites, right-wing abortion opponents and religious hardliners. The result was the nomination of left-wing and right-wing candidates usually rejected by the voters in primaries or general elections and in shrill, off-putting political rhetoric. All this left Minnesota open to the appeal of Jesse Ventura, candidate of the Independence party in 1998. Ventura was already known to Twin Cities television viewers--nearly three-quarters of the state's voters--and his clever ads tended to overshadow his more conventional rivals, Attorney General Skip Humphrey and DFL-turned-Republican St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman. Ventura scored in the low teens in most polls, but he sparked a huge rise in turnout--Minnesota has Election Day registration--and won with 37% of the vote, to 34% for Coleman and only 28% for Humphrey--less than half the 60% his father won in his first electrifying election for senator exactly 50 years earlier.

Ventura pulled out a new electorate in Minneapolis-St. Paul media market beyond the Twin Cities core of Hennepin and Ramsey Counties. In 2002 this area went heavily Republican, voting 51%-30% for Pawlenty and 56%-41% for Coleman over former Vice President and Senator Walter Mondale, who had been nominated to run in Wellstone's place. In 2004 the Republican margin here was not as great, as George W. Bush carried the area 54%-45%. This was not enough to overcome the increased margins the DFL turned out in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, nor to offset a trend against Bush and a reversion to DFL loyalties in Duluth and the Iron Range.