If the Harris/Walz ticket wins the presidential race, taht means Minnesota will be left with Peggy Flanagan as governor.  Not only is Flanagan a died-in-the-wood radical, she is one of the least likeable people in Minnesota politics (or was, until we met the DFL’s legislative class of 2023).

And if Trump wins, Walz will return to Minnesota most likely weakened after running into a media that asks him questions more probing than “Pronto Pups vs. Corn Dogs – what’s your take?” for the first time in his political career. 

This is an opportunity.

Now, some will say “The MNGOP will just screw it up”.

Let’s talk about that. 

Let’s start off with two points:

1. MNGOP has MUCH less power over who runs for office and what they say than the MNDFL does.
2. Unlike the MNDFL, the MNGOP is controlled by activists (defined as “people who show up, who support candidate, and who try to convince people to vote along with them”). But it takes something MN Republicans are bad at; patience and sustained effort. Let’s talk about both.

The Car, Not The Driver

Like a lot of people who rail on about politics without having been all that involved, I used to think the MNGOP drives policy.

A very smart person who worked at the MNGOP grabbed me and hauled me off to lunch and explained things to me.  Turns out…

…It doesn’t.

Campaigns, candidates and (eventually) elected representatives do.

So when people say “The MNGOP needs to DO something”? Their job is to support candidates who will…DO something. But you need the candidates.

If GOP activists bubbled up from the districts and endorsed 201 Michelle Bensons, Peg Scotts, Harry Niskas, Walter Hudsons, Mary Fransons and Jim Nashes, we’d be a red state and the MNGOP would reflect that will. If they kept that momentum doing and endorsed people of that caliber for govenor, the party would reflect that will – eventually.  We’ll come back to that.

Point being, the party isn’t a policy-driving organization.  Oh, it keeps the party’s platform – which is an enormous, unenforceable and occasionally self-contradictory agglommeration of wishes.  And it runs the process by which those caucus, BPOU and district endorsements waft up to the state level. 

But it doesn’t set policy.

If the activists endorse a majority of candidates who believe that the state anthem should be “Friends in Low Places”, and those candidates win elections, and the activists who nominated them and worked toward their elections stay active in the party and win seats in the State Central, then at some point in the future the policy of the MNGOP will be to enshrine that Garth Brooks song. 

Provided they show up and win.

The Arena

But the party reflects what the activists who show up, and KEEP showing up, bring to the table.

And the activists control how the party works – via various BPOU, District and eventually State Central Committees.

Thing is, it takes a couple of years of concerted effort to take State Central. As in, *sustained* effort.

Remember the Ron Paul crowd? They came,they actually took over the 2012 convention, they sent their delegates to Tampa…

…and then largely left.  A few of them stuck with the party and the process. 

Before them – remember the Tea Party? They came, they *slaughtered* the DFL in 2010 – and they left (or got hijacked by the “confrontation is BETTER than winning!” crowd).

In other words the party is controlled, not by the people who showed up at caucuses last February, but by the people who showed up the previous 2-5 caucuses, and kept showing up.

That is very unlike the DFL, btw. The GOP honors the decisions of the party’s activists, even when they make clearly doomed endorsements.

In contrast, the last activist-endorsed DFL governor candidate (for an open seat) was Mike Hatch. In every open seat election since then, the DFL party leadership has stepped in to assert its will – in 2010 pushing Mark Dayton past Margaret Anderson-Kelliher in the primaries, and in 2018 dragging Tim Walz over the finish line against Erin Murphy and Erin Maye Quade. 

For better or worse, the GOP goes with its activists.

Answers?

The answers are simple, but not easy or glamorous:

• Show up
• Endrose solid candidates for everything from school board to legislature to Governor and Senator
• Suipport them – with caucus time, money, work (!), and convincing neighbors. 
• Keep doing ti – even if you lose some races. 2022 (and, let’s be honest, every statewide race since 2008) was a heartbreaker.  So suck it up. 

The Minnesota GOP reflects the will of those who show up and keep showing up”. It sounds like a platitude.

It’s not – for better or worse. It’s a challenge, and sometimes it feels like a curse.   Democracy is so much easier when someone gives it to you, isn’t it?

Knock off the despair. If the Minneapolis City GOP can go out and scrap it out for every seat, people in Andover and Apple Valley can show up and win your purple ‘burbs.