Congressional rematch tests strength of rightward political shift in northeastern Minnesota
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When Jen Schultz won the first of her four House terms at Minnesota’s Capitol in 2014, she joined a stable of Democratic legislators from the area and the 8th Congressional District was in the party’s hands, too — albeit by a very narrow margin.
A decade later, it’s a far different picture. Outside of her home base in Duluth, Republicans hold sway in much of northeastern Minnesota. And the 8th District has elected a Republican in U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber in three consecutive elections.
Schultz, who left the Legislature after the 2022 session, challenged Stauber for the congressional seat later that year and came up well short. She kept a political oar in the water and is opposite him on the ballot again. But to win she’ll have to row against the tide.
“What we’ve seen in the 8th, I think, is a really strong shift away from that unionized, sort of moderate Democrat,” said Tim Lindberg, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota Morris campus.
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Carlton County is emblematic of the change in fortunes for Democrats. Back in 2014, Rep. Rick Nolan won there with 53 percent of the vote; in 2022, Stauber beat Schultz by a few percentage points in the county.
As he prepared his garage in Cloquet for a chili dinner for the local chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association, retired paper mill worker Rick Lahti said Democrats have trouble connecting to voters like him.
“Back in the day, maybe the Democrat Party represented people,” he said. “But I think they’ve left the people. They’re progressives now, and I can’t be there. That doesn’t work for me.”
Caroline Johnson, a restaurant owner in nearby Wrenshall, was more emphatic. She said she worries about the country moving too far left — toward socialist-style policies in her view — if Democrats prevail next month. She’s backing Stauber.
“I’m pro-life, pro-patriotic and I’m very conservative, so I vote for people that think like me," she said in voicing support for Stauber, a Duluth cop and St. Louis County commissioner before running for Congress.
As recently as 2008 about two-thirds of voters here backed Democrats. But lately they've supported Republicans by double digits. Stauber won two years ago with 57 percent of the vote.
The district has changed geographically over time, pushing to the west and south as population declines on the Iron Range and other parts of the northeast required the boundaries to expand during redistricting. Now it stretches from the exurbs of Chisago and Isanti counties all the way to the Canadian border.
Despite that, Democrats are excited about Schultz, a health economist at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Sitting outside the coffee shop Gordy’s Warming House, 54-year-old Paula Williams of Barnum proudly displayed a Schultz sticker on her thermos.
“She is a fighter. She did this run for Congress, and she was such the underdog. And now she’s at it again and she’s gaining momentum,” Williams said. “I'm just so impressed with how hard she works.”
National Democrats haven’t put the race on their list of districts they consider most likely to flip. As such, Schultz has had to do the spade work much on her own. She’s raised $1 million for this campaign, but that’s about half of what Stauber pulled in. The difference in their campaign spending was $1.3 million for Stauber and about $814,000 for Schultz through September.
Angela Evenson, an accountant and pharmacist who’s treasurer for the Carlton County Democrats, said she hopes voters will hold Stauber accountable and argued the incumbent hasn’t delivered for the district.
“And that’s not being hyperbolic. He really has not brought anything of any value,” Evenson said. “I think she comes to the table with a lot of good experience.”
Democrats have criticized Stauber for voting against a major infrastructure bill. It included funding toward a $1 billion rebuild of the Blatnik Bridge connecting Duluth and Superior, Wis.
At a shopping center parking lot in Cloquet, retired postal worker Sarah Johnson of Esko said she hopes Schultz can pull off the upset.
“I don’t agree with a lot of what Stauber has done in his term, and specifically because of who he supports and policies that he supports,” Johnson said.
Stauber has leaned into his support for Trump, who won the 8th district by 15 points the last two presidential elections. There were almost 64,000 more votes cast in 2020 when Trump was last on the ballot compared with 2022 when he wasn’t.
Lindberg, the political scientist, said that means Schultz would have to peel away a large number of Trump voters to win.
“And that’s just a tall task to ask. And it may not even be about Stauber versus Schultz. It may be about Trump versus Harris for voters,” he said. “There’s just not a willingness to split your ticket as much as you used to.”
