Why national groups are giving so much attention to a state Senate race in the Twin Cities suburbs
On paper, there aren’t many reasons that Minnesota’s political parties should be spending a lot of time and money on the state Senate race in District 34, a rematch from 2016 that saw the incumbent win by a 20 percent margin in a place where Donald Trump also won that year.
The district, which covers the northwest Twin Cities suburbs of Maple Grove, Osseo, Dayton and Rogers, has long been reliably Republican, with Sen. Warren Limmer winning there in 1995, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2016. In 2016, he beat DFL nominee Bonnie Westlin, who’s running again this year, by nearly 10,000 votes.
But the 34th has become one of a handful of highly targeted districts that DFLers want to flip and Republicans need to defend. And along with a handful of other Senate races, the race there has become a proxy war over broader themes: control of the Senate, control of post-census redistricting, gun safety, criminal justice reform, policing and even recreational marijuana legalization, with much of the money being raised and spent in the race coming from outside the district, even outside the state, by people who won’t vote in the election.
After the success the House DFL had in the Twin Cities suburbs in 2018, Democrats believe there is a chance to pick up state Senate seats there in 2020 — a year in which they need to net just two more seats to regain control of the chamber.
Trump defeated Clinton in Senate District 34 by 2.8 percentage points in 2016, but Tim Walz then carried the area by a single point in 2018, leading Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz to include the district in a group of GOP Senate seats the DFL could win, saying: “We are coming.” (Limmer’s response: “Bring it on.”) And one of the victories that gave House DFLers control of that chamber in 2018 came in the more liberal half of the 34th, where Kristin Bahner defeated then-GOP incumbent Dennis Smith by six points. Just two years earlier, Bahner had lost to Smith by 12 points.
https://www.minnpost.com/state-government/2020/10/why-national-groups-are-giving-so-much-attention-to-a-state-senate-race-in-the-twin-cities-suburbs/