By Michelle Griffith | Reporter
Good morning, Reformers.
If you’re in the Mankato area, our editor Patrick Coolican is hosting a panel at 6 p.m. at the Community Room at 1850 Madison Ave., for the final installment of our League of Women Voters’ series “Trusted Elections: Stronger Together.” He’ll moderate a panel on election security and voting rights.
Hours after the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan lied about graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Minnesota, the national honor society said that she’s actually a member. We linked to it in our newsletter, so it’s important to set the record straight.
It was a bit of a wild ride Wednesday because Flanagan’s campaign had told the Journal that she was nominated for the group but not a member because she couldn’t afford the membership fee at the time.
“I can verify that Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, having been inducted in 2002 at the University of Minnesota,” Amber Cox, associate secretary and chief operating officer of Phi Beta Kappa, said in a statement after the WSJ posted its original story.
Especially once the story fell apart, it seemed like an odd choice by a national outlet to focus on a college honors society membership.
In other news, the Star Tribune reports this morning that the Minnesota law enforcement officials say the federal government is again refusing to share evidence from killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Court documents show that the reversal is coming from the Trump administration.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in the documents that U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen informed her that evidence sharing and cooperation on the investigations would be paused “indefinitely” because of “challenges with D.C,” the Strib reports.
“All of this signals that the U.S. Attorney’s Office will not be able to share any more evidence” with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office or the state unless “there is a change in policy at the highest levels of DOJ,” Moriarty wrote.
Onto today’s Reformer.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar talks to fairgoers and supporters during the Minnesota State Fair Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Michelle Griffith
Sen. Amy Klobuchar has written two memoirs and time and again, she shares details about herself that expose an almost perfect-self awareness.
Her senior-year prom date ditched her because she refused to dance with him in the Ridgedale Mall fountain, lest she ruin her pink polyester dress. Her ex-boyfriends donated $17,000 to her first U.S. Senate campaign. She kept track.
Despite her place as one of the most-talked-about and written-about Minnesotans in state history, voters will still have to decide if Klobuchar is a demanding boss who gets the best out of talented people, or a bully who will struggle to oversee 50,000 state employees if elected governor; an ideologically malleable problem-solver, or an opportunist lacking any core principles; a model public servant, or a climber looking for one final bullet point on a resume that runs pages long.
Read my profile of House Speaker Lisa Demuth, published last week.
By Michelle Griffith
Demuth and Democratic Klobuchar each focused on guilt by association during their final gubernatorial debate Wednesday.
Repeating a theme on display up and down the ballot this year, Demuth argued that Klobuchar is aligned with Gov. Tim Walz and would govern similarly, while Klobuchar argued that Demuth would not stand up to President Donald Trump to do what’s best for Minnesota.
Wednesday’s debate, which was televised statewide and co-hosted by FOX 9 and Gray Media, was the second this week between the two candidates for governor and their final face-to-face meeting before the Nov. 3 election.
By Patrick Coolican
Patrick spoke with Doug Chapin, the Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District. He’s running a long-shot campaign against U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, one of the most powerful men in the Republican-controlled Congress in a district that voted for Trump over Harris by nearly 20 percentage points in 2024.
“When we tell the 40% of voters who live in the 6th District — or 25% of voters in the heavily Democratic 5th District — that their participation is meaningless to the point of being unnecessary, we lose a lot of potentially good ideas and effective people, to say nothing of a sense of belonging and investment in the community,” Patrick writes.
“Big cities would benefit from a Republican accountant on their councils, just as rural areas could use a Democratic environmental scientist who advocates for clean water.”.
IN OTHER NEWS
OH BY THE WAY
We launched a 2026 voter guide yesterday. You can find information on the candidates running for statewide races, as well as races to watch in the U.S. House and Minnesota Legislature. Election Day is in 12 days.
Have a nice Thursday.
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