By Max Nesterak | Deputy Editor
Good morning, Reformers.
After years of sowing doubt in our elections, the Minnesota GOP has succumbed to its own Stop the Steal scandal with widespread irregularities reported at its endorsement convention.
It seems inevitable that a party base obsessed with election fraud conspiracy theories would eventually turn that focus inward and self-immolate. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the party’s leading candidates for governor, pursued election fraud claims to the point of financial ruin — so why would he stop at the party’s convention voting system?
Alas, in this case there do seem to have been legitimate issues with the clickers that delegates used to vote last weekend. It’s unclear if those problems changed the outcome, but that’s the allure of doubt: anything could be true.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth capitalized on that doubt to take her campaign to the primary and renege on her commitment to drop out of the race if she didn’t win the endorsement, which went to Army veteran Kendall Qualls on the 10th ballot. Michelle Griffith reports.
In announcing her plans, Demuth would not say if she would pardon Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd or how she felt about the moment of silence for the former police officer who is still very much alive. These are straightforward questions that are nevertheless stumping Republican candidates in an interesting sidebar to the endorsement mess.
Demuth is ignoring the endorsement with the blessing of MN GOP Party Chair Alex Plechash, who released a statement both affirming the validity of the party’s endorsements and acknowledging there’s enough concern for gubernatorial candidates to ignore it. Have your cake and eat it too.
But why does Plechash’s decision only apply to the governor’s race? Delegates reported clicker issues all weekend.
Even though U.S. Senate candidate Michele Tafoya never committed to abiding by the endorsement, certainly she wants some party-sanctioned doubt to leverage for her campaign after losing the endorsement to Adam Schwarze on Friday. Interestingly, Senate candidate Mark York said the clickers were “hacked” but he would also honor his pledge and drop out.
I spoke to Republican delegate Andy Turonie from SD47 (Woodbury area), who said he noticed numerous problems with his clicker after other delegates raised concerns on Saturday.
“I don’t think they can confidently say, ‘We had our act together on Friday, but not Saturday,” said Turonie, who supported Demuth and Tafoya.
Turonie asked for an audit of his votes but said he has not, understandably, received a response from the party given all they’re dealing with.
The party did not respond to my email asking if Plechash would also acknowledge voting irregularities in the Senate race.
Turonie said he believes this year was his last serving as a delegate, not because of the clicker issues but rather the longstanding criticisms of the endorsement process that you find in both parties: The most loyal party activists often rally behind a weak general election candidate, and then many candidates go to the primary anyways, which costs everyone a lot of time and money.
“I think it’s time to move directly to a primary,” Turonie said. “August is way, way, way too late … Over the summer, they should be knocking doors and knowing whether or not they’re going to be on the November ballot.”
A coda to all this: Rep. Elliott Engen abided by his commitment to drop out of the race for auditor if he lost the party endorsement, but then filed to run for re-election to the state House despite the party endorsing Sebastian Stoss in that race. Stoss released a statement criticizing Engen’s decision and pointing to Engen’s social media post from last fall predicting, “If this district goes to an August primary, we can chalk it up now as a blue district.”
Peter Flower learns how to grade land on the first “sandbox” classroom in the Twin Cities. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Melissa Whitler
St. Paul Public Schools has officially opened a what the district calls a sandbox classroom, but it’s not for little kids. Instead, it’s part of the district’s new program that trains high school seniors to operate heavy equipment on the path to high-paying jobs in construction.
“Getting the hands-on experience has been everything,” said the program’s teacher, Dusty Thune. “You have to have a lot of seat hours in order to start understanding where you are in space with these big machines.”
Traditionally, apprentices mostly learned about job opportunities through family or friends. This program should help create a pipeline into good-paying jobs in construction even if students don’t know someone in the field.
If they can succeed in programs like this one, there’s work waiting for them: More than 46,000 heavy equipment operator job openings per year are expected during the next decade nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By Max Nesterak
Operation Metro Surge cost Minnesota’s leisure and hospitality sector an estimated 4,600 jobs and $71 million in wages, according to a new study.
The analysis of the economic fallout from the unprecedented immigration crackdown adds to a growing body of research showing the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda is hurting the labor market, affecting immigrant and native-born workers alike.
The researchers estimate that the industry could have expected to lose around 1,200 jobs during the first quarter of 2026 were it not for the immigration crackdown. In reality, Minnesota lost 5,800 leisure and hospitality jobs while the United States gained 38,000 jobs in the industry.
By Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa
The Trump administration has scrapped plans to use nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars to pay people who believe they were wrongly prosecuted by the Justice Department — a proposal that halted work on legislation to fund immigration and deportation activities.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified Tuesday before a House committee the DOJ will no longer move forward with those plans shortly after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said the administration had reversed course.
The Justice Department announced the creation of the fund last month as part of a legal settlement between Trump and the IRS over leaked copies of his returns during Trump’s first term. The settlement included provisions that precluded future IRS investigations into Trump and his family.
IN OTHER NEWS
US Senate panel pans DHS plan to stop customs processing at blue-city airports | Reformer via States Newsroom
States face tight timeline as feds unveil new Medicaid work requirement rules | Reformer via Stateline
Walz appoints leaders to council tasked with documenting Operation Metro Surge | Bring Me The News
OH BY THE WAY
The Star Tribune will lay off roughly 15% of its staff to position itself “for growth as a digital media company,” publisher Steve Grove announced in an email to staff on Tuesday evening. He encouraged everyone to work from home today.
Grove’s email landed in inboxes as some of us Capitol reporters were at a happy hour celebrating the career of longtime Associated Press reporter Steve Karnowski, who recently accepted an early retirement buyout from that shrinking, storied institution. Bleak.
The Star Tribune layoffs will not affect reporters, photographers or videographers — the principal newsgatherers — but will still impact the newsroom. Editors, page designers and other journalists are losing their jobs.
The layoffs feel especially unfair because of the exceptional work the newsroom has been doing over the past year of tragedy, winning a Pulitzer for its coverage of the Annunciation shooting and national recognition of its reporting during Operation Metro Surge.
The Star Tribune Newspaper Guild, the union representing hundreds of staff, released a statement promising to fight the decision:
“The argument made by Star Tribune management that these layoffs are going to improve our company in any way, shape or form lacks any foundation in reality. This is a direct attack on the staff that just won a Pulitzer Prize for our work and has been widely praised — including by management — for its efforts.”
Grove’s email also announced a plan to seek a non-profit ownership structure for the newspaper.
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