Weekend Reformer: At the fair with Klobuchar and Demuth

The Minnesota State Fair ends Monday. 

My colleagues waded through heat, humidity and crowds at the fair to see how politicians and voters were feeling about November’s general election: 

Michelle Griffith followed U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and House Speaker Lisa Demuth, the DFL and GOP candidates running for Minnesota governor in November, as they worked the state fair crowd and listened to their constituents’ concerns. 

Klobuchar and Demuth have both spent nearly every day at the fair to get in front of voters who aren’t at home to see their television ads. Numerous polls show Klobuchar leading against Demuth, though Demuth is hoping voters’ frustration with fraud will propel Republicans to their first statewide win in 20 years. 

Read Michelle’s report here. 

Max Nesterak spoke to three underdog candidates also at the fair, where they got the unique opportunity to reach tens of thousands of voters without well-funded campaigns or armies of volunteers — one said it’s “like a reverse door-knock.”

Klobuchar and Demuth shared their thoughts on housing at a KARE 11 interview at the State Fair, Michelle reported. Both broadly agree that the state needs to build more homes to increase supply and slow rising costs, though both were also noncommittal to reforming restrictive local zoning controls. 

GOP Senate candidate Michele Tafoya reported assets totaling $10.7 million to $37.9 million, putting her near or in the top 1%, Max reported. DFL nominee Peggy Flanagan’s financial disclosure shows between $990,000 and $2.7 million in assets. 

On Jan. 14, during Operation Metro Surge, ICE agent Christian Castro allegedly shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in north Minneapolis. Madi McVan reported the most recent updates on that case: Castro turned himself in to federal authorities Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury this week on six charges of making false statements related to the shooting. 

The federal charge came after Trump’s Department of Justice intervened to quash plans to bring civil rights charges against Castro, Megan Rose and Andy Mannix of ProPublica reported. 

Minnesota’s spending on Medicaid, which insures many low-income, disabled, elderly and pregnant residents, poses one of the biggest problems to the state budget: spending is projected to far outpace the state’s revenue over the next several years, I reported. That’s even before factoring in federal cuts from provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Trump administration’s targeting of Minnesota. 

CoreCivic, the private prison company opening a new immigrant detention center in Appleton, has offered to pay the city more than $1.2 million per year to cover lost tax revenue, Madi reported. 

Thomas Lee wrote that the rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, threatens many of the white-collar professions on which Minnesota’s headquarters economy depends. 

A Wednesday shooting at an apartment complex near Loring Park in Minneapolis left three dead and multiple others injured, Max reported.

Ally Braun, a working mother, argued that public investment in childcare would help bolster the declining birth rate and, in turn, our workforce and economy. 

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