The path to winning rural Minnesota votes

Before former DFL state Rep. Doug Peterson retires from the presidency of the Minnesota Farmers Union at year’s end — and before the F (for Farmer) in DFL fades into oblivion — I invited him to offer a few pointers on how to keep this state from splitting into warring metro and rural political tribes. I’d barely landed in my seat when he started schooling me on his party’s failures in the Nov. 8 election.“The Democrats didn’t have a message for rural people!” an animated Peterson said. “They didn’t feel they had to come to the rural areas and talk to us! You can’t win elections in Minnesota without rural people!” Actually, Hillary Clinton just demonstrated that a candidate can get trounced in rural Minnesota and still carry the state. But this election also showed that the DFL cannot hold majorities in the Legislature with a statewide victory as skewed to the Twin Cities, Rochester and Duluth as Clinton’s was.Democrats didn’t just lose by a little in Greater Minnesota. They saw a massive voter exodus. Some telling numbers, courtesy of DFL vote tally wizard Brian Rice: Clinton chalked up 457,000 votes in Greater Minnesota’s 80 counties, compared with President Obama’s 609,000 in 2012. That’s the loss of one of every four voters who favored the Democratic candidate for president four years ago.Further: Seven of the eight state Senate seats that switched from DFL to GOP control were in Greater Minnesota — while two suburban seats that Republicans had held switched to the DFL.