How did Minnesota get the way it is?
A state that by all rights should be a "purple" state, with an almost perfectly evenly-divided legislature and a 4-4 GOP/DFL divide in its US House elegation where Republicans have nonetheless not won a statewide race for Governor, US Senate, Attorney General, State Auditor or Secretary of State in almost 20 years, and where the DFL manage to inflict a rash of hyper-"progressive" legislation (while they held the "trifecta" of power, the Governor's office and both chambers of the legislature in 2023-2024) so extreme it got the hapless Tim Walz the nod for Vice President, and gave the likes of Zohran Mamdani and Abby Spanberger the the stimili for their "hold my beer" moments?
As a transplant to the state a few decades back, I have a bunch of theories: easily-exploitable Scandinavian communitarianism is the least pejorative of them.
But one of my theories might be seen to be playing out as we speak.
You've heard Minneapolis was the big story this past few weeks, as ICE went 'round and 'round with the local "look at us, we're the #resistance!" progressive crowd.
And wouldn't you just know it, this whole fracas happened just as the story of the DFL's biggest-in-the-nation fraud racket started making belated national headlines. I'm not saying the DFL engineered an insta-mob and a battle over ICE to draw attention away from the DFL's fraud woes - but if they had, how would things have looked any different?
Let's go back in history.
It's 2012. The Minnesota GOP controlled the House and Senate by a razor-thin margin, while the governor was DFLer Mark Dayton. Two constitutional amendments made it to the ballot; one that would have mandated the presentation of a government ID to vote (which, then as now, was supported by a supermajority of people nationwide, and according to polls a majority, even among Democrats, in Minnesots) and an amendment legalizing same-sex marriage (approved of by a majority of Minnesotans in all parties).
The DFL ran a masterful, if deeply cynical, PR campaign that managed to link the two issues, at least at an emotional level, among low-propensity voters, the people who don't really start paying attention to elections until a few weeks before election day; the campaign painted support for the same sex marriage amendment as a vote for "love" - and by the way, since voting yes on same sex marriage would make right the dehumanization of gays, might as well vote "no" on dehumanizing people by making them bring an ID to vote.
Or something like that. Sounds preposterous, right?
At first glance, requiring photo ID to vote seems like a no-brainer, as it did to 80 percent of people surveyed in a 2011 Minneapolis Star Tribune poll. This is because the majority of voters have photo ID, as do most of the people that they know who go to vote.
As recently as five months ago, the amendment appeared positioned for easy passage. Public Policy Polling’s first survey in June asking voters if they supported or opposed a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID, 58 percent supported the amendment and only 34 percent opposed it.
When asked again in September, support for the amendment had only eroded by two percent, while the numbers standing in opposition were beginning to grow — to 39 percent in September, and then to 43 percent in October. While the gap was narrowing, it appeared passage was still imminent.
But wouldn't you know it - it worked. Not only did same sex marriage pass, but Voter ID failed:
In a dramatic reversal, Minnesotans [in 2012] rejected a constitutional amendment that would have required voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot. The measure had enjoyed strong popular support just weeks earlier.
The DFL managed to get voters to forget what they'd actually clearly believed not a year earlier and make a vote that belied their actual sentiments, not only then but likely now, by inducing people to link the two votes on a purely emotional level.
So - moving back to today: Governor Walz, his attorney General Ellison, and a fair chunk of the executive branch (controlled by the DFL for the past 16 or more years) are in trouble for fraud - but managed to get a huge swath of Minnesota public opinion, at least among the most audible parts of the Twin Cities metro, to support him on ICE and "Operation Metro Surge".
So why not link the two, and count on the highly schooled but badly educated low information high propensity white progressive voter that wields so much power to have another emotional, knee-jerk reaction come election time?
Which brings us to this statement:
A manic Tim Walz claims he’s the one who actually cares about prosecuting fraud in Minnesota, unlike the federal government:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 10, 2026
"Fraud is a long forgotten thing for everybody except me!" pic.twitter.com/Q1Kn3MOFTb
He's the only one thinking about fraud? That's preposterous, and clearly aimed at gaslighting those willing to be gaslit.
But here's the quote that caught my attention:
The federal government sent us no one who was an expert in fraud prevention or fraud discovery or fraud prosecution. hey sent untrained people on the streets to push people down or try and follow teachers home.
Did you catch that? It sounds like a mental slip, mixing up the surge against the "Sanctuary City" with the investigation of fraud.
But I think it's just as likely intentional: the first part of a campaign to get highly schooled, badly educated, low information, high propensity white progressives to conflate the issues for this fall.
You might think it's too preposterous to work. I say, "Remember 2012".
