Dem
47
GOP
53
And now, we head north to the great state of Minnesota. Uff da!
It took a while for Donald Trump to make his pick in the Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary, but he's finally done it, and bestowed his endorsement on the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell. On one hand, Lindell is fanatically loyal to Trump, to the point that he (Lindell) has basically bankrupted his pillow empire in service of his fealty to The Donald. On the other hand, Lindell may lose the primary, and will certainly lose the general if he makes it that far, and Trump hates to bet on a loser. So, it's no surprise that the President dragged his feet here.
Meanwhile, like Ken Paxton in Texas, Lindell had a voter registration scandal emerge over the weekend. In Lindell's case, the issue is not that he voted from the wrong address in Minnesota, it's that he never voted at all in Minnesota, as he's not even registered there. He's registered in Texas, where he moved to for several years, before moving back to run in the Minnesota gubernatorial election. Given that Lindell's entire political program is the sacred privilege of voting, and the importance of protecting the sanctity thereof, his blasé attitude about his own registration makes him look like a hypocrite. It also reminds Minnesotans that he's kind of a carpetbagger these days.
The only quality, or semi-quality polls of the GOP primary taken in the last month are from Big Data Poll (a Republican House) and SurveyUSA, which both gave Lindell a 5-point lead (25% to 20%, and 27% to 22%, respectively) over his nearest competitor, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Lisa DeMuth. That said, both polls had at least a quarter of the GOP primary electorate undecided, and both polls were taken before Trump waded in. So, they're not all that instructive.
On the DFL side of the gubernatorial election, it's Sen. Amy Klobuchar and a bunch of unknowns. She has the formal endorsement of the DFL, she has all the money, and she has vast name recognition. So, she's going to be the nominee. If Lindell is her general-election opponent, she will tear him to shreds. The one semi-recent poll (mid-June) of a hypothetical Klobuchar-Lindell matchup put her up by 17 points, 53% to 36%. If it's DeMuth, that improves things for the GOP, though Klobuchar is still up 8 on her, 48% to 40%. Democrats should definitely be rooting for Lindell, because not only is he the weaker opponent, but he's also likely to say kooky things that embarrass the GOP nationally. (Z)