On Walz' old congressional distirct in south central Minnesota

Jess Bidgood writes in her column in the New York Times today about Tim Walz' former congressional district and how its politics shifted in the years since he was elected to represent it in 2006.  Here are some excerpts:   

Walz beat an incumbent by nearly six percentage points to flip the district in 2006 and won it again by nearly 30 percentage points two years later. But as the rise of Trump drove more rural Republicans to the polls to vote for him, Walz hung on by less than one percentage point in 2016. Over the years, he and the First District seemed to draw apart from each other; he lost the district, which has been slightly redrawn over the years, when he ran for re-election in 2022.

“Greater Minnesota turned a darker red in more recent years,” said Amy Koch, a former State Senate majority leader and a Republican. “We’ve become so geographically dug in now.”
Disillusioned voters

The district had been held by a Republican for 12 years when Walz, a high school teacher in Mankato, first won the district in 2006. The growth of the city of Rochester, formerly a Republican stronghold that is home to the Mayo Clinic, helped give him a shot there amid the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the president then, said Blois Olson, a Minnesota political analyst.

Doug Schultz, an 81-year-old former dairy farmer who was catching up with a friend near the petting zoo at the Nicollet County Fair, said he remembered meeting Walz during that campaign at a parade in nearby New Ulm.

“Wherever he saw a crowd, he stopped and he gave us a sermon, and the parade kept on going — I don’t think he ever finished the parade,” Schultz, a longtime Republican, said.

It didn’t win him Schultz’s vote — but Walz did win over Mike Anderson, a farmer from Windom, Minn., which was part of the First District at the time. I spoke with Anderson at Farmfest, where he told me he has since become deeply disillusioned with Walz. Walz took liberal votes as a congressman, but as governor he has signed numerous bills that many voters in this conservative region believe tugged the state too far left.

“He’s very liberal. His spending is beyond control,” said Anderson, pointing to Walz’s support for stricter emissions standards and electric vehicles.