Election Eve: Minnesota candidates make their final pushes before polls open
EAGAN, Minn. -- Minnesota candidates up and down the ballot made their final election push on Monday, holding rallies and get-out-the-vote efforts in the crucial hours before polls open Tuesday morning.
Voters will weigh in on who should be the state's elected leaders, including governor, attorney general and their representative in Congress. Power in the legislature also hangs in the balance with all 201 seats on the ballot.
For their closing arguments, DFL candidates took their message on the road for a statewide bus tour over the weekend, which ended in the Twin Cities. Gov. Tim Walz's voice was hoarse by the time he gave his stump speech to supporters in Eagan Monday afternoon.
Walz doubled down on his final pitch, contrasting his vision for Minnesota with that of Republican challenger Dr. Scott Jensen, whose message to voters Walz characterizes as "dark." The Democratic incumbent is renewing his theme of building "one Minnesota" that defined his first bid for the office four years ago.
"When you're asking Minnesotans to make you governor and your only claim to that is that you're able to admire problems and then find what's wrong with Minnesota, or try and divide us or try to be pessimistic -- that's not what this job is," Walz said. "This job is meant to try and bring people together."
Meanwhile Jensen packed a barn with his supporters at a campaign rally in Delano Monday evening. He said Minnesota's elections -- and other states like Wisconsin and Michigan, which have close races for governor -- will "transform America," as Republicans face national tailwinds.
"We have lost our way and that's why we're standing up. Tim Walz is disrespecting us," Jensen said. "He thinks that the ball is on the three-yard line and all he needs to do get it across the goal line tomorrow, all he needs to have is the media and the money and the machine and they'll do it for him. But what he doesn't have is, folks, he does not have you. And you do truly represent a movement."
Walz, a former congressman and Mankato school teacher leads Jensen, a physician, in the polls by an average of four points, according to Real Clear Politics.
Midterm elections typically favor the political party not in the White House, but Republicans have not one statewide office in Minnesota since 2006. They're hoping to break the losing streak Tuesday.
Minnesota Republicans and Democrats drew their national party leaders to the state in the final days before the election, in a sign of how competitive many contests here are.
More than 580,000 Minnesotans had already voted early as of Monday, according to the secretary of state's office.
