Trump returns to Minnesota with Midwesterner Vance to try to swing Democrat-leaning state
ST. CLOUD, Minnesota — ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — Donald Trump is bringing his campaign back to Minnesota, a state that favors Democrats but which the former president believes he can win this year.
Trump will hold a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night, this time with his running mate JD Vance and the expectation that Trump will run against Vice President Kamala Harris in November instead of president Joe Biden.
In May, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made a point of calling on the iron ore mine in northeastern Minnesota, where he hopes a large portion of the working-class and unionized population will switch to the Republicans after years of solid Democratic pedigree.
That’s also a group of potential voters that Trump’s campaign is trying to reach in particular with Vance, a senator from Ohio, since he himself comes from a city in the Rust Belt of the Midwest.
Attracting Midwesterners and union members is something that has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats being screened for possible Harris’ running mate.
Minnesota is a state where Trump fell 1.5 percentage points short of beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden extended the Democratic victory by beating Trump by more than 7 percentage points.
But the former Republican president is optimistic about the state.
In a memo last month to the campaign and the Republican National Committee, Trump political director James Blair called Minnesota a battleground where Trump compares favorably to Biden, their then-opponent. He also said the campaign was hiring there and opening eight offices in the state.
The campaign did not make it clear on Friday whether those eight offices were open.
Earlier this month, Republican congressional candidate Tayler Rahm dropped out of his primary and began serving as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign in the state.
“The Biden/Harris administration has been so disastrous, and the Democrats are in such disarray, that President Trump not only leads every traditional swing state, but also longtime Democratic states like Minnesota, Virginia and New Jersey are in play,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement.
Lexi Byler, communications director for Harris’ Minnesota campaign, said Trump and Vance “are completely out of alignment with the values of Minnesotans and the state is not going to be won by a Republican presidential candidate this year.”
“Democrats are excited and taking nothing for granted, with a powerful, well-organized, coordinated campaign and thousands of volunteers ready to elect Kamala Harris to continue fighting for them,” she said in a statement.