According to Democrats, one of the reasons Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is his appeal to rural voters in the so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Democrats, with the help of the compliant media, are shamelessly selling the fiction that Walz has rural appeal. A New York Times opinion piece offered this: “What a relief, then, to see emerge on the national stage the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz who embodies the earnest, human rural people who shaped me and the prairie populism that shaped the progressive foundations of the Great Plains.”

Rural Minnesota apparently never got the memo. Let’s set the record straight.

In 2022, Walz won a second term as Minnesota governor by 192,408 votes. Running against a weaker opponent (Dr. Scott Jensen) than in 2018, Walz won by a margin of 103,000 fewer votes than in his first gubernatorial election in 2018 (when he won by 295,391).

His gubernatorial elections definitively shatter the notion that Walz appeals to rural voters.

In 2022, Walz won thirteen of Minnesota’s 87 counties, while Jensen won 74. Further, in most of the counties Jensen won, he won overwhelmingly. Of the 74 counties Jensen won, he won 61 by a margin greater than 20 percentage points, 33 by over 30 points, and 13 by over 40. Only three of the 74 counties Jensen won were by less than five points. Walz had virtually no appeal in the rural areas of the state.

Walz won Minnesota’s cities, particularly Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the respective suburbs, by huge margins. He also won Duluth (by a large margin), Rochester, and Mankato (the area Walz represented in Congress) by more competitive margins. Jensen won everywhere else.

Hennepin (Minneapolis) and Ramsey (St. Paul) counties account for nearly half the votes cast in the state. Adding the other cities account for about 60 percent of the votes cast in Minnesota.

The population of Hennepin County is over 1.2 million. Ramsey’s population is over 530,00. Four more Twin Cities exurb counties have populations ranging from 200,000 to the mid-400,000 range. Minnesota has four counties with over 100,000 people, leaving 74 counties with no more than 70,000 residents.

Remember, 74 counties. The number Jensen won.

Walz dominated Minnesota’s two largest counties (Hennepin and Ramsey). He won Hennepin (Minneapolis) 70 percent to 27 percent. He won Hennepin County by 251,000 votes – in an election, he won statewide by 192,408.

Walz won the statewide election by less than his margin in Minneapolis alone versus the state’s 74 rural counties, but he also won the state’s other cities.

Walz won Ramsey County (St. Paul) 72 percent to 25 percent, a margin of 101,000 votes. Throw in Duluth, which he won by 20 points and 18,000 votes. 

Even with huge margins in rural areas, Jensen couldn’t overcome the margins in Minnesota’s largest metropolitan areas.

The problem Minnesota Republicans, including Jensen, have is that the party doesn’t have candidates with appeal in Minneapolis and St. Paul, such as Norm Coleman, a former St. Paul Mayor. 

Coleman and Democrat Skip Humprey lost the 1998 gubernatorial race in a shocking upset to former wrestler Jesse “the Body” Ventura. However, Coleman ran for statewide office again in 2002, winning a U.S. Senate seat. He lost Hennepin County by four percentage points and less than 25,000 votes. That’s what it takes for a Republican to win statewide in Minnesota.

Coleman lost his re-election bid to Al Franken in 2008 by 312 votes (out of over three million cast) in an extremely close and controversial election with plenty of monkey business. Ballots turned up in car trunks days later but were counted as Coleman watched his lead slip away. 

Franken’s attorney said, “Find the ballots,” and not a single Democrat called for throwing him in jail, but that was before the orange menace.

Minnesota Republicans must develop candidates who can at least compete in the Twin Cities to win statewide elections here. If Republicans keep Hennepin and Ramsey Counties within ten points, they easily win statewide.

If all these numbers and percentages are confusing, a picture is worth a thousand words. A red and blue map shows the results more clearly.

The map shows the blue areas of the state. What’s labeled Minneapolis is Minneapolis-St. Paul and its exurbs. Also labeled are the blue cities of Rochester and Duluth. Two blue areas not labeled are Mankato in the southern center of the state and Clay County in the western part of the state, which is suburban Moorhead, North Dakota.

The rest of the state is very rural and very Republican. In fairness to Walz, he did better than Hillary did in 2016. She won seven of Minnesota’s 87 counties. She won the state by just under 44,000 votes while carrying Hennepin and Ramsey Counties by a combined 243,666 votes (whether the 666 was a coincidence or a sign is up for debate). 

Walz won Hennepin County alone by more than 251,000 votes in 2022. His far-left ideology was far more popular in the city he allowed to burn two years earlier than Hillary. 

Maybe the thousands of rioters appreciated the freedom to riot, burn (including burning the third precinct police station to the ground), loot, and kill a few citizens. To show their appreciation, Minneapolis and St. Paul sent Walz back to the governor’s mansion to enact an agenda so leftist that it may have brought tears to the eyes of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. 

Walz’s far-left record is a major factor in choosing the little-known Walz as her running mate over the more moderate and pro-Israel Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro.

Despite the flannel shirts and other packaging suggesting he’s a Midwesterner who hunts and fishes, Walz can’t win rural areas in Minnesota. If voters in Walz’s state don’t buy the act, rural voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania shouldn’t buy it either.

What open-minded voters have learned about Walz during his introduction to the country as Harris’ running mate is that he has padded his military resume for political advantage over the past two-plus decades. Voters should study the bills he signed into law in Minnesota, and if they believe his description of Trump and Vance as weird, they should question why Walz spent $2 million to put free menstrual products in boy’s bathrooms of all public and charter schools (grades 4-12).

What they shouldn’t believe is that Walz appeals to rural voters. His election in Minnesota shows that he’s very popular in Minnesota’s cities – rural areas, not so much.

Andy Bloom is President of Andy Bloom Communications. He specializes in media training and political communications. He has programmed legendary stations including WIP, WPHT, WYSP/Philadelphia, KLSX, Los Angeles, and WCCO Minneapolis. He was Vice President of Programming for Emmis International, Greater Media Inc., and Coleman Research. Andy also served as communications director for Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio). He can be reached by email at andy@andybloom.com or you can follow him on Twitter at @AndyBloomCom.