WASHINGTON – The home stretch of an election season is always nutty, but this one seems especially bizarre.
Voters seem to be subjected to more attack ads, amplified by social media. This is also the year when deepfake campaign commercials have become prevalent and commonplace.
Then there are the polls, so many that pollsters say they can’t keep up with demand as the number of tight races have proliferated.
In Minnesota, both chambers of the Legislature are in play and there’s an unexpectedly close race for the U.S. Senate between Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Republican former sportscaster Michele Tafoya and other competitive races.
Historically, the party in power does poorly in the midterm. But this year, that party in power, the GOP, is really playing defense, even in the most Republican parts of the country, giving up help to some incumbents whose races have already been considered lost to staunch the bleeding in other parts of the nation.
This week, the top Senate Republican super PAC shifted $1.2 million to Mississippi to help Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is in a tougher-than-expected fight to keep her seat against Democratic challenger Scott Colom. Mississippi hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982.
There’s another reason this midterm election is unusual.
A Fox News poll released this week showed that government corruption topped the list of voter concerns, beating out inflation and health care.
According to the poll, the top five voter concerns were government corruption (60% extremely concerned), inflation (58%), gas prices (50%), government leadership (49%), and healthcare (48%).
And by double digits, respondents to the Fox News poll said they had more trust in Democrats than Republicans to handle those concerns.
The Democrats are seen as better on healthcare (D+22), inflation (D+16), gas prices (D+12), voting rights (D+12), election integrity (D+12), government leadership (D+11), what’s taught in public schools (D+11), artificial intelligence (D+10), government corruption (D+10) and foreign policy (D+9).
The last time government corruption was top of mind for voters was in the 2006 midterm, and that concern was driven heavily by lobbying scandals and ethical violations involving members of Congress.
The Fox News poll also determined that President Donald Trump’s overall approval rating was 36%.
During a visit to Kansas this week, President Donald Trump said the U.S. Department of Agriculture will launch a new “harvest fuel relief program” that will provide farmers with $8 billion in support to offset diesel costs during the harvest season.
Farmers – and others who use diesel fuel, including truckers – have suffered from a sharp hike in diesel fuel prices because of the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz and other factors that have boosted the cost of that fuel.
The money, to be paid in November, would come from the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act. That’s the same program the USDA used to give emergency payments to farmers earlier this year to offset losses from Trump’s tariff policy, which resulted in a loss of markets and higher input costs.
Minnesota farmers, who grow a lot of corn, wheat and soybeans, will benefit sooner than others from this program since the payouts for these “Title 1” commodities will come first.
The USDA said the payment methodology for other eligible commodities “will be announced at a later date.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-5th District, whose Washington, D.C., home was raided by Department of Homeland Security agents last week, said in an interview with MS NOW on Wednesday that she is now forced to move out of the house.
“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there,” Omar said. “So we have to figure out where to move to because our address has been public, and with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them.”
Omar also said about 25 agents were involved in the five-hour raid and that they seized her phone, another older phone, her youngest daughter’s old phone, her husband’s notebooks and a camera her husband had been given by his uncle. She also said they took a Somali phrase book for children, which her husband was using to learn the language.
Investigators are looking into whether Omar or her late father made false statements about her age during the citizenship process.
After fleeing with her family from Somalia’s civil war and living in a refugee camp in Kenya for four years, Omar came to the United States in 1995 at the age of 12.
She said she takes the matter seriously but doesn’t believe the federal government has a case to prosecute her.
“It would be a huge undertaking to, I suppose, indict a 12-year-old for being so cleverly conspiring to defraud immigration services to come to the United States,” she told MS NOW. “I’m sure there are a lot of smart 12-year-olds, but that seems like a leap.”
In other news:
▪️State Government reporter Matthew Blake has a piece about Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s detailed and ambitious agenda should she win her race for governor.
▪️Metro reporter Trevor Mitchell wrote that the number of serious crimes in Metro Transit buses, trains, stations and parking lots has fallen from highs in 2023, but the perception of safety at those public places is complicated.
▪️President Donald Trump’s promised to “drain the swamp” – that is, rid Washington, D.C., of special-interest lobbying – but the political influence business is thriving in Minnesota and across the nation.
▪️Video producer Taylor Canas has a story about what’s next for the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul and its planned land bridge.
Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to respond. I can be reached at aradelat@minnpost.com.
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