‘Remember, This is the City Where George Floyd was Killed’

“Too many people,” said Doug Bargfrede, an inventory manager for a John Deere dealer, after declining a pin from a Walz volunteer. “Not a chance,” he told him.

The state Republican Party, for the most part, hadn’t helped itself to take advantage of what appears to be a favorable midterm climate nationally for the GOP. Entering the election cycle, the state party apparatus was in chaos, with Jennifer Carnahan, the state’s then-chair, resigning last year amid accusations of mismanagement and the indictment on federal sex-trafficking charges of a GOP donor she was close to. The party installed a new, non-controversial chair.

But even then, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was working against the GOP. It could hit Democrats on inflation. But the state budget was in surplus, Minnesota unemployment had dropped to the lowest in the nation, and the coronavirus pandemic, as it has elsewhere, began receding as an issue of concern.

Then there was the party’s less-than-all-star cast of nominees. When Scott Jensen, the Republican nominee for governor, isn’t walking back his positions on abortion, he’s likening mask mandates to Nazi Germany. His running mate, lieutenant governor candidate and former Minnesota Vikings center Matt Birk, has linked abortion to American culture “telling women they should look a certain way, they should have careers,” while Kim Crockett, the GOP’s nominee for secretary of state, is an election denier who described changing election laws as “our 9/11.”

Given that roster of candidates, Schultz — Ellison’s challenger — was an unexpected reprieve for the Minnesota GOP, defeating Doug Wardlow, the MyPillow attorney and failed 2018 attorney general candidate, in the primary. Instead of Wardlow, a far-right — and likely less-electable — ally of the pillow company’s Mike Lindell, Minnesota’s most famous election conspiracy theorist, the state party got a 36-year-old lawyer who wore a campaign logo on his blue polo at the fair evocative of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s vests.

He is not without liabilities. In a state where large majorities of voters support abortion rights, Schultz said during the primary that he helped to set up a crisis pregnancy center in Mankato and would “be the one going on offense” on the issue of abortion. Then there’s his work as a hedge fund lawyer, and his sidestepping of questions about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Seated on a raised patio behind the state GOP’s booth at the fair, Schultz repeatedly declined in an interview to say if the election was fair, retreating to his statement of fact that “Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”

However, Schultz said, “I’ve never used the word ‘stolen’ or anything like that.” And there are reasons to think that he could appeal to the suburban voters Republicans need to win an election in Minnesota. His support for an abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy is so within the mainstream of conservative thought that, during the primary, Wardlow derided him as “Pro-choice Jim.”

One senior Republican Party official in the state who spoke to me on condition of anonymity so he could provide a candid assessment described the quality of Jensen as a candidate as “not great,” and Birk as a “liability.”

But Schultz?

“He’s our best chance,” the official said. “He can defy what happens to the other [candidates].”