In Minnesota governor’s race, DFL looks for face of the future
The 12-year state attorney general and an accomplished trial lawyer, but a more private politician now looking to lead
A teacher-soldier-congressman from
"The stakes are enormous," said
In their own way, each DFL candidate is contending with the forces that have pushed the upper
Murphy, the DFL-endorsed candidate and a six-term state representative from
"I feel like I've had the best seat in the house in the past two years of our politics, as I watch Minnesotans grab ... the reins of our democracy and take us in a different direction," Murphy, 58, said in a recent interview.
Walz, a
Walz, 54, thinks greater
"If there's 100 people in the room and 99 are with me, and one isn't, I'll talk to the one for a really long time," Walz said recently. "I really want to know why are you dissatisfied."
Swanson, 51, jumped into the race late, in June, and is banking on an older model of politics. The attorney general since 2007, her three statewide wins mean she's well-known to voters -- mostly through suing companies accused of malfeasance. Her campaign strategy relies on years of trust she's tried to build with Minnesotans, with less deference to recent ideological trends on the left.
Her focus: pragmatism and results.
"We're about getting things done and moving the state forward," Swanson told a gathering at Cirrus Aircraft in
She ticked off a range of issues left undone by the Legislature this year, including aligning the state tax code with the new federal tax rules, and confronting the opioid crisis. It was a subtle rebuke of DFL Gov.
"My record and background are as a practical problem-solver for the betterment of the public," Swanson said in a later interview, citing the recent
Swanson's lawyerly demeanor is a bit at odds with the gregarious style that candidates for governor typically adopt. While touring the Cirrus plant, she walked up to engineers and introduced herself: "Hi, I'm
Later, in a neighborhood up the hill from
She described how
After reading his eighth-grade valedictorian speech -- in which he extolled the American virtue of making the seemingly impossible come true -- she said, "I'm running for governor because I believe in possibilities."
Walz, who crafted a moderate persona to appeal to southern
After the convention, Walz reset his campaign. He recently walked through his old classroom at
Walz looked at home at the front of the classroom where he taught geography, his teaching enriched by time in
"It's time for an educator to be governor of
On a drive to
"These farms have been in these families for 100 years. If you go bankrupt, you're not just losing your job and you go get another one," he said. "You're losing an entire legacy of five generations."
He critiqued fellow
If the only people voting in the DFL primary were the Minnesotans gathered at the coffee shop and wine bar called the Hideaway in
Health care, he said, is his No. 1 issue. "And I will be voting for her," he said of Murphy.
Later, at a picnic for SEIU health care workers in
But Murphy also knows that many DFL voters are driven this year by anxiety, and that every hero needs its supervillain.
"We recognize that the powerful interests inside the
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