The Minnesota GOP is broke and struggling to contain the fringe

Minnesota Republicans haven’t won a statewide race since 2006, and thus far they have failed to recruit a serious 2024 challenger against U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar — likely because candidates don’t want to play the part of the sacrificial lamb. 

During a Saturday meeting of the GOP State Central Committee, a group calling itself Rebuild the MNGOP will try to remove state party leaders, including party Chair David Hann. 

They aren’t expected to succeed, but it counts as another distraction as the party tries to regroup following a series of electoral defeats culminating in the devastating 2022 election. That’s when Democrats won a surprising trifecta and spent the next six months turning Minnesota into a progressive model for the rest of the nation. 

“If this was a football team … we would call this a rebuilding year,” said former GOP operative Michael Brodkorb. “They hit rock bottom on Election Day.”

Despite recent history, however, Republicans have at least some reason for optimism. The likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump nearly won the state in 2016, and a wave of Republican candidates rode his coattails to majorities in both the House and Senate that year. A recent MinnPost poll shows Trump in a dead heat with President Joe Biden. 

The war in Gaza has revealed deep divisions in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, especially in the Senate, where more than a dozen members recently condemned state Sen. Ron Latz for comments he made about Palestinian children. 

Although the state Senate will not be on the ballot next year, the House DFL maintains a narrow 70-64 advantage. Republicans say a backlash is brewing against the 2023 session’s taxing and spending that took the state from a $17 billion surplus into a potential budget deficit. 

Still, if Republicans are to win again in Minnesota, they face some major challenges. 

“We’re just lost,” said Amy Koch, a Republican lobbyist and former Senate majority leader. “I don’t know how we pull out of this.” 

The Reformer talked to current and former GOP operatives, who identified three broad problems: Money, messaging and MAGA.

$53 in the bank

After a devastating 2022 election, Republicans were left reeling. Some big donors threatened to leave the state, and at one point this year, the party had just $53 in cash on hand and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Hann took over as chair of the party in 2021, after a federal sex trafficking scandal related to a prominent donor and allegations of a toxic work environment led to the fall of former Chair Jennifer Carnahan. 

Hann promised to erase the party’s debt, but hasn’t been able to yet, which he’s blamed in part on the cost of dealing with the Carnahan fallout and subsequent litigation with her. (She told party activists in a recent email that Hann is merely deflecting blame.)

John Rouleau, executive director of the Republican-aligned Minnesota Jobs Coalition, said the state party had to pay Carnahan’s severance with a maxed-out line of credit.

Federal Election Commission reports show the party with $145,000 cash on hand and $414,000 in debt. The most recent state campaign finance report, which doesn’t include any 2023 data, shows $8,000 cash on hand and $76,000 in debt.

Rouleau said donor interest has picked up, and he expects the party to put up decent fundraising numbers heading into 2024. After a sweeping loss, donors’ natural reaction is to pull back and reassess, he said.

A Republican insider, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal party matters, said Hann is capable and has credibility with the donor class, and it’s not fair to attribute the party’s money problems to him. Replacing him with a right-wing zealot would put the party in dire straits, he said.

“Any chair would be in the current situation,” he said. “If you think the 414 ($414,000 in debt) is bad now just wait until you get zero dollars coming in the door.”

Messaging: ‘Nobody wants to give money to that’ 

Koch attributes fundraising woes to bad messaging from bad candidates. She said Republicans who are tired of the DFL trifecta and “woke nonsense” need to stop putting up candidates who can’t win, and stop with the “horrible messaging.”

“It’s not something people want to give money to when you’re just angry all the time and you don’t stand for anything and you’re not winning. And you have campaigns that are put up there that are not ready for prime time, and they don’t represent their districts and they’re saying wackadoodle things,” she said. “Nobody wants to give money to that.”

Rather than focusing on opposition to the DFL’s wide-ranging legislative agenda this year, for instance, some Republicans were busy comparing President Joe Biden to murderous tyrants Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, claiming there are no hungry people in Minnesota,  ranting about schools “teaching kids to be gay,” calling COVID-19 vaccines death shots, and claiming the 2020 election was stolen.

Brodkorb said some Republicans learned from their mistakes, like 2022 GOP nominee for governor Scott Jensen, who has said the party needs to approach issues — most notably abortion — with a more realistic understanding of Minnesotans’ attitudes. (Jensen still, however, continues to raise money off his doctor-against-vaccines persona.)

“I think that the party is slowly climbing out,” Brodkorb said.  

‘Bats*** crazy people’

A de-emphasis on caucuses and party endorsements — which tend to elevate the party’s most radical voices — and an early primary election in June would “avoid a lot of the crazy” and attract more mainstream candidates, the GOP insider said. (Elected officials aren’t keen on the early primary, however, because they are at the Capitol into May and restricted from fundraising.)  

The GOP source blames social media for giving “bat(expletive) crazy people” a place to communicate, spread misinformation and organize.

Rouleau, with the Jobs Coalition, said the party should focus on its strengths and turn to others for help. In the post-Citizens United age of super PACs, he thinks state parties should focus on finding volunteers, getting out the vote and planning conventions.

Hann has worked to engage the grassroots, doing a “massive tour” around the state, he said.

He’s had his missteps, though. He promoted a right-wing activist connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection who held an event at a Sauk Rapids honky-tonk with Confederate memorabilia.

“That’s exactly what we don’t need,” Brodkorb said. “The party has to stay away from that stuff.”

The party needs to focus on rebuilding, re-examining its goals and reprioritizing, Brodkorb said, or it will have a credibility problem with donors and difficulty attracting quality candidates. The party needs to prove it’s worth investing in, he said.

Koch is dismayed at what the party has become. Conventions, she said, used to be fun even amid insurgent candidacies, Koch said. She chaired the 2008 “dumpster fire of a convention” when an influx of new people showed up to support libertarian icon Ron Paul. But some of his supporters stuck around afterward and got involved in the party.

“I like new people in the party,” she said. “But this is just angry people. Why would anybody want to get engaged with the party? You just go to these conventions, and everybody’s just yelling at each other, and we supposedly believe most of the same things … like conservative principles, fiscal common sense, strong national defense, communist Russia bad.”

Now, however, it’s all about Trump, she said.

“The fringe is never what runs the party. They have to have messages and messengers to bring in the people who’ve left. The everyday, normal, fiscally conservative Republicans. They have to get back to the basics, and get people organized and showing up.”