The assassination and assassination of two minnesota legislators should break, once and for all, the myth of the exceptionalism of Minnesota. The reality is that Minnesota has become a microcosm of polarization and political tensions that torment the United States today. These are, in fact, two separate and, if not uneven, at least very different states.
The myth of the exceptionalism of Minnesota is deep. Minnesotans often celebrate what they believe to be the unique character of their culture. This feeling dates back to one of the most famous writers in Minnesota, Sinclair Lewis, who satiated local boosterism through the character of George Babbitt.
He lived in the cover of Time magazine in 1973 with the then government. Wendell Anderson with the proclamation “Good life in Minnesota”. Or in the pastoral image of Garrison Keillor’s “Home Companion Prairie”, with his portrait of a place “where all women are strong, all men are beautiful and all children are above average”.
Minnesota is known for its heritage of progressive democratic politicians – Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone. The political scientist Daniel Elazar described the State as having a “moralist political culture” rooted in volunteering and civic commitment. Minnesota systematically ranks among the highest in the country of the participation rate, per capita income and secondary graduation rates. It is also the country of “Minnesota Nice”, a concept suggesting decency and civility in public life.
However, below the surface of this minnesota, Nice is another reality. The murder of George Floyd five years ago should have deposited this. Minnesota has some of the country’s worst racial disparities. While white students thrive, diploma rates, colleges registration and the results of standardized tests for colored students are among the worst in the country. Racial gaps persist in housing, employment and the criminal justice system.
Politically and geographically, Minnesota is deeply divided. Although often labeled a reliably democratic state – having voted for the last time Republican for the president in 1972 – Donald Trump has almost winning in 2016 and 2024. The state legislature is almost uniformly divided: the state Senate has 34 democrats and 33 Republicans, and before Melissa Hortman was murdered, the lower house had 67 Democrats. Minnesota is one of the three states with a divided legislature, because political trifectas dominate a large part of the rest of the country.
As I have discussed for years, Minnesota is a political swing state. Strong partisan divisions exist between the regions, with only a dozen of the 87 counties of the state regularly voting democratic. Drive just 20 miles from where Hortman was murdered and the political field moves quickly. In 2024, we could see Harris’ gardening panels in Trump in a single motorway section.
Geography divides us, but also culture. The same moralist spirit which once defined the policy of Minnesota now feeds passionate polarization. In 2022, the Democrats briefly held a narrow trifecta and promulgating a radical program of which national democrats could only dream – codifying the rights of abortion in a more extensive manner than ROE v. Wade. Despite being largely pro-Choix, the state also contains bastions of intense opposition to reproductive rights.
If this description of Minnesota looks a lot like the United States more widely, it is because it is. Minnesota is both unique and yet fully entangled in the same political, cultural and ideological battles gripping the nation. It reflects the rupture of political consensus and the growing temperature of our public discourse.
The political assassinations in Minnesota were the first in its history. And yet, many friends, neighbors and observers through the state and the country always think – like the title of another novel by Sinclair Lewis – that “it cannot happen here”. But it did. And he can. In an exceptional thought for a long time, we must now ask ourselves: What does that tell us about the degeneration of political discourse in America today?
Schultz is a distinguished professor of Hamline University of political science and legal studies in Saint Paul, Minn.
