Can the DFL keep the Third Congressional District without Dean Phillips?

At a fundraiser at an Applebee’s restaurant in Plymouth last week, Republican congressional candidate Tad Jude mingled with a clutch of orange T-shirted supporters, all hoping he will be the candidate to flip the district.

The Third Congressional District, encompassing inner-ring suburbs and including some of the state’s wealthiest cities in Edina and around Lake Minnetonka, was a Republican stronghold until outgoing Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat, won in the 2018 “blue wave” election.

Now, as Jude faces off against former state Sen. Kelly Morrison, who has raised almost seven times what Jude has according to Federal Election Commission filings, some at Jude’s party wondered if Republicans can still win in the district.

“I’m not sure whether it’s changed, or whether we’ve always been more centrist,” said Nancy Miller of Maple Grove. “It’s always been more moderate-leaning.”

Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin grew up in Eden Prairie, and remembered the district was once solidly conservative, from city councils all the way up through its representatives in Congress.

“The Third District used to be one of the most red districts in the state,” Martin said. But he said there was more variation among Republicans in the 1980s and 1990s. Republicans who represented parts of the district were fiscally conservative, but tended to be more liberal on social issues, including some who supported abortion rights.

“The composition of those voters is still the same,” Martin said. But he sees today’s Republican Party as increasingly out-of-step with those voters, especially as the state party has focused on voters in greater Minnesota.

David Hann, chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, said the GOP is trying to reach voters in all parts of the state, both in the metro and in greater Minnesota.

“We have not abandoned the effort to try and win those voters,” Hann said of suburbanites.

But Martin said he started to see the GOP’s grip on the suburbs loosening 20 years ago, when Democrat John Kerry won Edina in the 2004 presidential election.

“That’s the moment when I really knew there was a sea change coming in Minnesota politics,” he said. The DFL by then was competitive in suburbs like St. Louis Park, Richfield and Bloomington, but Martin saw Edina’s flip as “really quite remarkable,” he said. “You could see the wind started to change out there.”

It took another 14 years for a Democrat to win the Third Congressional District.

Since he became chair of the DFL in 2010, Martin said suburbs have been his main focus. He said the party has spent a lot of time and resources recruiting candidates for school board, city council and legislative contests.

“I think it would be reductive to say it was just I that flipped the district,” Phillips said of his win in 2018. That win came after years of organizing, he said, and amid growing dissatisfaction with former Republican President Donald Trump.

“I think I was the beneficiary of good timing,” Phillips said.

While the open seat in a historically-Republican district could look like a Republican pickup opportunity, Martin said he was confident of the DFL’s organization in that part of the metro. “If you look deeper in the Third District, almost every legislative seat is controlled by Democrats.”

Hann said he sees Democrats’ focus on the suburbs as coming at the expense of greater Minnesota.

Morrison said she sees some partisan shift in the district, but not much. “Those of us who have lived in the Third for a long time know this is a purple district.”

Voters want to see compromise, Morrison said, so she is talking to voters about the bipartisan bills she has worked on in the Legislature.

Morrison said she is also talking about abortion rights, leaning on her career as a practicing OB-GYN. The issue cuts across party lines, she said.

For Jude, appealing to the district’s moderates means talking about his work as a judge, trying to listen to both sides. “Most of the jobs I have had have been nonpartisan,” Jude said of his long career in the public sector, which has included stints in the Legislature and as a Hennepin County commissioner as well as judge.

He also hopes some voters for Vice President Kamala Harris will split their tickets and vote for him and for Republican legislative candidates.

Jude and some of his supporters said they thought Phillips was uniquely suited to flip the district.

“I think the world of Dean Phillips as a campaigner and as a person,” said Lisa Schneegans of Lakeville, who attended Jude’s event. “He changed the district.”

Phillips thinks ideological shifts in the Republican Party are as responsible for the party losing grip on the Third District as stronger DFL organizing. Jude is something of a holdover of an earlier Republican era, Phillips said.

“The party that Tad Jude represented 50 years ago doesn’t exist anymore,” Phillips said.

Hann noted that Jude first entered public life as a Democrat some 50 years ago and became a Republican later. “Maybe the Democrat Party has changed, and not him.”

Phillips said it is key to pick the right candidate for what he — and Morrison, and Jude — see as a purplish district.

Though he does not support him, Phillips think Jude was a good choice for the Republican nominee.

“He fits the model of what those Third District voters want,” Phillips said.

Schneegans agreed. “He’s not a far-right candidate. This district is not a far-right district.”

Though Jude’s supporters said they see Morrison as much more liberal than Phillips, Phillips himself said Morrison’s views are largely in line with his. He called Morrison a “thoughtful, common sense, pro-business, pro-human candidate.”

Though the district seems to be tilting toward Democrats, Phillips thinks the district could still be competitive if the right people ran.

“There are not many Democrats that could win in the Third,” Phillips said. “And frankly, a handful of Republicans who could.”