Northern Minnesota congressional race reflects changing political makeup

DULUTH - Ahead in money and name recognition, U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber is blasting President Joe Biden instead of his Democratic challenger as he campaigns for a third term.

During a televised debate this week, the Republican congressman said he knows working families are doing "everything you can to stay afloat in Biden's failed economy, costing you thousands and thousands more each year. ... We must stop Joe Biden's reckless spending."

Pointing out that she — not the president — is Stauber's opponent, state Rep. Jen Schultz took aim at his voting record and said she'd build relationships across party lines to get things done.

"People are tired of the polarization," she said. "They want elected officials to deliver results, not play politics."

Stauber and Schultz face off in the Eighth Congressional District, once a Democratic stronghold concentrated on the Iron Range and Duluth, its largest city. That's changed as conservatism — and power — grows to the north of Duluth, south and west.

Stauber, a retired police officer and Hermantown resident who flipped the seat from Democratic control in 2018, won by nearly 20 percentage points in 2020. District voters chose Republican Donald Trump for president both that year and in 2016 by convincing margins.

The district's already-sprawling boundaries have grown. Redistricting this year expanded it to nearly 37,000 square miles, now encompassing all seven Minnesota Anishinaabe tribes and pushing farther west beyond Bemidji and south into the outer reaches of the metro.

Federal filings show more than $2 million has poured into Stauber's campaign, while Schultz has received just shy of $530,000.

Stauber is opposed to abortion, and in September he co-sponsored a House bill that would federally ban most abortions after 15 weeks. But he said abortion is not a top-of-mind issue for voters in his district.

"We hear about the gas prices, the 401(k)s being reduced," Stauber said during a campaign stop on the Iron Range last week. "That they can't send their children to the park to play without something violently happening to them. That's what I am hearing at the doors."

Yet Schultz said abortion access is a priority for many she talks to. A University of Minnesota Duluth economics professor and state legislator for eastern Duluth since 2015, she spoke in mid-October to a room full of retired railroad workers at a West Duluth American Legion post. Amid questions about pensions, gun control and her stance on controlling the border shared with Mexico, someone asked where she stood on abortion rights.

Decisions about abortion should be made between women and their doctors, she said, "and I believe that we have had these rights for 50 years and I am not going to go back."

The room of mostly men erupted in applause.

Schultz sees more to the race than what's on paper, she said.

"The DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and outside groups aren't looking at this race, but they should be," she said.

The district hasn't seen a landslide congressional DFL victory since 2008, when U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar bested Republican Michael Cummins by more than 35 percentage points.

Stauber has changed how he presents to voters, said Cynthia Rugeley, a political science professor at UMD.

He advertised himself as a bipartisan congressman during his first term, and now, "he's overtly partisan," she said. "That tells you something about the makeup of the district."

Votes on infrastructure and elections

In their first debate Wednesday, Stauber and Schultz attacked each other's records and clashed on abortion, the student loan forgiveness program and ways to combat inflation. Stauber repeatedly tore into Biden, blaming him for high heating bills and gas prices.

Both Schultz and Stauber agreed on the value of mining in northeastern Minnesota, and that proposed copper-nickel mining be done safely. But Stauber said Schultz built her career on "anti-mining activism," while Schultz said Stauber has failed to secure federal funding to study safe ways to conduct copper-nickel mining, which has never been done in Minnesota.

The pair will debate twice more, in Brainerd and Hibbing.

In an interview, Schultz said people aren't happy with Stauber's voting record. Stauber opposed Democrats' $1.9 trillion stimulus package responding to the pandemic, as well as a bipartisan infrastructure bill. He also voted against parts of a massive spending bill that contained five earmarked projects he had championed for Minnesota.

Stauber said his vote against the pandemic stimulus package boiled down to fear of inflation. He voted against the infrastructure bill, he said, because it included unnecessary spending across the country.

"Nobody wanted an infrastructure package more than I did," he said, noting his support for the Twin Ports Interchange and Blatnik Bridge projects. "When the Republicans take the majority, I can assure you they are going to be clean bills on infrastructure."

Although Stauber was criticized for backing a failed Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 presidential election results in four swing states, he later voted to certify Biden's win just hours after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. He said in an interview last week that he has always honored election results.

"Joe Biden was elected, just like Donald Trump was elected in 2016," he said.

Stauber's connections to the "MAGA wing of the Republican Party" aren't a problem to many voters who are making decisions based on culture and identity, said Aaron Brown, an author and professor who lives in Itasca County.

Brown said Republican talking points about Twin Cities crime and the liberal environmentalists who live there resonate with many northern Minnesota voters, who buy into Stauber's "our way of life" campaign slogan.

"People will tolerate the things they don't like about Pete Stauber if culturally they feel like they're winning," Brown said.

Staff writer Hunter Woodall contributed to this report.