President Donald Trump, surrogates blitz Minnesota in final days of campaign

October 29, 2020 at 7:11PM
President Trump danced down the catwalk to "YMCA" as his supporters cheered him on at a campaign rally in Bemidji, Minn. on Friday, September 18, 2020.
President Trump danced down the catwalk to "YMCA" as his supporters cheered him on at a campaign rally in Bemidji, Minn. on Friday, September 18, 2020. (Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

President Donald Trump is coming back to Minnesota for a Friday afternoon rally in the Rochester area, and his daughter Tiffany Trump will be in Woodbury on Saturday to campaign for her father.

The Trump campaign announced his stop on Wednesday morning, amid a flurry of campaign appearances in battleground states around the country. The Minnesota rally is scheduled for 5 p.m. at McNeilus Steel in Dodge Center; it was moved after concerns the original site at Rochester International Airport could not accomodate a large enough crowd.

In addition to the "Breakfast with Tiffany" event in Woodbury on Saturday morning, the campaign is also throwing a "Trump Pride" event on Saturday night in downtown Minneapolis.

Democratic challenger Joe Biden will also be in the Minnesota on Friday, with campaign stops scheduled for Iowa and Wisconsin. Trump is also campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan on Friday.

Trump carried Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa in 2016 but lost Minnesota narrowly. Biden holds leads in polls of all four of those states, according to RealClearPolitics averages.

Trump last campaigned in Minnesota in Duluth in late September, just a day before he revealed his COVID-19 diagnosis. He campaigned in Bemidji earlier in September, and in Mankato in August. Before that, he held a campaign rally in downtown Minneapolis in October 2019.

Biden has made one stop in Minnesota as a presidential candidate, a September event in Duluth on the same day as Trump's stop in Bemidji.

Minnesota has not supported a Republican for president since 1972, but Trump came close to winning the state in 2016, and Republican insiders say the president has been fixated ever since on securing the state's 10 electoral votes this time around.

Patrick Condon

about the writer

about the writer

Patrick Condon

Night Team Leader

Patrick Condon is a Night Team Leader at the Star Tribune. He has worked at the Star Tribune since 2014 after more than a decade as a reporter for the Associated Press.

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