The thing that’s missing from MinneWalz Mania?

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We are now more than six weeks into MinneWalz Mania, a flood of national news and social media commentary on all things pertaining to Minnesota and our exuberant would-be vice president, Gov. Tim Walz.

Lots of angles have been explored, mostly superficial stuff: Our quirky folksiness and funny accents, dontcha know? Good neighbor Tim’s dadly vibe and “tonic masculinity.” And the obligatory rehashing of the mistakes and misstatements that inevitably pile up after almost 20 years in public office.

Watch for more about us and him in the lead-up to the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 1. Brace yourselves for more absurd right-wing falsehoods portraying Minnesota as a dystopian Marxist hellhole, a failed state run by cop-haters and overrun by criminals and communists and scary foreigners determined to eat all our pets.

Missing so far has been any serious in-depth treatment of Minnesota’s distinctive political character and how Walz as an immigrant from Nebraska was shaped by those traditions to emerge as a national leader. (Check out my “Reappraising Minnesota” series in MinnPost for in-depth analysis of how Minnesota has both changed but stayed true to its essence since 1973. That’s when Wendell Anderson, another plaid-shirted liberal governor, was celebrated on the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of “The Good Life in Minnesota.”)

Some national observers have noted that Minnesota has the longest unbroken record of voting for Democratic presidents and that Walz is the third Democratic VP candidate from Minnesota over the last 60 years. But few have tried to dig deeper to explain why Minnesota persists as a reliably blue high ground against a Trump tide in the rural Upper Midwest.

That one overlooked true thing throughout our history, before and since statehood in 1858, is a well-deserved reputation as an egalitarian and communitarian outlier among the states and in our region. Our better angels have sought not just greater equality through expanded entitlement to basic human needs, but a sense of solidarity and community. And it’s often been driven by a liberal religious conviction that all of us are God’s children and that we are obligated to take care of each other.

We have too often fallen far short of these ideals, and this DNA is not exclusive to us. Every state has at least some history of heroic social justice activism. But Minnesota truly has stood out in our preference for human rights when in conflict with states’ rights, capitalist orthodoxy, and the eternal conservative resistance to sharing wealth and privilege.

This equality imperative was embodied by Vice President Hubert Humphrey (1965-69), perhaps the most important white partner of the Black civil rights movement over the last century. Vice President Walter F. Mondale (1977-81) continued this good fight for human rights and expansions of the New Deal and Great Society, often framing progressive policy around the idea of common decency and neighborliness, as Walz does.

Minnesota all along has opted for relatively high minimum standards for economic security, leading the way on equal access to education and health care for all our residents. We also have prioritized conservation of natural resources and environmental protections. And we have continuously expanded civil liberties and voting access, now ranking at the very top of the states in voter turnout and other measures of civic engagement.

This lean toward a more equal and sustainable society was there with our original Ojibwe and Dakota societies, living in harmony with the natural environment and sharing its resources. Minnesota was not much better than other states in the conquest and attempted removal of our Indigenous people, but Minneapolis was the place where a proud and aggressive American Indian Movement was born, in 1968. If Walz is elected, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will become the nation’s first Native American governor.

Next, our earliest white settlers were radical anti-slavery zealots from New England and mid-Atlantic states, also social reformers who chiseled principles of equality and reverence for public good into our founding document. Many sacrificed their lives on southern battlefields for a more equal and more perfect union.

A further lasting influence was the huge wave of Scandinavian immigrants who arrived between the 1850s and 1920s. These Nordics, whose nations of origin today are among the most prosperous liberal democracies in the world, created models of cooperative enterprise and were less deferential to the capitalists and Christian fundamentalists who dominated in more conservative Anglo-American states to the south and west. By the 1930s, Minnesota had become a hotbed for the Farmer-Labor Party, arguably the most successful left-wing party in U.S. history, its name still embedded in today’s DFL Party.

Another blessing has been high-minded liberal-to-moderate Republicans who both competed and compromised with liberal New Dealers and DFLers from the 1930s through the 1990s. These practical good-government types were exemplified by Gov. Arne Carlson (1991-99), whose courageous advancement of rights for the LGBTQ+ community and ongoing environmental activism made him an outcast in his increasingly extreme GOP.

All along Minnesota produced more than its share of strong liberal women leaders and pioneers in equal rights, a spirit that also applied to equality movements for our LGBTQ+ community. In 2012, Minnesota became the first and only state to reject a same-sex marriage ban through the will of voters rather than a court ruling.

And finally we now have a new generation of powerful new social justice champions, increasingly drawn from people of color, who have grown from 2% of our population in 1970 to almost 25% today. The most racially diverse DFL caucus and Legislature in history, led by two strong women, House Speaker Melissa Hortman and former Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, did much of the heavy lifting in a historic 2023 session that produced the biggest advance in progressive policy since the 1970s. They deserve as much credit as Walz for this breakthrough.

Yet another largely unexplored angle is how Walz, as he was preparing a run for Congress in 2006, was influenced by his tutelage in community organizing at Camp Wellstone. This training program was created by the staff and other allies of Minnesota’s most unapologetic liberal firebrand in modern times, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, after he died in a plane crash just before the 2002 election.

Wellstone often shouted that he stood “for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers,” and he combined both progressivism and populism. But he won two terms in the Senate in part because of a neighborly warmth and an extraordinary ability to connect one-on-one with regular folks of all backgrounds.

Minnesota today continues to rank near the top in most national measures of social conditions and economic vitality. But we are far short of perfect, and coasting on our exceptionalism is not a good look. We need to get after stubborn racial disparities, improve education outcomes and create more affordable housing. We need to prioritize public safety issues and reduce gun violence. And we must restore a good-government reputation that has been tarnished in recent years by theft of public funds by bad actors in the nonprofit sector.

We also can be optimistic and confident that the egalitarian and communitarian values of our North Star State will see us through. We’ve inherited a community where most people still believe that equality matters and that we have enough for all to have enough. And as Wellstone often said, that politics should simply be about “improving people’s lives.”

Dane Smith is a former news reporter and think-tank executive, and author of a recent 10-part MinnPost commentary series “Reappraising Minnesota.”