What’s going on in Walz’s former Minnesota congressional district?

Gov. Tim Walz’s rise to become Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate has some hoping his former congressional seat in southern Minnesota could be winnable for Democrats again.

But recent elections show the rural First District will be tough for Democrats to win again. Donald Trump carried the district in 2016 when Walz was last elected to Congress. The only Democrat who has run ahead of Walz in the district since 2006 has been Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

In 2022, former Hormel Foods CEO Jeff Ettinger ran as a moderate Democrat and lost by more than 34,000 votes. The gulf between Republicans and Democrats has been growing. Walz won the 2016 congressional race by fewer than 3,000 votes, and though he won the district in his 2018 run for governor, he lost the district in his 2022 reelection.

Still, Democratic candidate Rachel Bohman, running against Republican Rep. Brad Finstad, thinks Walz’s presence at the top of the ticket will help her.

“I really want to use this to build our momentum,” she said. “I think it brings a lot of excitement to this race.”

Bohman said she has been trying to show up all over the district this summer, trying to make herself accessible — taking Walz’s campaigns as her example.

In a statement, the First Congressional District GOP called Walz a complement to Harris’ “radical and extreme” ticket.

“Kamala’s desperate attempt to appeal to middle America will fall on deaf ears as Americans remember what life was like under President Trump,” the party said in an email. Finstad’s campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Walz won the district as part of a Democratic wave in 2006 that also elected Klobuchar to her first term as the county was souring on the war in Iraq and the Republican administration, and as then-Sen. Barack Obama was electrifying Democrats at campaign rallies.

Walz won re-election to Congress in part because of his advocacy for local issues, such as funding the expansion of Highway 14 and a veterans home, Bohman said.

“Tim Walz is someone who had done good things for southern Minnesota,” she said. She said she hopes people in the district will vote for Walz again, this time as part of a presidential ticket.