| New reporting from the Washington Sun dives into the momentum behind Jake Johnson’s campaign to flip Minnesota’s First District, a race that’s now a dead heat despite Trump previously carrying the district by 12 points and Finstad by 17 points.
The Washington Sun followed Jake around the district in his “2011 Toyota Sienna minivan, its flat-tire light permanently on and duct tape holding up part of the rear bumper” as he crisscrosses all 21 countries on his “Receipts Tour” – meeting with voters and asking they “bring their shopping receipts showing the higher prices they’re paying” that he’ll take to Congress.
A math teacher who “campaigned for months while holding down his teaching job” before taking a leave of absence this fall semester, Jake gets what Minnesota families are going through: right now, his family is “living only on the $18,000 a year his wife earns working with deaf students in a middle school.” And his commitment to Southern Minnesotans is rooted in protecting the same American Dream his family lived to “climb into the middle class.”
While Brad Finstad backs the health care cuts, Iran War, and tariffs raising prices, sides with his special interest donors, and calls his constituents a pitchfork wielding mob instead of meeting with them, Jake shows up.
Read more:
The Washington Sun: How Big a Wave? This Minnesota Math Teacher Could Be the Democrats’ High-Water Mark.
- Here in Minnesota’s rural 1st Congressional District, which runs along the Iowa border, no Democrat had volunteered to challenge Republican Rep. Brad Finstad — and understandably so. The incumbent had just won reelection to a second term by a whopping 17 points in a district Trump had won by 12.
- So when Johnson, a high school math teacher who had never run for office before, announced his candidacy, the few elected Democrats in the area didn’t challenge him for the nomination, probably concluding, as Johnson put it, that “this new kid can be the sacrificial lamb.”
- Johnson, the father of four teenage boys, hired a former student to be his manager, and, outside of school hours, the two set off to campaign in Johnson’s 2011 Toyota Sienna minivan, its flat-tire light permanently on and duct tape holding up part of the rear bumper.
- Since July, Johnson has been on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list of its top prospects. He has been outraising Finstad, and in the latest quarter brought in $1.3 million. Two tracking polls in the past two weeks for the Democrats’ House Majority PAC found the race to be a statistical dead heat. A poll for Minnesota’s KAAL-TV released Monday night had Johnson leading by two points, also within the margin of error.
- Republicans are concerned enough that a group affiliated with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) is pumping $600,000 into the race.
- Johnson’s candidacy is typical of two ways in which Trump has shaped the midterms. The president’s deep unpopularity has made Democrats competitive in places where they would ordinarily have no business winning elections. And Trump has motivated an unusual crop of working-class candidates: Several of the Democratic nominees in competitive races this cycle, including Johnson, work ordinary jobs and didn’t follow the usual paths into politics.
- Johnson campaigned for months while holding down his teaching job, reducing his classroom load to 60% in the spring semester. He has taken the fall semester off, which means going without his $90,000 salary and living only on the $18,000 a year his wife earns working with deaf students in a middle school.
- But that struggle gives him credibility with voters who might tune out an elite candidate. “We were dirt poor,” Johnson said at last week’s debate with Finstad. “But because of that support, I got to climb into the middle class.”
- Voters are hurting here, as they are throughout the country, from high gas prices and inflation generally. But this is one of the nation’s top agricultural districts, and Trump’s tariffs and high diesel prices are crushing farmers. Because the area is home to the Mayo Clinic, it is also feeling the cuts to scientific research and to rural health care; Mayo last year closed six facilities across southern Minnesota.
- Going door-knocking with Johnson over the weekend, I watched him win over one disenchanted voter, an elderly woman named Bonnie.
- “I’m asking you to send me to Washington, D.C., to bring down costs and tackle corruption,” he began. “Lord knows we need it.”
- “Never going to happen,” she shot back. “I don’t care who we get in. The world’s so f—ed up right now.”
- But then they got to talking, about his work as a teacher, about her kids and grandkids, about her battle with cancer, about whether she should mow her lawn.
- “I’m about as regular a guy as you could meet, and I think we need a lot more of that in Washington,” he told her.
- His long Minnesota vowels matched hers. By the end, she was all agreement.
- “I am not going there to work for a party or work for some political leader,” he said.
- “Right!” she responded.
- “If that gets me kicked out, then so be it.”
- “Right!”
- “Go back to the classroom, where I probably belong anyway.”
- “Right!”
- Johnson moved to the next house. “I’ll call her a ‘lean Jake,’” he said.
- Later he stopped at a brewery in downtown Owatonna, where Johnson had asked locals to come and bring their shopping receipts showing the higher prices they’re paying. A farmer reported that he spent $71 for 2½ gallons of motor oil for his tractor — up from $30. The owner of a wine bar talked about the 27% increase in the price of Spanish olives because, she said, of the tariffs. A retired social worker recounted the increasing food and vet expenses for her service dog.
- Brian Fay, a forklift operator, showed Johnson the $2,100-a-month bill for his health insurance and said he still can’t find a participating doctor — while the insurance company CEO makes $34 million a year.
- “It’s certainly not a system that’s set up for folks like us,” Johnson responded. “We need a public option so that people can buy into it and get out of a private system that’s ripping them off.”
- The KAAL poll found that Trump’s favorability rating in the district is a net negative 16 points, which dragged Finstad to a net negative of 8 points while the lesser-known Johnson has a net positive of 11 points.
- You don’t have to be a math teacher to know this should add up to an interesting night on Nov. 3.
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