It's been more than a half century since a Republican won Minnesota in a presidential election, but former President Donald Trump says he's got "a really good shot" of breaking the losing streak this November in his 2024 rematch with President Biden.
The former president heads to the reliably blue state on Friday, to headline the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner.
Trump lost Minnesota by just 1.5 points in his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But four years ago he lost the state to President Biden by more than seven points in his unsuccessful re-election campaign.
"We think we have a really good shot at Minnesota," Trump emphasized in a Wednesday interview with KSTP, a local TV station in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. "We have great friendships up there."
Trump added that he's "worked hard on Minnesota" and that "Tom Emmer is very much involved," as he pointed to the House majority whip.
Emmer, who will join Trump at the state GOP gala, is chairing the Trump campaign in Minnesota even though the former president and his allies helped sink Emmer's bid last autumn to become House speaker.
As the Trump and Biden campaigns prepare for battle in seven crucial swing states that decided the 2020 election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were narrowly won by Biden, and North Carolina, which Trump carried by a razor-thin margin) and will likely once again in the 2024 rematch, both campaigns see opportunities to expand the map.
WARNING SIGNS FOR TRUMP, BIDEN, AS THE CAREEN TOWARDS DEBATES
Two weekends ago at a closed-door Republican National Committee retreat for top-dollar donors that was held at a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, senior Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio spotlighted internal surveys that suggested both "Minnesota & Virginia are clearly in play."
In both states, Donald Trump finds himself in positions to flip key electoral votes in his favor," the survey, which was shared with Fox News, emphasizes.
And both states have sizable populations of rural white voters without college degrees who disproportionately support the former president.
Biden's campaign disagrees that either Minnesota or Virginia are up for grabs.
While noting that they are "not taking any state or any vote for granted," Biden campaign battleground states director Dan Kanninen told reporters last week that "we don't see polls that are six or seven months out from a general election, head-to-head numbers certainly, as any more predictive than a weather report is six or seven months out."
Kanninen highlighted that the campaign has teams on the ground in both states engaging voters.
"We feel strongly the Biden-Harris coalition in both Minnesota and Virginia, which has been strong in the midterms and off-year elections, will continue to be strong for us in the fall of 2024," he added.
And Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt, pointing to the president's current fundraising dominance and ground-game advantage in the key battlegrounds, argued that "Trump’s team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of they’re resorting to leaking memos that say ‘the polls we paid for show us winning.'"
But Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who launched a longshot and unsuccessful primary challenge against the president, insists that "Minnesota's in play.
Phillips, in an interview this week on Fox News' "Special Edition," argued that Minnesota's "like a lot of states that I think a lot of my fellow Democrats don't want to confess is the reality… I'm telling my Democratic colleagues who are supporting President Biden, myself included, that there's a lot of work to do."
This is the second straight election where Trump aims to flip Minnesota.
At a late September 2020 rally in northern Minnesota, Trump boasted of the crowd size and insisted "this is not the crowd of somebody that’s going to finish second in this state to Sleepy Joe," a derogatory term he used for Biden.
While Trump's campaign looks for opportunities to expand the map in Minnesota and Virginia, Biden's campaign appears to be eyeing swing state North Carolina as well as Florida.
Trump carried the Sunshine State by less than four points in 2020, but two years ago Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP Sen. Marco Rubio each won re-election by nearly 20 points.
LaCivita argued the Biden campaign was playing "a faux game" in both states, but insisted that Trump has a "real opportunity in expanding the map in Virginia and Minnesota."
Trump's stop in Minnesota comes a week after he held a large rally in Wilwood, New Jersey, a red bastion in an overwhelming blue state where no Republican has carried the state in a presidential election in over three decades. Trump lost the state to Biden by 16 points four years ago.
"We're going to win New Jersey," Trump vowed at the rally.
