Political Happy Hour: Big early voting turnout

Thanks for joining us on Political Happy Hour. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm Courtney Godfrey. This is our political contributor, Boyce Olson. No shortage of things to talk about these days. Every day, and we have, what, 12 days? Yeah, something like that. First five weeks of early voting is showing some pretty strong numbers as far as turnout goes. You know, this state always has really impressive voter turnout, But when we don't have a presidential election on the ballot, it's usually less. So in the first five weeks of voting, according to the secretary of state's office, local election officials have distributed six hundred and ninety six thousand absentee and mail in ballots. Early voting for this election is far outpacing voting in the 2022 midterm. Yeah, so that I think there's a couple of things at play. One, is we know there's a lot of energy in this election. And we had a competitive primary where there was a lot of early voting. So people are getting used to early voting, and it's a convenience factor, right? I like the tradition of going on Election Day. This could mean that 25 to 30 percent of Minnesotans vote before Election Day. Wow. And that would say there's a lot of energy. Then you still have to see turnout, and does this peak turnout? out. We're also working to see where these votes are coming in from. Are they all coming in from rural? Are they all coming in for urban? Every county in the state for the first time ever has an early voting site. And so if you go to your county seat, you can vote early. The other thing about Minnesota that's a little different than other states is that both parties run early voting campaigns. So we've talked about, you know, the president not wanting people to early vote, doesn't like vote by mail, etc. In Minnesota, they know, Republicans know that they have a lot of older voters that they want to get there early. They want to make it really easy for them. So they're running an early vote campaign in their strongest counties as well. And I think now the numbers come out every Friday. Next Friday will be the last batch of numbers because then you have to vote in person. You can still vote, but they won't update daily before election day. But we have 25% of the people voting before election day because we expect about 2.5 to 3 million votes, 2.75. What percentage of the population is that that we expect to vote in Minnesota? So traditionally, 65 to 70% of Minnesotans vote in midterms. 85 to 90% eligible voters vote in presidentials. Interesting. Yeah. In other news, let's talk about this ad that came out today from the Amy Klobuchar camp. So yesterday, Amy Klobuchar joined Harper Moiskey's family. Harper Moyski was tragically killed in the Annunciation Catholic school shooting, and her family has endorsed U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar in her gubernatorial bid. They had a press conference yesterday. Today they came out with an ad. Let's watch it. The day we lost Harper, we were clearly out of our minds. We don't want another family to ever have to go through this. We all agree at the end of the day that kids should not be dying in a church or a school or anywhere. We met with a lot of legislators in our living room. The one that stands out is when Speaker Damuth looked us in the eyes and promised that she would allow a vote on firearm safety. And she lied to us. She blocked the vote. She totally went back on her word. She didn't just break a promise to us. She broke her promise to all of these kids. When she lies to you in your living room, it's pretty disheartening. So there you have it. What's your take on that? Well, we talked about this yesterday. I thought there was an ad coming. It came out first thing this morning. It's from the DFL, not from Global Choices campaign. That's legal. That's fine. So it's more of an attack ad on Damon. I think it's powerful. I think it regains momentum on the gun issue, which is important for suburban women who, as we continue to talk about, are the most undecideds in this race um and it's a close and anytime a parent like that says a candidate lies that straightforward that's a pretty solid landed punch well and that's what i took away from this ad is that yet again you know we saw this in the press conference as well and I said this yesterday, it personalizes Klobuchar and even takes a jab at Damoth's character. So to me, it goes beyond just talking gun control. It's about character in this ad. And I think that for a lot of people, character matters. And Lisa Damoth is largely undefined to most of the electorate while she was the speaker who knows who the speaker is until she started running for governor and they raised her name id and she won the primary most minnesotans couldn't name the speaker of the house so she's not known this becomes a character shot and it's a humanized character shot with parents of somebody who was killed at annunciation um i think it's powerful as i said yesterday i i thought this would be the close and it is i think this is what the klobuchar folks will run with the last week of the campaign and on two two things one is it keeps Lisa Damith on defense you want you don't want to be on defense in the last week and B whatever she does next if she does a news conference this weekend or next week she's going to get asked about this and then again it's back in the news Hmm. Can we talk about school board races? Yeah. OK, because in the last election cycle, we saw school board races get oddly politicized. So for the first time ever, we saw millions of dollars being pumped into school board races across the country. Candidates clashing over culture war issues, partisan and labor groups releasing competing lists of endorsements. That was two years ago. What are we seeing now? we're seeing more money we're seeing more competition not quite the same because if you're running for school board in a midterm it's going to be harder to break through but what's interesting is this kind of came it grew out of COVID and then it grew into the culture wars yeah and i would say this is an example where conservatives in 2021 2022 decided they were going to start organizing around school board races because of COVID well the DFL kind of said hold my beer and labor unions got involved teachers unions have always been involved in school board races but not as much partisanship and these races are non-partisan and so it's like sheriff for the county attorney technically it's a non-partisan office but if parties get involved they endorse that means candidates gets lists they get more money and in a midterm like this they get the momentum of the get out the vote effort the top of the ticket um and so you know it's interesting i've driven by every time i drive by a house i kind of take note of the signs so do i i'm so glad i'm not the only person no no you're not um and so i've started to see more clusters of DFL signs with the school board member or republican signs with the school board member and you're like oh this is part of the machine now for school board um i live in the St. Louis Park School District and last year we had our school board races and i and so it's not an election year you have city council and whatever and we'd have these like three of the three of the same not the same person but three together and then you'd have another three together in another house it was like they were running as a slate so i think this will continue people are passionate about their schools and i think the special interest groups and i don't say that derogatory but unions and other people interested in power will continue to look at school board races and they'll continue to be more politicized uh and moving on to the next topic um there is a vote to renew an AI powered traffic analysis program in Stillwater why should i care this is another example it wasn't so long ago we were talking about flock cameras and city council members dealing with Flock cameras i think it's an example of where AI is being used on and on and we've talked about this fear lens that people look at it and so they're studying traffic in Stillwater with AI what if they don't like the results what what are we doing and and i think that's, I think this AI in government is going to continue to be one of those kind of brush fire issues. If people don't trust it, don't worry. They'll let Stillwater City Council know and we'll see it. If they like it, if they like the results, they trust the results of this study, then, you know, maybe it'll grow a little more, but I think we're going to see more of this. And it just, it allows, and the anti-AI crowd is both on the left fringe and on the right fringe. It's kind of like the anti-vaccine crowd. Yep. And so that's a powerful alignment and coalition. And their most common statement is, oh, it's Big Brother. Yeah. And I get that. I get how you can draw that line. But the idea that so others doing this and talking about it openly, which they should do, I think is just going to be the next thing that, I mean, imagine if MnDOT decided they were going to run AI traffic studies with cameras from the traffic network. They might already be doing it. They're just not talking about it. And people would be like, wait, are you tracking me? It's a privacy concern. So city staff says that the software allows officials to review traffic speeds and volume data without deploying speed display signs. Yeah. But others are saying, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Privacy being violated here. So it's the latest trend. It is the latest trend. And then Keith Ellison, the candidate for attorney general, the sitting attorney general, had a press conference today. Ilhan Omar was there. It was her first public appearance. She was there, but didn't appear at the behind the podium. Right. So she came to the event. Our cameras were able to capture her at the event. She answered one or two questions. Yeah. And then she didn't appear at the actual event. She was there. But Keith Ellison holding this event, it was with local clergy. He also had someone there who had been arrested for protesting ICE. Yeah. What was this? This is more of a let's put ourselves back in the news because of Metro surge. There's a series of events this weekend of activists doing a memory of Alex Preddy. They're really trying to keep Metro Surge and ICE's invasion of Minnesota in the headlines because they know that's a motivating factor. And this just is one of those places where the sitting attorney general kind of gets a stage. Did he make news? Not really. He was just talking about how this happened. And I always say this with my hat on, both sides, just because they call it a news conference doesn't mean there's news. And I think this is one of those days they just wanted to be visible and show themselves there. And they did pitch it as though Ilhan Omar was going to be a part of the news conference. And then she wasn't. And she did only answer a couple of questions. I have no doubt that her attorneys are like, could you just lay low for a little bit and not answer any questions? You are under investigation. and if you answer questions it could be used against you she did push back on this idea that she that Ilhan Omar is not her real name right she said her her full name yeah that was somebody asked her what's her real name and she gave her full name as we would as we have reported yeah uh all right let's take a quick break we'll be back after this welcome back to political happy hour happy friday everybody we hope you've got a cold one in your hand already you've got a coffee got a coffee i need a little second life today it's been a long week courtney as we had the gubernatorial debate you were working long hours that night it's a 15 hour day yeah oh come on you can do it uh so as we lead up to the election my mailbox is full of political mailers the other day and we were talking about this with our producers and everything and i went i got one of those the other day i opened my mailbox i'm looking through it i i almost tossed this one because I just, you know, I just toss them. I don't even look at them. It was a mailer about U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, but it wasn't a vote for Amy Klobuchar. It wasn't a don't vote for Amy Klobuchar. It was it had to do with Israel and her support of Israel. And it was it was I was like, where is this coming from? What do they want me to do? It prompted me to call the senator's office and tell her not to support israel so what is what is what is going on where is it coming from why now the timing feels weird so let's just start with the basics it's a different kind of fund and legal structure when you say call the senator versus vote for the senator or don't vote for the senator so you'll often see groups say call them tell them not to support this but when you see it deep in a campaign it's obviously intended to drive the campaign it's harder to trace those kinds of funds than it is a political fund so we saw um i think it was a columnist with the star tribune actually dug into this yeah tried to figure out where this mailer came from right and dead ends the klobuchar campaign has been trying to figure out where they're coming from for a week or two they can't figure it out and the theme of that particular mail is very clearly she's not liberal enough or she's not you know progressive enough okay so that brings me into my next question do you believe that this could be Republican operatives sending out these mailers hoping to maybe get um her far left voters yeah potentially sit this one out that is definitely a strategy. It's also a worry of the Klobuchar's campaign. I don't know if it's Republican operatives, but it very well could be Republican operatives doing this. However, we have to look at the facts. Amy Klobuchar at the DFL convention had a challenger. That challenger went to the primary. At the DFL convention, that challenger got like 25, almost 30% of the vote at the convention. There are definitely Democrats who don't think Amy Klobuchar is liberal enough to be governor they are upset about it they are they protested her presidential race they are local and so i think there is concern on the left so it's not out of the realm that some left-wing group is doing this because they want her to lose so they can you know put forth a more liberal candidate next time and say if we would have had because remember how does that make sense well hang on remember when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters said if Bernie would have run and that there were a certain amount of Bernie supporters that voted for Trump again these fringes this and I would say it's a populism issue and Minnesota is a very populous state everybody's mailbox is full right now and I do ask my friends to like bring me their mail and i'm seeing who's spending and um i'm like oh okay interesting who's spending for who's spending against and by the way people who watch us are also getting different ads based on where they live because when we're running the stream the ads are can be zip code based and yeah last night i was somewhere and there was an ad that i hadn't seen from planned parenthood i was like i haven't seen a single Planned Parenthood ad I wouldn't be the target of a Planned Parenthood ad on the stream and so the proliferation of these ads and we see them in this show you see them all day on TV you see them in your internet feed they're everywhere and it got me thinking and i'm going to probably write about this in the next couple days remember it wasn't too long ago six eight ten years ago where every TV ad even from third-party groups we would have somebody fact check reality check whatever we would do there are so many ads there are so many mailers now. There are so many channels that they appear in. Can't fact check them all. You could never, ever, ever fact check them all. And I think these groups are clearly like, flood the zone and make sure it works. And hope we don't get questions about fact checking. Ads used to have sources at the bottom. They don't have sources anymore. It's just we're going to say what we want to say and we hope it's true. Or even if it's not true, nobody will really check and it is just a flood this year i have never seen first of all this is record money year in Minnesota the number of groups and the way they fund the groups and hide the groups is crazy there was a legislative ad the other day and uh i sent it to some people i'm like who's this group they're like oh that's so and so i sent so and so a text and they're like no response and then somebody said hey why are you asking about those ads and i'm like well that's not your group and i was like do you know about these ads well here i can look them up for you they're not from us but i know who they're doing and they're not going to comment so there is a lot of shady ad stuff going on right now so be careful people and by the way it's totally on both sides oh totally yeah and you're so well sourced with this i mean i know you're going to get a bunch of text messages after this segment like hey why'd you call us out like that why'd you because you're You're so well sourced with these people. I mean, you know, the operatives on both sides, you know, the people who are buying these ads. It's kind of incredible that someone like you actually can't trace some of these. Yeah, well, so people in Minnesota, Democrats first and then Republicans, have set up a series of funds. And so A fund gets money, they give it to B fund, then it goes to C fund, and then all of a sudden there's an ad. And that ad, at somewhere along the line, the fund that's paying for the ad is just money from all the funds. It's not money from human beings or corporations or anybody else. there's a couple reasons people do that one is they don't want pushback on who they're giving to etc but it's one of the reasons why citizens united when citizens united happen especially visible brands don't want to be affiliated with certain politics but their interests are in certain people who win or lose and so that's why this money becomes so very hard to trace Let's take a quick break. We'll be back after this. The Secretary of State's race. So the Secretary of State is not usually a very contentious race. It's not a race that gets a lot of media attention. But Steve Simon is a longtime Democrat. And Republicans see this one as possibly a seat that they could take. I have said since the beginning that I think Republicans will win one statewide seat. And I think fraud is a big part of that. I think public safety is part of that. Neither one of those apply to the Secretary of State's race. However, the Secretary of State's race and the Open State Auditor's race have strong third-party candidates. And third-party candidates have been running 2% to 3% for a few years. Non-factor. But this year, with strong candidates, they could get to 6% or 7% or 8%. and if you start to see because by the way you see a drop off in total votes between governor senate attorney general so people skip over this race and so you don't know what's going to happen steve simon i think has done a good job of staying visible these races they also don't have very much money so they can't run the TV ads, they can't boost their name ID etc, and third party groups by the way they don't come in and spend millions of dollars to get the Secretary of State over the, to run negative ads against the Secretary of State. I have gotten some negative texts about Steve Simon. So what I would say here is Tad Jude is the Republican. We talked about his ad the other day, by the way, views of that up to 5 million. Really? Yes. And that was just put out on YouTube. Yeah. Put out all on all the social channels and it's getting more traction where younger people are TikTok ads and Instagram than even on YouTube and so um so that's one piece the third party candidate Chip Tangan Libertarian party um was at the fair every day he was I couldn't avoid him and it wasn't like he was stalking it was like there's Chip Tangan again there's Chip Tangan he was at Farm Fest he's been out there there's a chance he pulls four five six percent And as a libertarian, I assume he's gonna pull from the Republican votes. You would assume so, however, he's running saying, we should have somebody in the office that's not a Democrat or Republican. And so it's this idea that throw the bums out, don't let the parties rule the electoral system. And then you look at the trust in our voting system and how it's deteriorated. And you can start to see people say like, I don't know, maybe it's time for a change in that office, because trust in the voting system has dropped I think about 15 points even in the last two to four years, even in Minnesota. Which is ironic because I'm like, well, we have so many people who vote, they must trust the system, right? So we're gonna have a debate on CCO Sunday at nine, these three candidates, and it'll be interesting to see the dynamic. They've debated before, it's not like Wednesday night where they're trying to get under each other's skin. One of Ted Jude's other big things is he wants to restore us back to the original Minnesota flag. Again, populist issue gets people in Greater Minnesota fired up. And this is to say that, like, we haven't talked about this race. Not a lot of people are talking about this race. And we could wake up on the Wednesday after and be like, oh, we didn't see that one coming. Well, now it's going to be televised on Sunday night. All right. That's going to do it for us today. We'll be back on Monday at 430. We'll hope you join us then. Bye-bye.