Crime is still a major vulnerability for Democrats across the country heading into the midterm elections. The issue tracks back to the riots that were permitted in Minneapolis in 2020, and now, the effects might be felt statewide in Minnesota.
Politico details the standing of the state’s “most vulnerable progressive,” Attorney General Keith Ellison. Ellison is polling nearly even with his GOP opponent Jim Schultz. According to Politico, “crime is about all” Schultz wants to discuss, which only makes sense in a race to serve as the state’s chief prosecutor.
It also makes sense, given where Ellison comes down on policing. Ellison supported Minneapolis’s attempt to abolish its police department and replace it with a “public safety department” that would be under the control of the city’s incompetent city council. Minneapolis still hasn’t gotten its homicide surge under control, thanks in part to city leadership that was focused on dismantling the police department instead of confronting crime — again, a decision that was supported by Ellison.
Minnesota may be reliably Democratic (no Republican has won statewide since 2006), but the state is far more competitive than it seems. Donald Trump also came surprisingly close to carrying the state in 2016, and the GOP’s Senate nominee in 2020 came closer to winning than the much-hyped Democratic candidates in Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina. Virginia hadn’t elected a Republican statewide since 2009, until Republicans swept into office in 2021. And Rep. Ilhan Omar, the anti-police Democrat who seceded Ellison in his district, nearly lost her Democratic primary to an unhyped, pro-police candidate.
On top of that, Ellison only won his election in 2018 by 4 points in a Democratic wave year. That was before the Black Lives Matter riots turned crime into a real concern. Now, crime is near the top of the list, and the national environment favors the GOP.
Democrats cannot shake the issue of crime for two clear reasons. The first is that Democrat-run cities — including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis — are significantly less safe today than they were a few years ago. The second is that Democrats have spent the last few years downplaying crime after downplaying riots and fighting to make things easier for hardened, violent criminals in the name of “criminal justice reform.”
That is what Ellison did in supporting the abolition of Minneapolis’s police department. In the process, he and Minneapolis’s Democratic leadership have given Republicans an opportunity to break through in a swing state that hasn’t really swung in 16 years.
