While Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz won Minnesota’s statewide presidential vote, President-elect Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance outperformed them in the county where Walz began his political career.
Walz was the representative for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District from 2006 to 2019. This district includes Blue Earth County. He lived with his family in Mankato, which is the county seat.
The Minnesota secretary of state’s unofficial results show that Trump got 49.9% of the vote in Blue Earth, which is 18,002 voters. The Democratic ticket got 48.18% of the vote, which is 17,558 voters.
Trump lost the state as a whole to Harris 50.88% to 46.66%. Iowa has not had a Republican win since Richard Nixon in 1972.
In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by about 1,600 votes in Blue Earth. In 2016, Trump won the county by about 1,200 votes.
Before Walz was elected, Republicans had been in charge of the 1st District for most of its history. The office has been run by Republicans again since he left.
There were 12 years that Walz taught at Mankato West High School. He was also an assistant football coach and helped start the school’s first gay-straight alliance group in the 1990s. His home state is Nebraska.
After Walz won the 2020 election for governor, he and his family moved to St. Paul in Ramsey County. Harris and Walz won that metropolitan county by a large margin.
On Wednesday, the governor of Minnesota went back to his home state to finish his second term.
He said he is “grateful to the millions of Americans who joined our campaign and stood up for our greatest ideals: decency, compassion, and love of our neighbor.” He has not said yet if he will run for governor a third time.
