2018 Minnesota Elections
A general election was held in the U.S. state of Minnesota on November 6, 2018. All of Minnesota's executive officers were up for election as well as all the seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives, several judicial seats, two United States Senate seats, Minnesota's eight seats in the United States House of Representatives, and several seats for local offices. Special elections were also held for a Minnesota Senate seat and Minnesota's Class 2 U.S. Senate seat. A primary election to nominate Republican and Democratic–Farmer–Labor (DFL) candidates and several judicial and local primary elections were held on August 14, 2018. Background The DFL has held all of Minnesota's executive offices since 2011 after Mark Dayton was elected governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election. They have held the office of attorney general since 1971 and the offices of secretary of state and state auditor since 2007. The Republicans have controlled the Minnesota House of Repr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now partially cleared, farmed, and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Roughly a third of the state is covered in forests, and it is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" for having over 14,000 bodies of fresh water of at least ten acres. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", the state's main political, economic, and cultural hub. With a population of about 3.7 million, the Twin Cities is the 16th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas in the state include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tina Smith
Christine Elizabeth Smith (née Flint, born March 4, 1958) is an American politician, retired Democratic political consultant, and former businesswoman serving as the junior United States senator from Minnesota since 2018. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party ( DFL), an affiliate of the Democratic Party. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Smith moved to Minnesota in the 1980s to work for General Mills and later became the vice president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. She then began a career as a political consultant and organizer for Democratic candidates. Smith managed Ted Mondale's unsuccessful bid for governor of Minnesota in 1998 and Walter Mondale's unsuccessful last-minute campaign in the 2002 United States Senate election in Minnesota after incumbent senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election. After Mondale lost, Smith served as chief of staff to Mayor of Minneapolis R. T. Rybak. She then helped run Mark ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chris Wright (activist)
Thomas Christopher Wright (born October 14, 1957) is an American businessman, cannabis rights and free speech activist, and frequent candidate for public office. Wright, who co-founded the Grassroots Party in 1986, owns a computer repair shop in Bloomington, Minnesota. Activism Chris Wright organized the Minnesota Tea Party, a cannabis rights rally held on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol every September from 1987 to 2013. A political rally and music festival called Grassroots Gathering, organized by Wright in 1992, which was to be held on a private campground near Ogilvie, Minnesota, was cancelled by authorities citing incidents reported at the Weedstock festival in Wisconsin the previous year. Wright was arrested in 1996 for growing 41 cannabis plants at his home in Minneapolis. He appealed the conviction and lost. Wright argued that under Art. XIII, Sec. 7 of the Minnesota Constitution any person may sell the products of the farm or garden occupied by him without ob ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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MinnPost
''MinnPost'' is a nonprofit online newspaper in Minneapolis, founded in 2007, with a focus on Minnesota news. Funding ''MinnPost'''s initial funding of $850,000 came from four families: John and Sage Cowles, Lee Lynch and Terry Saario, Joel and Laurie Kramer, and David and Vicki Cox. The Knight Foundation in Miami, Florida initially donated US$250,000 and in 2008 subsequently granted additional funds to expand local reporting. Major foundation support has come from the Blandin Foundation, Otto Bremer Foundation, Bush Foundation, Carolyn Foundation, Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Martin and Brown Foundation, Joyce Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, Pohlad Family Foundation, and The Saint Paul Foundation. In March 2014, ''MinnPost'' announced that, thanks to a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, ''MinnPost'' and online news site Voice o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tim Walz
Timothy James Walz ( ; born April 6, 1964) is an American politician and retired educator. A member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), he has served as the 41st governor of Minnesota since 2019. Born in West Point, Nebraska, Walz was a member of the Army National Guard, and was a temporary teacher on a reservation in South Dakota after high school. He later graduated from Chadron State College and Minnesota State University, Mankato. He moved to Minnesota in 1996. Before running for Congress in 2006, he served for 24 years in the Army National Guard and as a social studies teacher in the Mankato school district. Walz was the U.S. representative for from 2007 to 2019. He was first elected in 2006, defeating six-term Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht. He was reelected five times. On November 6, 2018, Walz was elected governor, defeating the Republican nominee, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson. His tenure has been marked by the George Floyd protests and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jeff Johnson (Minnesota Politician)
Jeff Johnson (born November 11, 1966) is an American lawyer and politician. He was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2000 and served there from 2001 to 2007. Johnson left the legislature to run for state attorney general in 2006, but was defeated. Johnson served as a Hennepin County commissioner for the 7th district from 2009 to 2021. He was elected as the Republican National Committeeman from Minnesota in April 2011. Johnson was the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota in 2014 Minnesota gubernatorial election, 2014, losing to incumbent Democrat Mark Dayton, and again in 2018 Minnesota gubernatorial election, 2018, losing to the Democratic nominee, U.S. Representative Tim Walz. Early life, education, and career Born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, Johnson graduated from Detroit Lakes High School in Minnesota in 1985. He received a triple Bachelor of Arts in economics and political science/history in 1989 from Concordia College (Moorhead), Concordia Colleg ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hennepin County, Minnesota
Hennepin County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its county seat is Minneapolis, the state's most populous city. The county is named in honor of the 17th-century explorer Father Louis Hennepin. The county extends from Minneapolis to the suburbs and outlying cities in the western part of the county. The county’s natural areas are covered with extensive woods, hills, and lakes. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,281,565. It is the most populous county in Minnesota, and the 34th-most populous county in the United States; more than one in five Minnesotans live in Hennepin County. Hennepin County is included in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area. History The Territorial Legislature of Minnesota established Hennepin County on March 6, 1852, and two years later Minneapolis was named the county seat. Father Louis Hennepin's name was chosen because he originally named Saint Anthony Falls and recorded some of the earliest ac ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nonpartisan Blanket Primary
A nonpartisan blanket primary is a primary election in which all candidates for the same elected office run against each other at once, regardless of the political party. Partisan elections are, on the other hand, segregated by political party. Nonpartisan blanket primaries are slightly different from most other elections systems with two-rounds/runoff, aka "jungle primaries" (such as the (Louisiana primary), in a few ways. The first round of a nonpartisan blanket primary is officially the " primary." Round two is the "general election." Round two ''must'' be held, even if one candidate receives a majority in the first round. In addition, there is no separate party nomination process for candidates before the first round. Also, political parties are not allowed to whittle down the field using their internal techniques (such as party primaries or conventions). It is entirely possible that multiple candidates of the ''same'' political party advance to the general election. In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Open Primaries In The United States
An open primary is a primary election that does not require voters to be affiliated with a political party in order to vote for partisan candidates. In a traditional open primary, voters may select one party's ballot and vote for that party's nomination. As in a closed primary (such that only those affiliated with a political party may vote), the highest voted candidate in each party then proceeds to the general election. In a nonpartisan blanket primary, all candidates appear on the same ballot and the two highest voted candidates proceed to the runoff election, regardless of party affiliation. The constitutionality of this system was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in ''Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party'' in 2008, whereas a partisan blanket primary was previously ruled to be unconstitutional in 2000. The arguments for open primaries are that voters can make independent choices, building consensus that the electoral process is not splint ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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First-past-the-post Voting
In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins even if the top candidate gets less than 50%, which can happen when there are more than two popular candidates. As a winner-take-all method, FPTP often produces disproportional results (when electing members of an assembly, such as a parliament) in the sense that political parties do not get representation according to their share of the popular vote. This usually favours the largest party and parties with strong regional support to the detriment of smaller parties without a geographically concentrated base. Supporters of electoral reform are generally highly critical of FPTP because of this and point out other flaws, such as FPTP's vulnerability t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Amy Klobuchar
Amy Jean Klobuchar ( ; born May 25, 1960) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2007. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota's affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the Hennepin County attorney. Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School. She was a partner at two Minneapolis law firms before being elected county attorney for Hennepin County in 1998, making her responsible for all criminal prosecution in Minnesota's most populous county. Klobuchar was first elected to the Senate in 2006, becoming Minnesota's first elected female United States senator, and was reelected in 2012 and 2018. In 2009 and 2010, she was described as a "rising star" in the Democratic Party. She announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |