The 2024 Minnesota legislative session came to an end last month. The session saw a lot of discussion of both the legislative process — an alleged burglar voting on key state legislation is certainly a first for the North Star State — and also policy issues, which, as Minnesotans know, have increasingly been marked by a sprint to the left.
As we consider this past session and the direction of our state over the past several years, we shouldn’t miss one fundamental reality: the policies the liberal governing majority have embraced are increasingly hostile to working-class Minnesotans, the backbone of our state and the country. From attacks on law enforcement and the embrace of soft-on-crime policies, to unchecked illegal immigration, to indifference or worse toward traditional Minnesotan and American values, the working men and women of our state are increasingly an afterthought for those controlling the Minnesota government.
The treatment of police over the past four years is the best example. In 2020 Minnesota’s police watched as state “leaders” embraced the defund-the-police movement, attacked qualified immunity for police officers, and rhetorically targeted them at every turn, often insinuating (or saying outright) that every cop was racist. Many of those legislative efforts, and other efforts equally outrageous, have continued to this day, including legislators’ forcing cops out of Minnesota schools in 2023 or the unlawful prosecution of Trooper Ryan Londregan.
The attack on the working class here is twofold. First, there is the reality that these efforts substantially originate from the wealthiest elites of our state and are directed against police, many of whom come from working-class backgrounds and lead decidedly middle-class lifestyles.
Second, soft-on-crime policies broadly exacerbate the vulnerabilities of working-class communities. By advocating lighter sentences for violent criminals and reduced enforcement, the “progressive” left in our state has allowed crime to flourish in areas least equipped to deal with the repercussions. While the affluent retreat to the relative safety of wealthy (and sometimes gated) communities, working-class families are left to confront the rising tide of violence and disorder in their neighborhoods, making their daily lives increasingly unlivable. Such animosity toward cops and sympathy for criminals is class warfare of the wealthy against the average Minnesotan.
Our state’s leaders’ approach to illegal immigration similarly undermines working-class Minnesotans. Last year, the Legislature delivered free college tuition and healthcare to illegal immigrants, and now they aim to transform Minnesota into a sanctuary state through the North Star Act. This follows a national trend under the Biden administration, which as a result of lax immigration enforcement has seen over 9 million illegal immigrants enter the U.S. This massive influx strains public resources, undercuts working-class wages, and facilitates the importation of fentanyl, which is now the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. Sanctuary state policies are not acts of compassion, but of political recklessness and harm the communities and the individuals they claim to protect.
And on less tangible subjects, the hard left’s disregard for the traditional values embraced by the working class extends beyond hostility toward law enforcement. Their rhetoric often dismisses the importance of family, mocks patriotism, and diminishes the respect traditionally accorded to military service.
Republicans and conservatives have made their share of mistakes when it comes to the working class, from some wrongheaded attacks on labor to an overemphasis on tax cuts at higher incomes. Fortunately, in recent years, conservatives have realigned themselves as the champions of the working-class, and that shift is thankfully here to stay.
Finally, even as those governing our state demonstrate indifference or worse toward the working class, there is the reality that they have allowed, and even facilitated, the massive fraud engaged in by the non-working class. Recent reminders of such systemic fraud are the progression of the Feeding Our Future fraud trials and last month’s announcement of fraud charges against two men for defrauding Hennepin County. Yet many in our state government, including our legislators and attorney general, have actively facilitated such fraud by continuing to grant state contracts to fraudulent enterprises or by refusing to investigate them seriously. We can have good-faith disagreements on policy, but making possible the active fraud in our midst — historically the largest in the state’s history — is an outrage.
We must change course. We must again be a state that supports its working men and women and holds accountable the non-working fraudsters amongst us.
Jim Schultz was the 2022 Republican nominee for Attorney General and is the President of the Minnesota Private Business Council.
Jim Schultz
Jim Schultz is the President of the Minnesota Private Business Council and was the 2022 Republican nominee for Attorney General.
