The sound of a gameshow-like spinning wheel was almost as constant as the smell of fried foods on a stick along a stretch of Underwood Street on a mostly sunny Wednesday afternoon. A line of about five dozen people snaked its way down the boulevard stretching southward to Ye Old Mill at Carnes Avenue.
“You landed on Covid snitch line!” a volunteer from behind the “NEVER WALZ” booth shouted to a throng of onlookers who either cheered, jeered or were indifferent.
“You just missed ‘Stolen valor!'” someone yelled from a crowd that had gathered.
The wheel spinning participants, a pair of young women, politely received their “Never Walz” fans, affixed them atop the large pouch of their backpacks and jaunted away.
They were two of about 5,000 or so visitors who stop by booth daily, said Jesse Smith, a staff member for Action for Liberty.
The conservative grassroots organization has provided an intentionally provocative presence at the Great Minnesota Get-Together the last handful of years. The location of its booth has changed on occasion, but regardless of where it pops up from one year to the next, Action for Liberty’s political critiques of DFL policies and politicians tend to draw crowds.
Especially this time around, as one of the organization’s most regular targets for their criticism, Gov. Tim Walz, is now a running mate to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
“We had to be nimble this time around,” said Erik Mortensen, a former Republican legislator from Shakopee and president of Action for Liberty, as he described the planning for the annual booth which tends to draw many fans, along with a solid handful of foes.
Pivoting from one political topic to the next in time for the fair
Earlier this year, the organization was planning to run again with its “Dump Biden”-themed booth that it said was a success during the 2023 Minnesota State Fair. But those plans changed abruptly mid-July when former President Donald Trump was shot by a would-be assassin during a political rally in Pennsylvania. Mortensen said the organization quickly planned to pivot its theme for the booth to “Never Surrender,” a tribute to Trump’s spirit and survival. They designed and ordered custom t-shirts with that now indelible image of Trump with a raised fist as he was being rushed off stage by Secret Service, just seconds after shots rang out. But those plans changed again when on Aug. 6, Harris, a newly christened Democratic successor to Biden, announced she had tapped Walz to be her running mate.
The location of the “Never Walz” booth is about 40 paces south of where Walz had pitched his own political booth the prior two years at the fair. While the two-term Democratic governor has been noticeably absent from the fairgrounds as he campaigns with Harris across the country, his presence is still felt.
“We knew [Walz being picked to run with Harris] was going to be the political topic of the fair,” Mortensen said, wearing a red hat with the phrase “Walz Lies” emblazoned on the front. “There are so many people who come to visit us fired up to vote for Trump. And now that Walz is on the ballot they’re even more determined to get Trump back in the White House. They know how terrible he’s been for Minnesota.”
The booth has become such a popular attraction that it has had to carefully ration the number of “Never Walz” fans it hands out each day to visitors who spin the wheel that features eight of the issues Smith said voters are most critical of Walz: “Tax increases, Burning Minneapolis, Mask Mandate, Tampons in Boys’ Bathrooms, Small Businesses Crushed, Child Trans Surgeries, Stolen Valor and Covid Snitch Line.” When it’s all said and done the booth will have distributed more than 20,000 fans to fairgoers, Smith said.
Political party booths bustling
At the DFL Party booth just two blocks away at Dan Patch Avenue and Cooper Street, the mood was equally energetic and the crowd similar in number. A few dozen visitors took their time glancing at a wall adorned with no less than 30 politically-charged t-shirts on sale, some with simple phrases like, “Kamala” and “Team Harris-Walz,” and others like “OMG GOP WTF” and “Land of 10,000 Rights.”
Along the plaza in front of the DFL booth, staff for the progressive political action committee “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” had camped out to get people to register for their mailing list in exchange for fans that featured a quote from former U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone on one side, and the organization’s logo on the other.
The Republican Party of Minnesota booth also was bustling with activity, including visitors who chatted with two candidates for Congress, Tad Jude and Joe Teirab. Both said that visitors seemed to be more informed than ever on the political issues and candidates.
“It’s all about inflation, public safety and accountability for government spending,” said Jude, a former judge, legislator and county commissioner running as a Republican for Minnesota’s Third Congressional District. “We are seeing these big government programs that are just a complete failure, they’re not managed well. It’s a concern for people who live in [CD3], and it’s the topics people I’ve met at the fair want to discuss.”
For Teirab, a former federal prosecutor and military veteran who’s challenging incumbent Angie Craig in the Second Congressional District, all the talk among fairgoers is centered on inflation.
“They are telling me they can’t afford groceries, car bills, the cost of energy,” Teirab said. “Sadly, the Biden-Harris economy is at fault for it, and Angie Craig has been a lockstep vote for that.”
But voters aren’t neglecting state issues, said state Sen. Mark Koran, who’s become a regular fixture at the fair, both at the Minnesota Senate booth in the Education Building, and at the Republican Party booth along Carnes Avenue.
“It’s fascinating, because with the elevation of Walz to the presidential race, people are just now starting to learn about all the spending, all the extreme legislation that the DFL passed and Walz signed the last two years,” Koran said, as he took time out from being filmed interacting with fairgoers by a crew from CNN he said was working on a story about politics at the Minnesota State Fair. “We speak out on a lot of these bad ideas from the Democrats, and people think they are just Republican talking points. And then they learn that Democrats passed them into law.”
No shortage of Walz crop art
Even away from more obvious destinations for state fair political fodder, you couldn’t escape the “Walz effect.” In the Agriculture Building, a line of onlookers admired a heavy dose of Walz and Harris-themed crop art installations adorned on the walls among several non-political works of art.
A staff member inside the Crop Art Exhibit told Alpha News that a few hundred people visit the exhibit every hour throughout the busiest hours of the fair. Viewers of the several Walz tributes that were on display pointed out their favorites, including one image of Walz, constructed with 14 different varieties of seeds, with the quote, “They’re just weird.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
