Bill Luther

No, you know, and it's interesting too, this sort of like how the districts have changed, you know, when I was coming up in politics, which to me doesn't seem that long ago, but in an objective sense was a very long time ago.

The notion that this is the last time iron range seat held by a democrat is sort of just kind of amazing uh and not that others couldn't flip this year and and may well uh that you'd call iron range or iron range adjacent uh seats but that that is at least of note too that there's a there's some legacy component going into that I also, on the age thing, I can remember early in my career the race for Minnesota's 2nd District, which was then held by Democrat Bill Luther.

He was being challenged by John Klein.

This is in 2000.

And there's a rich web of local news outlets up on the Iron Range.

Yeah, well, and that was just, thank you for the reminder, that was, it is the largest geographic district in Minnesota, but, you know, A, there's almost exactly as many people in that district as there are in any other Senate district, and B, it's probably the cheapest or second cheapest media market in the state, or one of the cheaper media markets in the state.

So, last observation, too, just as having spent a minute and campaigns uh not so much recently but it's harder and harder to reach people and cut through the noise uh to to determine you know to to get in front of voters uh you know in the bill luther years i mean i'm sure like 90 some percent of that budget went on to tv and that's where most people got their political information from that's just not happening in 2026 and it's it's getting less every year so But nonetheless, I'm sure we will have lots of time for rank punditry between here and November 3rd.

Moving on, though, as we approach a change in leadership for the state of Minnesota, Governor Walz, our current governor, of course, has given what's described here as a candid exit interview with the Star Tribune, which he had sort of admitted that There was some fraud, and that looks badly for him on his record.