Free Republic

Two weeks ago, the liberal Center for Media and Democracy kicked off a national campaign to reveal the identities of anonymous contributors to conservative groups in an effort to unseat the GOP governor here. Now the group may have to answer embarrassing questions about its own finances. A Watchdog.org review of financial documents reveals the Madison-based CMD, which bills itself as a journalism organization, received $520,000 in 2011 from the Schwab Charitable Fund. That’s 60 percent of the $864,740 CMD received that year. CMD lists no donors on its tax returns, but its website identifies numerous financial backers without any...

Everyone knows that rural America has gone deep red. That trend came last to the Upper Midwest, but it has arrived in Minnesota with a vengeance. Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, home to the state’s mining industry, is heavily unionized and was long a Democratic Party bastion. No longer: the 8th, along with the rest of Greater Minnesota, is now Trump country. It is represented by Republican Pete Stauber, a former police officer and union member, who has been endorsed for re-election by every private sector union. Today it would take a miracle for a Democrat to win that seat. In...

Our friend Howard Root attended the Trump rally in Duluth last night. This is his (fantastic) report along with photos he took at the event (at the top and bottom below): At least 25 percent of the audience was under the age of 30, and around 40 percent were women. The senior citizen percentage was less than 10 percent — the lowest I’ve ever seen at a Republican event. Other than the hundred or so party leaders, this was a vastly different crowd from the Minnesota Republican Convention that I attended in Duluth three weeks ago. None of the attendees...