Thousands are fleeing Tim Walz’s Minnesota. It’s a warning to America

High energy costs, crime, and appeasement of unions have made for a toxic mix

The United States is now less than a month away from what looks likely to be an extraordinarily close presidential election. 
In the handful of swing states that will decide the outcome, Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are running neck and neck against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.
Supposedly solid and dependable, Walz was picked by the Democrats to appeal to middle America. He was expected to be a counterweight to some of Kamala’s kookiness. Unfortunately, things have not turned out quite how Democrat strategists intended.
Walz has proved to have what you might charitably call an awkward demeanour. Less kindly, you might say he’s straight up odd.
Nervous during his TV debate against JD Vance, he managed to blurt out that he was “friends with school shooters”. Questioned about claims he had made that he was in Hong Kong at the time of the Tiananmen square massacre, his long and rambling answer looked and sounded shifty.
But it’s Walz’s record as governor in Minnesota that is proving even more awkward for Team Kamala.
Walz has been active in Minnesota politics for almost two decades, serving as a congressman for the state before becoming governor in 2019. How has Minnesota fared under governor Tim Walz?
Minnesota, for perhaps the first time in its 166 year history, is losing people. At a time when the population of America is growing, the Gopher State is flirting with demographic decline. People from every income group, apart from those at the very bottom, are leaving in significant numbers according to IRS data.
You might imagine that Minnesota is one of those wealthy mid-Western states. It certainly used to be. But one analysis suggests that, in 2023, Minnesota’s per capita income fell below the US national average for the first time.
One reason that the state has stalled economically could be that energy costs in Minnesota are now sky high. Perhaps thanks in part to Governor Walz’s renewable energy agenda, electricity prices have shot up – even if they have not yet reached the sort of levels you see in Europe. This has hit energy intensive industries hard.  
Minnesota once had a relatively low crime rate. No longer. Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd died after that notorious confrontation with the police soon after Tim Walz became governor, was at the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed. The city suffered extensive damage, and one of the city’s police precinct buildings was overrun. It still has not fully recovered.  
Rather than stand up to the anti-police movement in the aftermath of the protests, Walz and the local Democrat leadership were accused of appeasing it. Local police forces have since struggled to recruit and retain officers willing to serve. Crime in urban Minnesota skyrocketed. The state was recently found to have a higher crime rate than the US national average.
Walz, who famously presents himself as an educator, has also appeased teacher union interests in the state. His governorship has been a disaster for public education. Despite spending per student increasing significantly on Walz’s watch, proficiency in maths and reading have plummeted.
As governor, he has seemed to defer to all the Leftist interest groups, from the anti police protesters and public prosecutors, to the green energy lobby and the teacher unions. If his priorities in Minnesota prove to be the same as the priorities for any future administration in Washington, expect to see such interest groups indulged at a federal level, too.
If Walz’s Minnesota proves a microcosm of what America under a Kamala Harris presidency is to become, America will be much worse off as a result.
Douglas Carswell is the president & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, one of the leading state-based think tanks in America