Saturday morning in Ortonville's Lakeside Park, twenty DFLers gathered to share their favorite moments of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago by the sylvan shores of Big Stone Lake.
The Big Stone County DFL gathers most Saturdays while the local farmers market is open, but Saturday's meeting had a renewed optimism and energy.
Those gathered named various speakers as highlights, though Ortonville resident Todd Sandberg shared his delight in seeing his nephew Jake from Mankato on the stage, one of the winning Mankato West football players who streamed out in introduction to their coach, Vice President nominee Tim Walz. Jake wore jersey number 65. It's classic rural Minnesota community across the map.
My romantic partner, who'd accompanied me from Summit to visit the local Dems, shared how the Walz family released his inner dad. He was so impressed with Hope Walz, he said, he'd created a Hope Walz Vegetarian Hotdish, a meatloaf-style dish of chopped garden vegetables and ground turkey (a vegetable in Minnesota). The Minnesota Democrats were delighted.
The meeting served a more practical purpose, as dozens of yard signs were distributed.
Located on the "bump" in Minnesota's border with South Dakota, Big Stone County resembles much of Greater Minnesota in having become more "red." Wikipedia notes:
Between 1928 and 2008, Big Stone County voted Democrat in every election except for two nationwide Republican landslides in 1952 and 1980. The only other time between 1928 and 2000 that the Republican candidate lost by less than 10% was Ronald Reagan during his 1984 landslide reelection. Beginning in 2000, the Democrat margins began to shrink, with George W. Bush losing by about 2% in both 2000 and 2004, and by a margin of no more than 60 votes. Despite favoring Barack Obama by over 6% in 2008, this would prove to be the most recent time Big Stone County would vote Democrat. Mitt Romney narrowly carried the county by 40 votes and less than 1.5% in 2012. But in 2016, Donald Trump greatly expanded the thin margin Romney won the county by as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost by nearly 25%, the first time a Republican won by more than 5% in the county since 1924. Trump further increased his margin of victory in 2020 to over 27%
Likewise, representation in the state legislature shifted from DFLers to solid Republicans.
And yet, the enthusiastic DFLers aren't going back to 2016.
Photo: Big Stone County DFLers and friends gather at Ortonville's Lakeside Park on Saturday morning. Photo by Edie Barrett, Facebook.
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This is a great article, Sally Jo! Thank you very much for writing about Big Stone County DFL!
Posted by: Lila Salls | Sep 19, 2024 at 12:17 PM