As Olmsted County shifts left, political observers see battle brewing over control of a complicated electorate

Updated May 9, 10:33 a.m. | Posted May 7, 4 a.m.

In today’s hyper partisan political climate, it’s hard to imagine the GOP senate candidate Sheila Kiscaden was in 1992. 

“I ended up winning as a pro-choice, moderate Republican and I got to the Legislature. And at that time, there were about a half a dozen of us,” she said.

Her victory wasn’t unusual. Rochester had long favored moderate Republicans over Democrats. 

Kiscaden never saw herself as much of a partisan. Focusing on local control, efficient government spending and prudent taxation, she found common ground with her GOP colleagues and continued to win races as a Republican.

But by 2002, being a moderate was out of favor within the GOP and Kiscaden was no longer able to secure her party’s endorsement.

“I said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m just going to run Independence Party.’ Then, I then went on to the general but there was a write-in conservative against me in the general election. And I still won.”

Kiscaden left the Senate in 2007. By that time, she was representing her constituents as a Democrat — an affiliation that she said better fit her brand of policymaking. Later, she became a nonpartisan county commissioner.

In many ways, Kiscaden’s legislative career charts the same course as Olmsted County’s political evolution. Once reliably Republican, the first sign of the county’s move to the left was evident in 2008, when voters threw tepid support behind former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Today, this once moderately conservative regional center has recently become a solidly Democratic outpost, at times more aligned with the Twin Cities in its values and politics than with the more conservative rural counties that surround it. 

Diploma divide

A driving factor in Olmsted County’s shift to the left is Rochester’s rapid growth, particularly of people with advanced degrees who work at Mayo Clinic, said Chris Chapp, a political science professor at St. Olaf, who also directs the college’s Institute for Freedom and Community.

Highly educated people are often more liberal on social issues like abortion, race and gender equality, said Chapp. 

“Education appears to divide voters in a way that it did not 20 years ago,” he said. 

While the so-called “diploma divide” was brewing before former President Donald Trump took office, Trump’s track record on these issues may have pushed some moderate Republican voters to the Democratic party.

“All of a sudden, these issues that really differentiate college educated voters from non-college educated voters become salient, and you start to see some patterns of party switching,” said Chapp. 

Toss-ups and expensive races

At the same time, voters have also been self-sorting along geographic lines, with Democrats consolidating in suburban and urban areas, and conservatives gaining ground in rural parts of the state. 

As a result, contested races are becoming increasingly rare and where a race is a genuine toss-up, party money often plays an outsized role, said former Republican State Senator Dave Senjem. 

In 2020, Senjem ran an unusually challenging race where incendiary ads were deployed against him to motivate voters. He says the state DFL and the interest groups that support the party poured nearly $1.5 million into defeating him.  

“These campaigns are normally $50,000 to $60,000,” said Senjem. “The idea of having almost a million and a half dollars spent against you to get rid of you is almost asinine. But it’s real.”

Senjem narrowly won his 2020 race. 

But if the DFL saw his seat as a worthy target in 2020, it became a sure thing in 2022 after redistricting made his district even bluer. 

After two decades in the Legislature, Senjem decided not to run again, instead focusing on a nonpartisan county commissioner seat that encompasses some of the same parts of Rochester that he’d struggled to win in 2020. 

Without an “R” next to his name — and perhaps without Trump at the top of the ticket that year — Senjem got a lot more support in areas that were previously lukewarm on him. 

It was a result that still has Senjem flummoxed. 

“So I wonder, has Rochester changed? Or is it just the politics with the R’s and the D’s and some people just hate the D’s, and some people just hate the R’s,” he said. “That is a question I haven’t answered yet.”

Progressive, or not?

Today, most members of Olmsted County's legislative delegation are Democrats, and that includes Minnesota State Senator Liz Boldon who easily won Senjem’s state Senate seat in 2022. 

When she’s talking to constituents, Bolden sees a community that’s grown much more ethnically diverse — an observation backed up by data. In 2010, Olmsted County was 95 percent white. Today, it’s 78 percent white.

“As we look at the values of the two main parties that we have right now, I think it’s clear that a lot of focus on a lot of the growth we’re seeing in Rochester, those values align with the blue side of the aisle,” she said. 

At his mosque in downtown Rochester, imam and community organizer Salah Mohamed said housing affordability and Islamophobia are two big concerns for the city’s growing Muslim population.  

“Who’s listening? The Democrats are listening of course,” he said. That attention has motivated his community to be more politically engaged on the party’s behalf.  

“Those are the campaigns that we have run basically: door knocking and inviting volunteers to door knock. That’s how we have been really successful and participatory. Our numbers have increased in the last two elections,” he said.

But Mohamed hesitates to say that Olmsted County is truly progressive, because its elected officials both at the county and city levels don’t reflect the area’s growing diversity. 

“And at Mayo Clinic, the biggest institution that hires people, we don’t see that many people in areas of leadership when it comes to our communities,” he said.

Even though the political headwinds appear to be pushing liberal candidates forward, local officials and voters don’t always support truly progressive policies, said Nicole Andrews who grew up in Rochester, and has worked on local political campaigns and for local nonprofits. 

“Based on where we were 10 years ago, absolutely, Rochester is progressive,” she said, “If we are looking at the standards of what is technically progressive, Rochester is not progressive.”

A recently failed school funding referendum and a decision by the City Council to ban camping on city property as a way to prevent homeless encampments are just two examples, said Andrews. 

Where political strife often exists between opposing political parties, Andrews sees the same rancor within Rochester's Democratic majority, as the push and pull of competing priorities plays out. 

Sheila Kiscaden sees these tensions too, locally and nationally, and they remind her of the same intraparty conflict that influenced her decision to leave the GOP more than two decades ago when moderates were no longer welcome in the party. 

“So it’s the same kind of distinction that the Democrats are making that the Republicans make. It’s like, ‘Oh, the old party philosophy no longer reflects my views,’” she said.

She worries that the strife within the parties doesn’t leave much room for a variety of political views.

Correction (May 9, 2024): An earlier version of this article included a graph showing precinct-level voting patterns from 2012-2020. It was missing information on new boundaries that affected its accuracy. It has been removed.

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