Tolkkinen: Greater Minnesota never forgave Walz for pandemic measures

Every time I hear someone lamenting that Gov. Tim Walz has pulled out of the 2026 governor’s race, my body registers mild surprise.

Not because I don’t like Walz, but because out here in the land of rocks and cows, I feel inundated by loud, incessant and often querulous anti-Walz messaging.

It started during the pandemic in 2020, and it has been relentless ever since.

Maybe the billboard in Fosston, in the northwest part of the state, was the first time the gov was bashed bigtime in rural Minnesota. It was 2020, and the billboard showed a picture of a man with his head up his derriere. “Governor Walz,” the sign reads, “Northern MN is trying to see things from your point of view.”

Dan Franklin, of Franklin Outdoors Advertising in Clearwater, was behind that billboard, raising money through an online fundraiser to pay his own company for the sign, according to the Minnesota Reformer.

It was an angry time. We were scared, and we couldn’t buy toilet paper. Changing government guidance about masks confused us. A bunch of people in Washington state got COVID during choir practice and two died. Was this a super virus that was going to fill up the morgues? Was it spread by singing? Nobody knew.

That was the context that greeted Walz several months into his second year as governor. He presided over some of the worst months to ever afflict our state. He closed schools, and schools had to figure out how to teach kids remotely, which stressed out the kids and the parents trying to juggle jobs and their kids’ homework and the teachers.

The page has 48,000 followers, and its vitriol is so exhausting that I end up snoozing them for 30 days at a time. It’s a steady stream of Tampon Tim this, Walz Belongs in Jail that, all designed to weaken him ahead of the 2026 election.

The thing is, these loudmouths tap into real grievances. Rural Minnesotans were flabbergasted that Walz didn’t summon the National Guard sooner to quell the violence following the death of George Floyd under a Minneapolis cop’s knee. Many hate the new flag and still fly the old one. (In fact, some of them defiantly hoisted the old state flag in their yard for the first time ever.)

In the years since the pandemic, things have only gone downhill for Walz in greater Minnesota. In the 2018 election, he won 16 greater Minnesota counties. In the 2022 election, he won only nine. Support for him grew in the Twin Cities from 2018 to 2022, but lagged throughout much of the rest of the state, even in the counties that voted for him.

And in 2022, the massive swindling of state programs wasn’t yet on most voters’ radar. People are angry again in the hinterlands because of the fraud, maybe even angrier than they were in 2020. People are talking about it at bars and hardware stores. It is feeding the anti-immigrant sentiment here. People are disgusted that some of the people convicted of fraud were immigrants. Even as the Twin Cities pivots to fight ICE and protect their Somali neighbors, plenty of rural Minnesotans are cheering ICE on.

Most people I talked to on Jan. 5 in greater Minnesota felt that Walz was right to bow out of the race.

She also doubted he could win this time, given all the baggage.

After the news broke on Monday, our illustrious statesman U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, sniped, “Good riddance!” Other Republicans seemed a bit nonplussed, trying to figure out who to attack now.

As for me, I’m just sad. Not that Walz is stepping aside, but at how badly we communicate. Rural Minnesota is fully entitled to disagree with Walz and any other elected official and to vigorously advocate for their point of view. But it’d sure be nice to be able to articulate those views instead of muddying everything with insults.

All insults do is drive people away.