A divided Minnesota grapples with the elation and despair of a second Trump presidency

Elation and despair crept through early morning fog Wednesday as Minnesotans awoke to election results that delivered a Republican mandate across the country and Republican inroads at home.

While Minnesota continued its 52-year run of voting for the Democratic nominee for president, Donald Trump’s convincing win over Kamala Harris reverberated across the state.

Rick Braun stood with renewed hope outside the Shakopee Community Center. The Biden-Harris administration made promises they couldn’t keep, he said. In his corner of Scott County, he’s watched prices rise at his local Hy-Vee grocery store.

“There’s no relief in sight.”

Duluth real estate broker Jill Busam stayed up through the night to witness Trump capture Wisconsin and the presidency. She went to sleep in 2020 thinking he had won, and awoke to see he had not.

On Wednesday, the 68-year-old felt “really, really happy” about the outcome.

A fan of Trump’s business skills, she expects him to lower taxes, end overseas wars and close the border between the United States and Mexico, potentially preventing murder and assaults, she said.

“I’m excited about the future,” Busam said. “I really feel like we got our country back.”

Lucy Paulson, 60, a retired lunch lady, was jovial at Charlie’s Up North restaurant in Walker, drinking a bottle of Coors Light shortly before Harris delivered her concession speech.

She wore a “War Room Battleground” T-shirt, for conservative commentator Steve Bannon’s podcast, and said she was over-the-moon happy despite little sleep.

“I don’t know what time I went to bed. I was busy calling ... going crazy,” Paulson said. “It’s like an eternity I waited for this. Finally we get a decent man in office who will make America great again.”

Bailey East, 32, a bartender at Charlie’s, is a felon who had her voting rights restored last year. She is also a mother with another child on the way.

“This year voting was a big deal for me,” East said. “I want a safe place for my daughters to grow up and not have boys in their sports or boys sharing the same bathrooms with my daughters. And people say, ‘Well, you’re voting for someone that’s taking your rights away.’ He’s not for Project 2025. He’s not taking any rights away.”

That feeling wasn’t universally shared.

Claire Kirch was surprised by the number of votes she counted for Trump as an election worker in Duluth.

“This country has given women, people of color and people who are LGBTQ a big finger,” Kirch said. “They know who Trump is, and they still voted for him.”

Across Minnesota, Trump supporters took to social media, posting they woke up to the “smell of low interest rates and cheap fuel prices.” They shared Bible verses and praised God for another Trump presidency. They posted photos of their children standing in front of Trump Force One from when the president-elect campaigned in Minnesota over the summer.

Trump’s share of the popular vote was the highest for a Republican candidate in Minnesota since George W. Bush in 2004, and conservative momentum was reflected across the state, especially as the six-seat Minnesota House majority Democrats held going into Election Day disappeared.

While the largest cities in Minnesota went overwhelming for Vice President Harris, the state was politically purple.

On Wednesday, farmer Tim Velde hauled a manure spreader out of Jordan, Minn., back to his farm outside Granite Falls. He said the obscured view — and implement — felt symbolic.

”I’m hauling a [animal feces]-sprayer through the fog,” Velde said. “Feels like the American electorate.”

At the Fillin’ Station Coffeehouse in Mankato, Esteban Ramirez of Winnebago leaned on his cane and talked about his fears over Trump’s plan to deport Hispanic immigrants.

The 53-year-old said some of his family members voted for Trump because they wanted him to stop migrants crossing the border. Years ago, his parents traveled from Mexico into America without documents and gave birth to him, but he said his brother voted for Trump in order to stop such crossings.

Drew Campbell, 67, of Mankato stood next to Ramirez and wondered if the Democratic Party hurt itself by campaigning vigorously in favor of abortion access. He views himself as a religious moderate and voted for Harris, but he felt Democrats ceded religious voters.

“A lot of people I thought were progressive or liberal probably voted for Trump,” said Campbell, a former Blue Earth County commissioner.

In Chatfield, Minn., the chatter inside Dave’s Barbershop was relief that Trump had won mixed with surprise.

“I thought it would be a lot closer than it was,” said Scott Hanson, 65, a retired postal worker who lives in nearby Jordan Township.

Dave Dudek, the 66-year-old namesake of the barbershop that has been a fixture of the small southeastern Minnesota city since 1979, said he has heard the complaints about Trump — that he’s brash and prone to speaking in hyperbole. But after watching the past four years play out, he was ready to return to Trump’s leadership.

“When he lost the [2020] election, a lot of people didn’t vote for him because they didn’t like him,” Dudek said. “I think this time they realized you don’t have to like the man to look at what he’s getting done.”

Seated in Dudek’s chair, 55-year-old Brian Nolan nodded his head. The vote was about policies, not the person, he said.

“My wife is always like, ‘Why are you voting for him?’” Nolan said. “I say, ‘I am not voting for Donald Trump. I am voting for what he got done in office as a Republican. That’s what I am voting for.”

Political pragmatism was far from the mind of voters who fear what a second Trump presidency means ideologically for the country.

Michelle Austin-Dehn kept busy pulling out Christmas decorations inside her shop, R Marketplace, in downtown Anoka. She does not vote along party lines and said her decision to vote against Trump was largely based on his character.

“The thing that is most disappointing to me, as a mother of two teenage sons, we have just told our boys that we can be mean, hateful bullies and be rewarded,” she said.

Austin-Dehn tried to find silver linings in local races. She was happy to see Heather Rostadc be elected to the City Council. Rostad, she said, “was the only candidate talking about the environment.”

And while she was unhappy voters rejected a plan for the city to move to organized trash collection, “that seems more minor with everything else going on.”

Major wars overseas played on the minds of Minnesota voters, including Sabir Aden, 20, at the University of Minnesota.

Aden was part of the uncommitted campaign to protest the war in Gaza. He cast his vote for Jill Stein. In the last election, Aden, who is Muslim, said his family voted for Biden.

“I have so many Muslim friends, I have so many Arab American friends who are also Muslim, we all voted for Jill Stein, or we did not vote at all,” Aden said.

In 2020, Biden received 81 million votes to secure the presidency, the most in American history. As of Wednesday evening, Harris had accumulated more than 67 million votes compared to more than 72 million for Trump.

For Krystin Foster, Kirstin Johnson-Nixon, Antoinette Watkins and Gloria Stamps-Smith, the defeat of Harris was a reminder of the historical struggle that women and minorities have faced and continue to face in America.

The four women, alumni members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, spent election night together in Golden Valley watching returns come in, dancing to Kendrick Lamar and trying to stay positive. They woke Wednesday morning to a stinging loss.

It left Watkins concerned about what the result means for young people, elderly people, vulnerable populations and the working class. But it did not leave the group without hope.

“That is the spirit of Black women in general,” Foster said. “Even in some of our darkest hours, we are just going to find the joy, and we are going to make sure we celebrate ourselves and what we have done, how far we have come. … The results are in; are we going to sit in misery? No we’re not.

“We’re going to hold our head high and do the best we can with what we are given, as we have always been expected to do.”

Sean Baker, Jeff Day, Eva Herscowitz, Jana Hollingsworth, Kim Hyatt, Zoë Jackson, Jp Lawrence, Sarah Ritter, Christopher Vondracek and Deena Winter contributed to this story.