A new year, a new Minnesota

Make Minnesota great again in 2026

We have reached a new year in Minnesota. With 2025 revealing the state of our state as one fraught with fraud, a see-nothing, do-nothing governor on a failed presidential ticket, and myriad other socioeconomic problems such as an educational achievement crisis, spiraling violent crime, and an out-of-control state budget, it can be difficult to see reason for optimism for the coming year.

But as challenging as these issues are, we know that effective solutions exist — as has often been proven in more conservative states with more limited government. I’m proud that Center of the American Experiment has not only identified the causes of Minnesota’s government policy failures but has consistently articulated solutions.

The prescriptions for our policy ills are no mystery, as four decades of this publication — Thinking Minnesota — have proven within its pages. It starts with awareness, of which American Experiment and its ever-vigilant policy fellows have led the way. Only by keeping the pressure on our elected leaders and representatives on issues important to Minnesotans can we enact change in the state. Now is that time and now is that opportunity. As poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.” It is time for a new voice.

Minnesotans have an opportunity to enact real change in Minnesota and make this state “One Minnesota,” not just a phrase that Gov. Tim Walz used as a cynical campaign slogan that ended up being more of an ironic punchline. Under his leadership, average, hard-working taxpayers have been too often left treading water while he and his administration oversaw our tax dollars funding over $1 billion in fraud — from Feeding Our Future to autism centers and Medicaid fraud — and being used to inflate the government bureaucracy with no positive impact on the lives of honest Minnesotans, and even footing the bill of his high-priced Washington, D.C. lawyers to prepare him to answer simple questions before Congress. One need only look at our annual Golden Turkey Award (the latest is in this issue) to see the ridiculous waste occurring at taxpayer expense.

Fortunately, there is a way to return sanity to government and relief to taxpayers, despite Big Government lobbyists, the teachers’ union, and the vast network of administrative state agencies who insist Minnesota would implode if they didn’t have a massive government bureaucracy making endless claim to the money in your pocket.

It’s time to make your voice heard. Talk to your neighbors and friends and family, attend an American Experiment event or pass on a copy of Thinking Minnesota, write to your local representative, attend city council meetings as well as your local precinct caucus on Tuesday, Feb. 3, consider running for office or your school board. Vote. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to enact change in this state if we are to correct our course and avert disaster. Nothing is accomplished by complaining, only by doing. And we know what to do.

There are plenty of Minnesotans who haven’t left the state or abandoned it as hopeless. I know because I hear from you all the time. In fact, American Experiment continues to grow our grassroots support year after year through small-dollar donations, attendance at events across the state from Ottertail, Eveleth, Fergus Falls, Hibbing, Duluth, Mankato and throughout the Twin Cities, and in our latest Give to the Max Day, where we saw the largest amount ever raised in support of our conservative values — truly an investment in the future of the state — and we are immensely grateful. These grassroots efforts are the work of people who are the backbone of the state and always have been. They’re invested in their communities and families and won’t let radical progressives discourage them. Now is the time to seize this occasion and fight for our values and conservative principles: liberty, individual freedom, free-market economics, lower taxes and smaller government, and law and order. All the things American Experiment has been working tirelessly to promote are enjoying success in numerous ways. It’s time to get our state in order before it’s too late and we become a colder, irreversible version of Illinois.

It’s easy to be discouraged by watching the news or seeing Minnesota be the butt of national jokes — but hope remains as long as you and I stay committed to the fight ahead. I’m a strong believer in maintaining a sense of rootedness as a recipe for strong communities and families. It’s crucially important to me that Minnesota is a state where parents and grandparents can feel good about raising their children and successive generations. It’s important that this state is as hospitable to a young couple just starting out on life’s journey as it is to a fourth-generation farmer who wants to pass down his trade and wisdom to the fifth and sixth generations of his family. The state becomes inhospitable when the government picks winners and losers, wants to make your child a ward of the state through public schooling, or makes it impossible to save for a college education, retirement, or an inheritance through debilitating taxes and budgetary boondoggles. There is no better way to hold our ineffective elected officials accountable for the disastrous condition in which they’ve left the state than to vote them out of office. Let’s make 2026 the year of accountability and responsibility, and leave the scandals, division, and downward spiral behind.