Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
At left, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen arrived to vote with his wife, Mary. At right, Gov. Tim Walz waited with his daughter Hope, 21, to have their ballots counted.
Minnesota voters will decide on Tuesday whether to give DFL Gov. Tim Walz a second term or elect Republican physician Scott Jensen instead, handing the GOP control of the executive branch for the first time in a dozen years.
The two candidates have been locked in a heated contest for months, debating each other on abortion access, the economy and crime, while painting a dire portrait of the future of the state if the other is elected governor. The marquee contest will determine who gets to lead roughly two dozen state agencies for the next four years and hold the power to either sign or veto proposals to spend a historic $9 billion budget surplus.
Walz, a former teacher and southern Minnesota congressman, is running on the "One Minnesota" mantra that helped propel him into the governor's office four years ago with the highest margin of victory of any governor candidate more than two decades. But in his first term, he had to grapple with a once-in-a-century pandemic and riots after the killing of George Floyd that leveled buildings in Minneapolis.
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