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A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day up in Southern Minnesota with our candidate for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, Jake Johnson. More to come on our visit there, but first I wanted to introduce you to my new friend, Jake!
Consider supporting Jake Johnson’s campaign in MN-01>>>
His district is based in Rochester, MN, home to the Mayo Clinic, but includes 21 different counties and hundreds of small towns.
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Jake grew up in his district, in a small town called Stewartville, just south of Rochester. When he was growing up, his dad was a garbage man, and his mom was a meter reader. He had 10 siblings!!
“When you grow up in a family like that, you definitely appreciate and understand hard work, but also local community support.
I got to grow up in southern Minnesota, where I got to live what I thought was the American dream.
Even though, you know, we didn’t have a penny in our pocket. We were worth investing in and believing in.”
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Jake grew up on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and on Medicaid for health care. He used Pell grants and subsidized Stafford loans to afford attending college.
While attending the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, he met and fell in love with his wife, Molly, even though they grew up 2 streets apart!
They are now raising four Southern Minnesota boys – ages 16, 14, 12, and 9 years old! Y’all know they have a busy and active household, LOL!!
Jake has spent the last twenty years serving his community as a public school teacher and a union leader for his local education union.
But when he saw his Congressman, Brad Finstad, vote for the Big Ugly Bill, which made significant cuts to the same programs that helped his family get by, he didn’t want to sit on the sidelines.
So he jumped into the race to give Southern Minnesotans a real voice in Congress.
It’s clear that Finstad isn’t listening to his constituents’ needs. Jake just wrapped up a 21-county town hall series in which he heard several concerns from his community.
The tariffs are gauging the agricultural export markets for Southern Minnesota farmers.
87 billion dollars has been cut from rural health care, causing four hospitals to close already this year.
The Iran war has jacked up prices of all sorts of goods: fertilizer and diesel, affecting farmers, and the cost of unleaded gas, which is affecting everyone.
Cost of living is the number ONE concern.
“Just being able to put food on the table for your family, keep the lights on, and keep your small business or your small nonprofit open. Those are the biggest things that I hear from people.
They don’t need a government to solve all their problems. But Lord knows, get out of the way and let us do the work that we know how to do to protect our small communities.”
Jake is running in one of the country’s most competitive districts. And I have faith in Jake’s campaign – not only because of his commitment to the people of Minnesota, but also because I’ve heard from several folks that Jake is running one of the best organizing programs in the country!
And here on Team Underwood, we are believers and investors in Organizing Programs!!
Jake’s team has found and fostered volunteers across the district, building what they call supergroup super teams. They have seven supergroups that are knocking on doors, organizing events, making phone calls, and relationally organizing in their communities.
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“And so it’s so powerful for them to be able to speak in their own communities about the issues that affect them.
And then they can inform me back as a candidate, “like Jake: this is what we’re hearing in our communities”. And so it’s an absolutely beautiful grassroots effort here in southern Minnesota that we’ve built.”
The supergroups’ work has clearly spilled over! Turnout is off the charts -- in the August 11th democratic primary, more voters showed up on the Democratic side than ever before. They even outvoted the Republicans!
“We had more people vote on the DFL side in the primary by 52 to 48, as compared to a district that Trump won by 12.”
Y’ALL. Isn’t that crazy? Jake turned out more Democratic voters by 4 points in a district that went for Trump by 12 points in 2024!! Wow. That’s incredible momentum and a strong foundation for November.
Something special is happening in Southern Minnesota -- and Jake Johnson is crushing it!
MN-01 is currently rated an R+6, yet Jake has made the district competitive, earned a spot on the Red to Blue list, and out-raised his opponent two quarters in a row by over $100k.
It also helps that Brad Finstad’s public approval rating is only 36%....
“It’s almost like the folks in southern Minnesota have woken up to the fact that we have a guy who is a rubber stamp, who is a ghost, who’s not doing his job, and that not only does that bother Democrats, of course, but it also really bothers independents and even some Republicans who say, you know what? We value hard work. We value the fact that our congressmen will go to bat for us.
And that is compounded by the fact that we’re running against a guy who won’t host a public town hall meeting and goes so far as to call his constituents a pitchfork-wielding mob just for wanting to host a meeting with him.”
Jake is committed to hosting a town hall in every single one of his twenty-one counties every single year! What a change for the folks of Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District.
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When we visited, Jake had already completed sixteen of these visits. Incredible.
I am so excited to support Jake Johnson in his run for Congress, and I am going to encourage YOU to do the same!
To support his campaign, you can visit: jakejohnsonforcongress.com
Sign up to volunteer: forms.gle/wQkZk5xWGrWVotYF9
Keep an eye out for our travel vlog from my trip to MN-01, but in the meantime, keep supporting Jake and our other Red to Blue candidates.
50-something days to go!
Congresswoman Lauren Underwood
DCCC Red to Blue and Red Alert, Co-Chair
Support our entire slate of Red to Blue candidates, including Jake, here>>>
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