#i definitely also had an incorrect perception of the political complexity of the midwest before i moved here

[astriiformes]

Minnesota is surprisingly left for a red state are they akso pro choice too

I definitely wouldn't describe Minnesota as a red state! I know people make the assumption sometimes given what much of the rest of the Midwest is like (including many of our immediate neighbors -- although I'd be remiss not to point out the many people striving to make it otherwise in all of them, particularly some of the hard-fought battles being slowly won in Wisconsin -- you go guys, and I know you can do it). But MN has other cultural influences like a long solid labor history and a large immigrant population that mean it's actually been a Democratic stronghold for a long time. We have the longest streak of voting blue in presidential elections of any state in the US!

Things do get much redder as you leave the Twin Cities metro area, though that's really the trend in any state. But for perspective, over half the state's population lives in the metro, so when you take into account that there are at least a few other blue clusters in the state (Duluth, a Great Lakes shipping town on Lake Superior with a long labor union history and that currently has a nonbinary representative in the MN House comes to mind!), we really are more of a blue state, or at least a very blueish-purple one. Right now our state Democrats (the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party) control the House, Senate, and Governor's office, which is the reason they've been getting so much good legislation passed. And while our national House reps are split half and half (though some of our Democratic reps are particularly progressive) both our Senators are Democrats.

I wouldn't oversell how blue we are, there are certain parts of state politics that are narrower and go back and forth a bit more than in some of the really "safe" blue states. But at the same time, after living here for a while, I really do think the flip side of that is that our Democratic politicians are somewhat more genuine about what they do, which ends up balancing certain things out. Hence the current legislative session where they're pushing through everything they can in remarkably quick succession!

To answer your question though -- yes, Minnesota is also a pretty pro-choice state. Our state House recently passed a bill that would limit the release of reproductive healthcare information, essentially protecting people from other states who come here for reproductive care. The bill is expected to pass in the Senate and be signed by the governor as well. Our governor and lieutenant governor have both been fairly outspoken about protecting reproductive and abortion rights in the state. Earlier this year the governer also signed into law the Protecting Reproductive Options (PRO) Act to explicitly protect and codify abortion rights here.

I hope some of that's useful information! Minnesota politics are definitely not what I expected when I moved here -- in my time living in the state I've had the opportunity to vote for one of the most progressive reps in the US Congress (Ilhan Omar) and been consistently impressed by how seriously our state takes things like voting rights and state welfare programs. There's a lot of really incredible political activism happening here and it's moving to be a part of -- especially since I know we're becoming even more of an important sanctuary state for people from other places in the Midwest. The northern Great Lakes states (thinking about MN, WI, and MI in particular) are all sort of interesting beasts politically and I'm grateful to have learned more about some of the strong Democratic and labor history in the region in my time here.

Ending with a terrible joke, but -- we have over 10,000 lakes, of course we're blue!