In Minnesota city most evenly divided on politics, a generational shift

MOUNTAIN IRON, MINN. – There's only one political sign inside BG's Bar and Grill on Minnesota's Iron Range.

"WE SUPPORT UNION STEELWORKERS," it reads behind the bar.

On that one thing, virtually everyone here agrees.

But in Mountain Iron, a sprawling mining town of 3,000 people, there's a 50-50 chance neighbors are on opposite sides of the fence about the presidential election. In 2020, 881 people in the "Taconite Capital of the World" voted for Joe Biden, while 876 voted for Donald Trump.

A handful of sparsely populated Minnesota towns, townships and unincorporated areas saw a dead heat in 2020. In Denham, eight voted for Biden and eight for Trump; in Long Lost Lake Township, 19 voted for Biden and 19 for Trump. But of Minnesota cities with more than 250 people, Mountain Iron saw the closest vote margin in 2020, with Biden winning by two-tenths of a percentage point.

This place and its changing politics are a study in how — in Minnesota's most evenly divided city in this evenly divided country — neighbors can set aside differences. People in Mountain Iron say they take a very Minnesota Nice approach to rancorous national politics: They simply don't talk about it. Better to keep to themselves than upset the community's apple cart.

Families here go back several generations; everyone knows everyone, and they know where neighbors align politically. Political disputes, whether online or in person, breed further discontent. In small towns, anonymity is scarce, so political anger that flows freely online is often met with face-to-face interactions the next day. Many here have decided human connection matters more than intractable political discord.

In Mountain Iron — at 69 square miles the third-largest city in Minnesota by land area — few national political signs are on display weeks before an election. Yard signs for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are far outnumbered by signs for a local roofing company still hard at work after a devastating June hailstorm. This election season seems more muted than last, locals say, whether from the receding of COVID chaos, a fed-up feeling toward divisiveness, or a sense that everyone's already chosen sides.

"If I hear somebody talking politics out here, I keep a close ear on it," said Wayne Russo, manager of BG's. "You can pretty much guarantee it'll turn into an argument. So we cut them off. But honestly, people keep to themselves about that kind of stuff."

It's a credo most follow here: "I don't talk politics or religion with anybody," said Arnie Kaivola, 76, a retired mining mechanic who was a lifelong Democrat until voting for Trump twice. Locals say they'd rather stick to common ground, talking about hunting or fishing or their beloved high school sports, particularly Mountain Iron-Buhl girls basketball, which has made state 13 of the past 14 years.

Kaivola and his wife, Deb, don't always agree politically — she supports Harris — but both resent politicians in general. They feel the Iron Range has been forgotten.

And in Mountain Iron, where iron ore was first discovered on the Mesabi Iron Range in 1887 and is still home to the state's largest single mining operation in Minntac, politics often centers around jobs — particularly mining jobs.

The Kaivolas' resentment stems from the raw deal Arnie got on his pension when the mine he worked for west of Mountain Iron was sold to an international conglomerate.

"I feel we've been pushed aside and forgotten about," Deb Kaivola said. "Thrown to the birds."

North Star political realignment

Mountain Iron sits between Hibbing and Virginia, an hour's drive north of Duluth on the edge of the Mesabi Iron Range. The city used to be a DFL bulwark, the spiritual center of the Iron Range's union-facilitated marriage with Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Among older people here, those ties still run deep: Strikes and the strikebreaking violence, a mix of Scandinavian socialism and unionism that defined politics for generations. Iconic Iron Range DFLers like Tom Rukavina or David Tomassoni fought for mining interests in the Minnesota Legislature. In recent decades, though, politics here swung right, which locals attribute to gun rights, the urban-rural cultural divide and, most of all, mining.

Rangers of all political stripes often rankle at the DFL seeming to be reflexively anti-mining because of environmental concerns. "I don't tell people in the Cities how much cement to pour," said Joe Prebeg, a lifelong Democrat who worked at Minntac 43 years and serves on the Mountain Iron City Council.

The Range's Republican shift accelerated with Trump. Late in life, even Tomassoni left the DFL, joining another Iron Range legislator to form an independent caucus. Their move echoed the common feeling here that the "L" no longer felt welcome in the DFL. Today, cities like Hibbing, Virginia and Eveleth remain evenly split while rural areas vote more Republican.

"If I was in 1980 then woke up today as Rip Van Winkle, it would shock me," said Gary Cerkvenik, a lobbyist born and raised in Mountain Iron. "When you'd check out your potential spouse, your would dad ask, 'Are they a DFLer, what's their nationality, what's their religion?' And number one was always DFL. Now it's gone from a very uncompetitive political environment to a competitive one."

It's a North Star-tinged take on a national political realignment.

The old Democratic politics of the Range were colored by populism, social conservatism and isolationism, explained Aaron Brown, a longtime Iron Range journalist and historian who is a contributing columnist for Strib Voices. Today, those are all animating views of Trump's Republican Party.

In Minnesota, the DFL coalition now includes more suburbanites and people in the Twin Cities. "When I was younger, suburban Republicans were the boogeyman: 'Them people from Edina,' said in the Range accent," Brown said. "They're still saying 'them people from Edina.' It's just that Edina people are Democrats."

This red hue, however, is unique to the Range. In most of America, Trump voters tend to skew older while Harris voters skew younger.

Here, politics are flipped: Older voters with stronger union ties tend to vote Democrat, while younger voters who came of age during the 1980s mining slump tend to vote Republican.

At BG's, all stripes gather. On a recent afternoon, two younger miners, both Trump supporters, grabbed a beer and a bite after work. A group of seven retired women, who graduated from high school together in 1966 and said they almost all support Harris, whooped it up nearby. Both sides were astounded at how rapidly this region's politics have changed.

"My father, when I'd bring him to a doctor, he wouldn't ask if he was a good doctor. He would say, 'Are you a Democrat?'" laughed Phyllis Harvey, a retired nurse who supports Harris.

"I was raised to be a Democrat, period. If you were a working-class person, you voted Democrat no matter what," said Pat Lesemann, 37, an electrician at Minntac who plans to vote for Trump. "That's changing now. The Democratic Party, they're not looking out for the blue-collar worker."

Talking politics with the like-minded

Mountain Iron's downtown used to be vibrant. But decades ago, the mines purchased downtown homes, knocked them down and mined the iron ore beneath. Now downtown has a few dozen homes but is mostly shuttered businesses, a post office and a vacant school. Action centers on the highway bordering Virginia or in newer development on the west side of town — a gleaming new school, a new subdivision of big suburban homes, a Wal-Mart-anchored shopping area.

The town's biggest business success in recent years is indicative of change. On top of an old tailings pile sits a 90,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for Heliene, the third-largest solar cell manufacturer in America. The town that for generations was defined by the old-world mining industry has added 400 jobs in the new-world green energy industry.

As the former mayor of Mountain Iron for 18 years, Gary Skalko knows how jobs have determined the politics of the Iron Range for generations: The mining boom years that led to this becoming a DFL stronghold, the downturn that severed that connection, the Democratic embrace of environmental concerns that turned many miners against the party.

At 75, he's still an old-school Range DFLer with a big Harris-Walz sign out front. When Skalko spoke at a Biden rally two months before the 2020 election, Trump fans protested. But things seem quieter now. Skalko has breakfast with a group of retired miners, mostly Trump fans, once a week at Village Inn, and political talk has become muted.

Still, politics can disrupt relationships. Skalko has been friends with Shawn Goerdt, a blaster at Hibbing Taconite, for years. In 2020 Skalko asked his friend, an ardent Trump supporter, to stop texting about politics. "Shawn, I'm not going to change you, you're surely not going to change me, so knock it off," recalled Skalko.

On a recent evening, Goerdt cracked open a Dos Equis on his Mountain Iron deck and talked politics — not with Skalko but with two like-minded friends.

Goerdt, 48, noticed miners' shifting politics during the Obama years. "We got duped," miners said of Obama. Now, Goerdt sees the Democratic Party as having lost its way: emotion-based, brainwashed by media, dominated by "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Yet Goerdt loves Trump so much, he said, that he'd "give my life for that guy."

On the deck, a fellow Hibbing Taconite blaster, Adam Maxwell, and his wife, Larissa Rossman, spoke of government's response to COVID as a political wake-up call. Now they see all sorts of insidious connections: between government and Big Pharma, between the left and mainstream media.

The next morning, Skalko was sitting in his backyard with his energetic French bulldog, Luna. He wore an anti-Trump T-shirt — "MAKE LYING WRONG AGAIN" — and spoke admiringly of Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, having worked on his 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Skalko's backyard was a separate political universe from Goerdt's. They're still friends, but there's no political talk between them.

"Maybe we're so divided, so many friendships have been destroyed, so many families have been split, people are just sick of it," Skalko said. "People are afraid to cause more fighting. I don't know if that's healthy. But people are just avoiding it, not showing or talking about it.

"Trump's been around eight years now," he continued. "Most people, I know where they are, they know where I am, and we're not going to change."

Newsroom developer Tom Nehil contributed to this report.