Tuesday’s election will feature a number of municipal and school board races as well as ballot questions in the east metro and two special elections for the Minnesota state Senate.

While it’s an off year election with no state or federal offices on the ballot in Minnesota, local elections will directly impact the taxes you pay, the education children receive and how the city you live in is run.

Polls open at 7 a.m., and you need to at least be in line by 8 p.m. when the polls close to vote.

Where to get information on voting

Nearly everything you need to know or do — such as where to vote and who will be on your ballot — can be found at the Minnesota secretary of state’s website MNVotes.gov.

The website also has a section, “free and fair elections,” that discusses polling place rules (you can not have campaign buttons or other materials displayed inside), your rights (yes, you can bring your child) and rules for challengers (the only thing you can challenge is a voter’s eligibility).

If you haven’t registered to vote, you can do that in person Tuesday at your polling place. The website explains what you’ll need to bring with you to do that.

To find a poll place in your county go to sos.mn.gov/elections-voting/find-county-election-office.

Where do I find information on candidates, ballot questions?

There are municipal races, such as a mayoral races in St. Paul and White Bear Lake, and school board elections taking place as well as a number of school levy referendums on the ballot this year.

And, there are two special elections for the state Senate — in districts in Woodbury and Buffalo — that could impact of the balance of power in that chamber.

Related Articles

St. Paul’s mayoral race to be decided by ranked-choice vote — on Election Night

Ramsey County elections: Races for mayor, city councils, school boards

Judge tosses complaint against St. Paul DFL, Vote Yes treasurer Rick Varco

St. Paul: Administrative citations amendment is on the ballot. Here’s what you need to know.

Special elections to decide whether DFL, GOP control MN Senate

Voters in St. Paul can rank their choices of candidates running for mayor under the city’s instant runoff voting system. This allows voters to rank multiple candidates for the same office in order of preference. For more information on this go to ramseycountymn.gov/residents/elections-voting/voters/prepare-vote/ranked-voting

Stories on the various races in Ramsey, Washington and Dakota counties as well as candidate surveys can be found at twincities.com/news/politics/elections.

There’s also an election guide at twincities.com/2025/10/16/election-guide-dakota-ramsey-washington-races-ballot-questions to help answer other questions about the 2025 races.

Check twincities.com for full coverage of east metro races Tuesday night.

Sometime in 1985 I had lunch with Sam Francis in the cafeteria of The Washington Times, where we both worked. You may never have heard of Sam Francis, but MAGA people (at least the more intellectual ones) know him as one of the seminal thinkers of their movement.

The lunch was awkward because I found him dark and creepy (and he probably found me naive). Back then I didn’t understand that his way of thinking would triumph in conservative circles and my way of thinking would be vanquished. I don’t think he won because he was a flat-out racist, though he was. (He was later fired for writing a column arguing that “neither ‘slavery’ nor ‘racism’ as an institution is a sin.”) I think he won because he was a revolutionary, while I was a conservative. I wanted to reform things; he wanted to burn it all down.

Francis’ views coded reactionary on substance but revolutionary in method. He understood that his tactics were closer to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin than Edmund Burke. And it wasn’t just him. Over the last 50 years or so, left-wing revolutionary ideas have entered what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called the “spontaneous philosophy,” and what we would call the cultural atmosphere. MAGA has profited by exploiting these ideas in order to destroy the left.

The ideas, conceived when the bourgeois center constituted the cultural establishment, were developed to destroy that establishment. Now the elite university left is the cultural establishment, and left-wing revolutionary ideas work just as well against them. Let me give you a few examples of how MAGA embraces left ideas to get its way (even while not knowing, in most cases, where these ideas came from):

Postmodernism

Many postmodernists argued that there’s no such thing as capital-T Truth. Statements are constructed narratives for the imposition of power. What matters is whose narratives gain social dominance. As Jonathan Rauch noted in a brilliant essay in Persuasion, Donald Trump, who probably has never heard of the postmodernists, took that idea and ran with it. Truth is whatever he says it is. Kellyanne Conway talked about “alternative facts.” Rudy Giuliani, that notorious postmodernist, said that “truth isn’t truth.”

Anti-Globalization

In 1999, a group of mostly left-wing activists protested free trade and globalization at a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. I would love to go back in time and watch their faces as I told them who their eventual savior would turn out to be.

The Power Elite

Radical sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote a book with that title in 1956. His argument was that a shadowy elite made up of people who got into exclusive clubs at Harvard, Yale and Princeton actually ran America. Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott began to explore a stratum of politics that he eventually called the “Deep State” in his 2007 book “The Road to 9/11.” As you know, MAGA embraces the “deep state” concept and this kind of conspiratorial thinking.

Marxist-Leninism

Marx saw history through the prism of class conflict. MAGA also sees history as the conflict between the masses and the elites. Lenin believed that every state institutionalizes the dictatorship of a single class. MAGA believes America has been ruled by a dictatorship of the educated elites. Lenin realized you can use a vanguard to seize power and utterly destroy the structures of the old regime. This is what MAGA seeks to do, using traditional Leninist tactics.

Back in 2013, Steve Bannon was honest about this. “I’m a Leninist,” he told an interviewer. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, destroy all of today’s establishment.” Christopher Rufo, the conservative culture warrior, embodies Lenin’s concept of “vanguardism,” that it takes a small revolutionary cadre to propel history and liberate the masses.

Critical Theory

This intellectual hodgepodge, which emerged from something called the Frankfurt School, built on Marxism and influenced the New Left over the past two generations. One of its tenets is that the supposedly neutral institutions of society are simply shams that the elite use to mask their grip on power. Trump agrees. A neutral Justice Department? Gone. A neutral media? Gone. A neutral Constitution? Going. A neutral judiciary? Going. Free speech? Going.

Identity Politics

This is based, first, on the idea that your group identity explains your worldview more than your individual consciousness. It is based, second, on the idea that history is a struggle between oppressor and oppressed groups. It is based, third, on the idea that victimized groups are innocent and oppressor groups are evil. You are defined by how much your group is oppressed. Over the last few decades identity-based departments flourished in American universities — women’s studies, African American studies, etc.

Trump took this idea and flipped it on its head. Now cultural studies professors are the evil oppressors, and evangelical Christians are the persecuted oppressed. As so many have noted, MAGA is identity politics for white people. It turns out that identity politics is more effective when your group is in the majority.

The Gramscian Turn

Gramsci argued that cultural power is interwoven with political power. Capitalist establishments wield their power through cultural hegemony. Political shifts are concretizations of shifts in values that have already occurred in people’s minds. Sam Francis (who died in 2005) explicitly cited Gramsci as his role model as he waged his culture war struggles. Christopher Rufo does the same today. This is why Trump is going after the universities, public broadcasting and the Kennedy Center. Francis once wrote, “The main focus should be the reclamation of cultural power, the patient elaboration of an alternative culture within but against the regime — within the belly of the beast but indigestible by it.”

Transgressivism

Since the 19th century, left-wing cultural figures have tried to “épater le bourgeois” — shock the bourgeoisie. They’ve done this in part through artworks like Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917), which was a urinal laid flat on its back, and “Piss Christ,” Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass tank of urine. It’s fun to shock the pearl-clutching elites. You tell yourself you’re trying to jolt polite society into a new way of thinking. Recently Politico reported on a Republican group text chat that had a strong épater le bourgeois vibe, with participants sharing deliberately offensive and performatively transgressive statements like “I love Hitler” and Holocaust jokes like “We got to pretend that we like them. ‘Hey, come on in. Take a nice shower and relax.’ Boom — they’re dead.”

Cancel Culture

There are more human beings in America eager to be offended than there are those who are eager to offend. A few years ago, people had their careers destroyed for uttering words that offended the snowflake left. Now people see their careers destroyed for uttering words that offend the snowflake right. These are words like diversity, equity, gender, nonbinary, antiracist, trauma and hate speech. Even just typing words like trauma traumatizes me. The horror! The horror!

Last year, a writer named James Lindsay cribbed language from “The Communist Manifesto,” changed its valences so that they were right wing and submitted it to a conservative publication called The American Reformer. The editors, unaware of the provenance, were happy to print it. When the hoax was revealed, they were still happy! The right is now eager to embrace the ideas that led to tyranny, the gulag and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, the right didn’t take the leftist ideas that were intended to build something; they took just the ideas intended to destroy.

Related Articles

Jonathan Zimmerman: Free speech? Absolutely, for me. But not for you.

Robert Pearl: A collapse of patient trust — how U.S. health care lost its way

Michael Hiltzik: The Republican war on food stamps has a long, ugly history

David M. Drucker: The perverse incentives fueling this long shutdown

Laura Washington: If Donald Trump can run for a third term, so can Barack Obama

But the left doesn’t get off the hook. Since 1848, leftist intellectuals have been working on a core body of thought, composed, in part, from the ideas listed above. Back in 2020, woke Democrats embraced these ideas with gusto — until Trump utterly co-opted and discredited them. One of the reasons the Democratic Party is struggling so much is that the radical left ideologies that undergirded its cultural stances are kaput, and it hasn’t yet built a more moderate intellectual tradition to fall back on.

If you want a one-sentence description of where politics is right now here’s my nominee: We now have a group of revolutionary rightists who have no constructive ideology confronting a group of progressives who let their movement be captured by a revolutionary left-wing ideology that failed.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 4, the 308th day of 2025. There are 57 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 4, 2008, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was elected the first Black president of the United States, defeating the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Also on this date:

In 1922, the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt.

Related Articles

Mamdani and Cuomo face off as New York City chooses new mayor, while Sliwa hopes for an upset

California voters take up Democrats’ push for new congressional maps that could shape House control

Virginia governor’s race will test Trump and Democrats nationally — and make history

Trump’s policies and inflation drive governor’s race in New Jersey, where GOP has been making gains

Pennsylvania could keep its Democratic high court majority or get partisan deadlock on the bench

In 1979, the Iran hostage crisis began as militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seizing its occupants; 52 of the hostages were held for 444 days and were released on Jan. 20, 1981.

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan won election to the White House for the first time as he trounced Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

In 1991, Ronald Reagan opened his presidential library in Simi Valley, California; attending were President George H.W. Bush and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford and Richard Nixon — the first-ever gathering of five past and present U.S. chief executives.

In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli minutes after attending a peace rally.

In 2007, King Tutankhamen’s face was unveiled for the first time to the public more than 3,000 years after the pharaoh was buried in his Egyptian tomb.

In 2016, the Paris climate accord, reached the previous year, took effect; the first global pact to fight climate change called on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposed no sanctions on countries that didn’t.

Today’s Birthdays:

Blues musician Delbert McClinton is 86.
Former first lady Laura Bush is 79.
Author Charles Frazier is 75.
Actor Ralph Macchio is 64.
“Survivor” host Jeff Probst is 64.
Actor Matthew McConaughey is 56.
TV personality and entrepreneur Bethenny Frankel is 55.
Jazz musician Gregory Porter is 54.
Football Hall of Famer Orlando Pace is 50.
Football Hall of Hamer Devin Hester is 43.

By STEVE PEOPLES and WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tuesday marks the nation’s first major Election Day since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, and his leadership and policies dominated the debate in almost every race — even though the Republican was absent from the campaign trail.

The biggest contests are in Virginia and New Jersey, the only states electing governors this year. Trump lost both last fall, but voters in each have a history of electing Republicans for statewide office. The GOP candidates have closely aligned themselves with the president, betting that his big win last year can still provide a path to victory this time, even if the party occupying the White House typically suffers in off-year elections.

Strong Democratic showings, meanwhile, could provide the party a pathway back to national relevance — even if its top candidates have taken very different approaches, from adhering to a moderate line to wholeheartedly embracing government spending to improve voters’ lives.

In New York City, a self-described democratic socialist who already has been a target of Trump’s criticism could emerge as a national star if elected mayor. And California voters will decide whether to redraw the state’s House map, as Democrats look to counter a push by Trump to reshape the balance of congressional power.

Here’s what to watch:

A referendum on Trump

The president did not set foot in either Virginia or New Jersey to campaign with Republican gubernatorial candidates Winsome Earle-Sears or Jack Ciattarelli, but both contests will likely be viewed as a referendum on Trump’s job so far.

Over the last year, his tariffs rocked the global economy, his “big, beautiful” budget bill threatened rural hospitals and health insurance coverage for millions, he enacted massive cuts to the federal workforce and he sent the National Guard to multiple American cities.

This combination photo shows candidates for governor of New Jersey Republican Jack Ciattarelli, left, and Democrat Mikie Sherrill during the final debate in governors race, Oct. 8, 2025, in New Brunswick, N.J. (AP Photos/Heather Khalifa)

The president endorsed Ciattarelli in New Jersey’s governor’s race, but held only a pair of tele-town halls on his behalf, including one Monday night. Trump also did an Election Night eve tele-town hall for Virginia Republican candidates, but he did not mention Earle-Sears, speaking mostly in favor of the GOP candidate for attorney general. Earlier in the campaign, Trump gave Earle-Sears only a half-hearted endorsement, saying he supported the GOP candidate for governor though he did not use her name. Earle-Sears was nonetheless a fierce defender of Trump and his policies, just as Ciattarelli was in New Jersey.

Despite Trump’s distance, a good night for Republicans would almost certainly be viewed as a political victory for Trump and his “Make America Great Again” policies. A bad night for the GOP would give Democrats a strong — though perhaps fleeting — start heading into midterms that are still a year away.

A new Democratic playbook?

Tuesday offers a test of two very different Democratic philosophies on display from candidates: toeing a moderate line or fully embracing far-left progressivism. But it also presents a scenario where both, or neither, could be successful — making drawing conclusions going forward more difficult.

The party’s candidates for governor, New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, have focused largely on the economy, public safety and health care, distancing themselves from some of the Democratic Party’s far-left policies.

A growing collection of Democratic leaders believe the moderate approach holds the key to the party’s revival after the GOP won the White House and both congressional chambers last year. Tuesday could be a key indicator of whether they’re right.

Both Sherrill and Spanberger have downplayed their support for progressive priorities, including LGBTQ rights and resistance against Trump’s attack on American institutions. Spanberger rarely even mentions Trump’s name on the campaign trail.

Both also have resumes that might appeal to the middle.

Sherrill spent a decade as an active-duty helicopter pilot for the Navy before entering Congress, while Spanberger is a former CIA case officer who spent years abroad working undercover. They have played up their public safety backgrounds as a direct response to the GOP’s attack that Democrats are soft on crime.

Above all, the Democrats have focused on rising costs such as groceries, energy and health care, which Trump has struggled to control.

A new star for Democrats (and Republicans) in New York City

That approach is far different from New York City’s mayoral race, where progressives are energized by Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim state legislator who identifies as a democratic socialist and backs radical changes to address economic inequality.

FILE – New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a rally, Oct. 26, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

His bold agenda and inspirational approach have attracted thousands of volunteers in New York and brought the likes of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to campaign on his behalf. It has also spooked some business leaders and voices in the Jewish community, who otherwise support Democrats but oppose some of Mamdani’s past statements about personal wealth accumulation and Israel.

Mamdani has been locked in a caustic race against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani. Republican Curtis Sliwa is looking for a huge upset.

And while many progressives are thrilled, some Republicans in Washington are also quietly rooting for a Mamdani victory. Republican campaign committees have already launched attack ads against more than a dozen vulnerable House Democrats in New York and New Jersey linking them to Mamdani and his far-left politics.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speaks to a crowd of reporters and pedestrians while campaigning in New York, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Trump endorsed Cuomo, posting online Monday evening: “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

That’s after Trump derided Mamdani nearly every day. GOP operatives are also giddy about the opportunity to use him to attack many more Democrats closer to next year’s midterm elections — just as they have done with progressive Democrats such as House “squad” members like Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The shutdown effect

Election Day comes in the midst of a federal government shutdown that has already spanned more than a month. Both parties in Congress blame each other, and there is no end in sight.

Will it matter?

Virginia is home to more than 134,000 federal workers, many of whom have been furloughed or are being forced to work without pay. New Jersey has nearly 21,000 federal employees, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, out of a total of more than 2 million such government employees nationwide.

Either number is more than enough to swing a close election.

At the same time, millions of people may be losing critical food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, offering voters another urgent reason to express their displeasure.

Polling shows that Republicans, who control Congress and the White House, are getting slightly more blame than Democrats — though there is plenty of frustration aimed at both sides.

Trump has taken the extraordinary step of calling on the Senate to scrap filibuster rules requiring a 60-vote minimum on major legislation to try and force the government to reopen — even though his party’s leadership considers that a nonstarter.

A test for the Trump realignment

While Trump lost Virginia and New Jersey last fall, there were significant shifts to the right in both states. In New Jersey, Trump’s 16-point loss in 2020 shrunk to less than 6 points in 2024.

Those shifts were fueled by Trump’s increasing popularity among traditional Democratic loyalists: labor union members, Black men, Hispanic voters and younger people. Democrats are particularly vulnerable in New Jersey, which has among the largest percentage of labor union households in the nation.

If those pro-Trump trends continue this week, Democrats could be in trouble.

But Trump is not on the ballot, of course. And the Trump coalition — especially lower-propensity voters — has not typically shown up in the same numbers in non-presidential years.

Democrats are cautiously optimistic given that Trump did not campaign aggressively in either state, a move driven both by the president’s weak standing and his allies’ concerns about the Republican candidates’ viability — especially in Virginia.

At the same time, the biggest star in Democratic politics, former President Barack Obama, rallied voters in New Jersey and Virginia over the weekend.

Related Articles

Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in US history, dies at 84

Mamdani and Cuomo face off as New York City chooses new mayor, while Sliwa hopes for an upset

California voters take up Democrats’ push for new congressional maps that could shape House control

Virginia governor’s race will test Trump and Democrats nationally — and make history

Trump’s policies and inflation drive governor’s race in New Jersey, where GOP has been making gains

Pennsylvania and California and the future of elections

Pennsylvania voters will decide whether three state Supreme Court justices supported by Democrats will serve another term.

The outcome may shape the seven-member high court in the nation’s most populous swing state, and may have implications for key cases involving redistricting and balloting for midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.

The incumbents aren’t listed by party affiliation. The ballot merely asks voters to cast a yes-or-no vote. But spending on the race is likely to exceed $15 million, indicating how important it is to Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania and beyond.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, frequently mentioned as a 2028 presidential hopeful, is leading a charge to redraw congressional maps to give Democrats as many as five more House seats in upcoming elections.

The push is the centerpiece of a Democratic effort to counter new Republican maps in Texas and elsewhere that were drawn to boost the GOP’s chances in next year’s fight to control Congress. In order for the new maps to count in 2026, however, voters will first have to approve a yes-or-no ballot question known as Proposition 50.