DULUTH — In case you doubted Sharon McMahon’s Twin Ports bona fides, she made clear when discussing her place of residence that she knows exactly what it means to live here.
“This is a unique place,” McMahon said. “I would challenge you to find anything even remotely similar to it that’s this far away from a Trader Joe’s, and has this extreme of a climate, and has this kind of arts scene and these kinds of community resources.”
No, the Duluth area does not have a Trader Joe’s, but it does have “America’s government teacher.” With 1.3 million followers on Instagram, McMahon may be the most famous person currently living full-time in the Northland. (Even Bob Dylan, who once called Central Hillside home, has only 1.2 million Instagram followers.)
That’s a funny position to be in for a person who remembers how starstruck Duluth was when the movie “Iron Will” was filmed here in 1993. “It was a big deal,” McMahon said, “the idea that someone who’s on a poster might be walking around your town.”
Never mind movie screens, though. People today have their eyes glued to smartphone screens, and McMahon is on a lot of them.
From her home outside Duluth, McMahon runs a media enterprise with employees “all over the country, from New York to Los Angeles.” In addition to social media, she has a digital magazine, a podcast, a book club and more — including her own book, “The Small and the Mighty” (2024), which topped the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list.
“I have zero interest in moving away,” McMahon said. “Even though it’s very cold and it’s very remote, I love it. Yes, it would be easier to live somewhere else, but I don’t consider it.”
Not only has McMahon come a long way since her youthful years plying a News Tribune delivery route while listening to her Walkman, she’s come a long way in just the past six years. Her rise to fame began in 2020, when she found success with a video about the Electoral College and learned she had a knack for creating accessible civics content online.
“When I was a child, the internet didn’t exist, so it wasn’t something I could ever have dreamed to have aspired to,” said McMahon about her online stardom.
After growing up in Duluth, McMahon moved away and began a career that included teaching government classes at the high school level.
“I moved back to Duluth in 2010 because I had three kids and I wanted to be closer to my family,” McMahon said. “It is very interesting to have lived on both coasts and to come back to Duluth as an adult.”
McMahon’s husband had gained the then-unusual ability to work remotely, but McMahon knew she would be unlikely to find a social studies teaching job in the area. She embraced entrepreneurship, first pursuing a yarn business and then becoming a successful photographer.
“I knew that moving home would definitely be leaving the traditional classroom,” McMahon said. “What I didn’t know, though, is that I would someday have a different and much larger classroom.”
McMahon now tackles topics like government shutdowns, international relations and the lessons of presidential history. Recently, she and her colleagues have been covering the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in the Twin Cities — an operation that has claimed lives and riveted international attention.
“Duluth is deeply interconnected with the Twin Cities,” McMahon said. “We all know people whom this directly impacts. I think there’s a lot of fear about what will happen next.”
McMahon has encouraged her followers to ask their senators “to commit to opposing any DHS appropriations bill that includes funding for ICE without clear guardrails on their actions.”
One of the things McMahon is most concerned about is the potential for tensions to rise even further. If an ICE agent is seriously injured in a clash with community members, it could lead to the presence in Minnesota of more than a paramilitary force; President Donald Trump has threatened to summon the actual U.S. military.
“That will result in an escalation of the federal government’s actions and rhetoric, potentially resulting in something like invoking the Insurrection Act,” McMahon said. “It’s a very tough position to be in if you are asking the Minnesota National Guard to protect people from the federal government.”
Since Trump took office a second time, McMahon has talked about the potential for such a scenario to occur. “What I did not predict is that it would happen here,” she said, meaning in Minnesota.
With all eyes on our state, Minnesota’s “unique culture of civic participation,” as McMahon described it, is on display. Minnesotans have a history of showing up, not just for extraordinary events but for ordinary local elections and public meetings.
McMahon recalled once asking a class of Maryland high school students why Minnesota has such high levels of voter turnout. “They all sat there in silence,” she said, “and one of them finally raised their hand and said, ‘Because there’s nothing else to do there.’”
Although the rise in partisan tensions is visible in our state, as it is throughout the country, “Minnesotans have a very strong independent streak,” McMahon said. That independence, she believes, has informed the state’s response to the arrival of thousands of armed federal agents.
“What did we do to you?” McMahon asked, describing Minnesotans’ mindset. “We’re just out here trying to make it through the negative 50 (degree windchill). Leave us alone.”
McMahon’s rise is built on her own expertise and charisma, but may also indicate a widespread desire for a trusted teacher who can offer objective context and historical background in turbulent times.
“It’s never been more important to know where we came from,” McMahon said, “because if we don’t know where we came from, how can we know where to head?”
Through projects like her book, which highlights unsung American change makers, McMahon hopes to remind people of their own agency.
“Every single person you would say that you admire has lived through some type of unprecedented times, and has found a way to have fortitude,” McMahon said. “Some of the most important actions that have happened in history were not done at the governmental level; they were done at the community level.”
Even as she discusses topics like the future of American democracy and the fate of NATO, McMahon remains rooted in her own local community.
“The culture of the city shaped who I am,” said McMahon about Duluth. “I remember, many times, my parents helping people in our neighborhood and people in our neighborhood helping us, and that was something that was like, ‘Yeah, that’s part of just how things are.’”
McMahon has even grown attached to the weather. “I can’t imagine living somewhere like Arizona, where it’s sunny 350 days a year,” she said. “I need a good blizzard advisory now and then.”
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