The regulars file into Ye Olde Pickle Factory in Nisswa, Minn., before 10 a.m. most days, taking their seats at the bar. Chili pepper lights hang from the ceiling, and neon beer signs glow against wood-paneled walls. A television flickers on. “The Price Is Right” is about to start.
They have been doing this since the mid-1980s, gathering in this small, dim room, waiting for someone on the game show to spin exactly $1 on the big wheel. When that happens, everyone receives a token for a free drink. Lately, they had been in a lull. No one had hit the dollar in weeks — until Wednesday.
Nisswa is a town of about 2,000 people in the Brainerd Lakes Area, a popular summer vacation destination about 150 miles north of Minneapolis. Most of the regulars on hand this morning say they prefer not to go to the city anymore. Not since the summer of 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer and the city erupted.
Now, Minneapolis is in the news again. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman, Renee Good, during an immigration operation last week, and demonstrators are back on the streets.
What did the regulars make of it?
Good’s death was tragic, they said. Horrific.
But they also said that she had asked for trouble.
“You obey the law officer,” a man in a veterans ball cap said, “and question it later.”
This is the divide, in a single sentence. In Minneapolis, protesters saw an innocent woman killed by a federal agent and took to the streets. At “the Pickle,” the regulars saw a woman who should have complied.
In bars, cafes, and coffee shops across rural Minnesota, the same conversations were unfolding. Good’s death had become a mirror, reflecting back a fracture that had been deepening for years — not just in their state, but across the country, wherever rural areas chafe against the political power of big cities.
Deb Lund and Connie Jenson, both in their early 70s, sat at the bar. A Busch Light cooler nearby read “Welcome Hunters!” A patron had brought smoked salmon to share, and someone passed a Tupperware container down the line.
This area, like most of rural Minnesota, votes solidly Republican. It was not always this way. For decades, rural Minnesota was home to moderate Democrats who would vote for candidates from their own party who aligned with their views. The rightward shift was catalyzed by the rise of Donald Trump. Now the regulars at the Pickle say that what everyone in the region seems to agree on is that life there is safer and quieter than in the Twin Cities.
Most of the regulars avoid Minneapolis if they can. They see the city as dangerous, out of control, and something to flee.
“I don’t even want to go there,” Jenson said of Minneapolis. “Not anymore. Not since the George Floyd riots.”
Lund used to live in Crystal, a Minneapolis suburb. “I worked my butt off to get up here,” she said, “and there’s no way I’m going back.”
The regulars once bristled when Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, referred to rural Minnesota as “the land of rocks and cows.” Now they call themselves “rocks and cows” with a kind of pride.
“It’s a hopeless feeling,” Jenson said, “that most everything is controlled by the city.”
There is a term for what Lund and Jenson are expressing. Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota, calls it “rural consciousness” — a sense that living in a rural area comes with consequences: less political power, fewer resources, less respect.
“One thing we find is that individuals who are high in rural consciousness feel misunderstood by people living in nonrural areas,” Federico said. “To some extent, there’s evidence they feel shortchanged.”
There is nothing uniquely Minnesotan about this. The same fault line runs through Illinois, California, New York ― anywhere a major metropolis dominates state politics, as it is in Minnesota by the Twin Cities. Rural citizens have become more conservative and more Republican across the country. But in Minnesota, the shift has been particularly pronounced. Today, less populated areas of the state vote Republican by a margin of roughly 2 to 1, according to Tim Lindberg, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who studies rural politics.
This sense of alienation is not new. But in recent years it has become tightly bound to Republican partisanship — a shift accelerated by conservative media and political leaders who frame cities as dangerous and lawless.
But elsewhere in rural Minnesota, the shooting had unsettled even some conservatives.
In Pine City, about 75 miles north of Minneapolis, Trever DePoppe, 23, helps manage a pro shop that screens jerseys for local sports teams. He considers himself a Republican. He supports ICE.
He is also troubled by the killing.
“I don’t think the shooting was necessarily 100 percent justified,” DePoppe said. “I can see both sides of it. Obviously when you drive into someone that has a gun pointed, that’s probably not the smartest idea. But at the same time, why do you have a gun pulled in that situation? And then to walk away on your bodycam and be using foul language toward the person?
“I think it’s great to start to get some of the illegal immigrants out of the state,” he added. “I think it’s bad how they are going about it.”
DePoppe had never seen an ICE agent in town. He said many residents see the Twin Cities — also known as “the Cities” in these parts — as almost another world.
“Until something happens up here, it’s not a problem for anyone up here,” he said. “A lot of people don’t watch the news anymore because all you see is the stuff that happens in the Cities. It’s depressing, traumatizing. It’s things that we don’t think about until it happens up here, but down in the Cities it happens every day.”
Sign in to read the full article.
Sign in with Google