First and foremost, abortion is not on the ballot in November. Can you just clarify for us now, what your position is? Lately, you've said you would not seek to overturn the State Supreme Court ruling that found a right to abortion in the Minnesota Constitution and that you do support some exemptions to an outright ban. A few months ago, before the Supreme Court ruled you and I were talking and you told me you would try to ban abortion outright if Roe v. We're gonna see all those things on the table. Without any kind of deep analysis, this election is going to be about public safety, putting more cops on the street, having incarceration be a tool for deterrence, having judges and prosecuting attorneys actually follow mandated minimum sentencing, and we're gonna inflate an economy and broken supply chains, and what Governor Walz has done to long term care facilities. People who maybe got their biggest raise in years from their workplace, and they're actually only. And it's been compounded by an inflationary cycle that in large part has been born of, in many situations, foolish economic policies that serve to fracture supply chains, accelerate the inflationary driving forces. I think public safety is absolutely the critical issue. And over a year's period of time, we've been near record breaking. We've had more police officers assaulted in 2021 than any normal year, we've broken records for concentrated homicide events in a short period of time. We've got teenage kids killed an hour or two before a baseball game in the downtown Minneapolis area. We have the Mega Mall, the Mall of America closed down because people are firing at each other with guns there. I mean, we have shootings virtually every day. Well, if people don't recognize that, the pivotal issue is public safety, they've got their head buried in the sand. Support MPR News Today Heart So what are the key issues you will stress now in the general election campaign has a couple of months to go here? A movement was born and it got behind the Jensen campaign. But there's a lot of, I think, conservative minded people who say, we can do so much better than this. Last night, it was just a little bit above 400,000. I think we had more votes in a statewide Republican primary than anybody's ever received for the last 25 years.Īnd I think it was really important to was that the Democrats, I think, in 2018, I think there were some 600,000 to 650,000 Democrats who turned out for the primaries. And then we had some 89 or 90% of the vote. And then at the endorsing convention in May in Rochester, after nine ballots, we won, I think, 65 to 33%. And that was almost double what had been there four years ago. 1, with almost 20,000 people coming to the Republican precincts. And so we had tremendous performance on Feb. And through all that, I think a movement was born. And we also talked very much about the economy, and what is the role of government. Along the way we stood up for parent rights and for health freedom, and for public safety, and for a foundational education for kids. On Christmas day, three months later, we launched and for the last 18 months, we've done everything we can to try to get out and have a conversation with Minnesotans. Mary and I, my wife and I, decided to run for election in December of 2020. And I think that's what happened in Minnesota. That event in Virginia in 2020, I think galvanized an awful lot of places outside of Virginia. There was an activism there was an energy and electricity. And I think we saw that really come to play in Virginia, as we saw, mama bears and warrior dads and people get off the sidelines in a way that perhaps hadn't been seen in a long time. And I think the movement is born of a concern for the nature of our very democracy. I think there's a movement going on in America. How did you get to this point? And how do you win in November? When this campaign started, there were quite a few Republicans, more than a half dozen who wanted to be in the position you're in right now.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. The following transcription has been edited for length and clarity. He also said he supports the right of victims of rape and incest to seek abortions. The day after the primary election, he told MPR News’ Mike Mulcahy that the “pivotal issue” of the campaign will be public safety. Former GOP state senator Scott Jensen is his party’s nominee for governor.