Trump seeks rural votes in battleground MInnesota

President Donald Trump stumped for votes in rural Minnesota, predicting his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, would terminate Trump's travel ban and settle more refugees in the North Star State.

"Biden will overwhelm your children's schools, overcrowd their classrooms and inundate your hospitals," Trump said to supporters in Bemidji.

Since narrowly losing Minnesota in 2016, Trump has emphasized the state in hopes that a victory this year could offset losses in other states.

He has visited regularly and kept a close eye on issues of particular importance to rural corners of the state.

He's reversed an Obama administration policy prohibiting the development of copper-nickel mining and has bailed out soybean, corn and other farmers who have been hurt by trade clashes with China.

More recently, he's embraced a “law and order” message aimed nationally at white suburban and rural voters who may be concerned by protests that have sometimes become violent.

That's especially true in Minnesota, where the May killing of George Floyd by a police officer sparked a national reckoning on racism.

"Your state will be overrun and destroyed if Biden and the radical left win. That's what's going to happen," he said.

But for all the work Trump has put into the state, it may elude him again in November.

A series of polls over the past week show Biden has built a consistent lead in Minnesota. And in the 2018 midterms, Democratic turnout surged in suburbs, small cities and even on the Iron Range, across the blue-collar mining towns that were once labor strongholds but had been trending Republican

Trump’s path to Minnesota success likely depends on finding more votes in rural, conservative areas –- running up the score beyond his 2016 tally. It’s a strategy he’s trying to pull off in other states and it depends on a robust field operation with the money and time to track down infrequent or first-time voters. That could be a tall order since Minnesota already has one of the nation's highest voter turnout rates.