Klobuchar looks to have no real contest. The MinnPost item notes she'd not had a real contest last time either.
The Republican's name is Joe Fraser (not Frazier). Google the name. Yeah. If you only google the name you get returns about a British gymnast.
search = Joe Fraser minnesota
Months ago, MPR reported:
A retired Navy commander and political newcomer embarked Tuesday on a U.S. Senate campaign against three-term Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a race that has drawn little interest from established Republican officeholders.
Joe Fraser, 50, of Minnetrista, said the incumbent deserves a spirited challenge. He traveled to Duluth as part of a kickoff campaign that will be as much about introducing himself.
Fraser, who spent 26 years in naval intelligence, said he has worked in the business and banking sector since leaving the military. Since 2022, he has been president of the Minnesota Council of the Navy League of the United States, a nonprofit civilian group that assists families of people in sea branches of the military.
That career took him all over the world and led to many moves domestically. Fraser moved to Minnesota a few years ago, meaning he wasn’t living here the last time Klobuchar faced voters.
He said he would make border security, inflation and the national debt a campaign focus. And he said he would make Klobuchar’s longevity an issue, too.
“Part of the problem that we get into politics is everybody thinks their seat is safe. That’s not very democratic,” Fraser said. “It drives me nuts when people just assume that the incumbent is going to when you have to earn it. And going for a fourth term is just — that’s a career politician whose biggest objective is just to continue to get reelected.”
[...] Klobuchar’s campaign issued a statement that, in part, said she’s focused on “delivering results for Minnesotans” on drug prices and veterans health care, and that she’s seen as a bipartisan collaborator on Capitol Hill.
[... Fraser] said he personally opposes abortion but said women deserve to make choices about their care.
And on immigration, he said the borders need to be secure but he also pointed to the positive contributions that newcomers to America can make.
He said President Joe Biden legitimately won and said the Capitol storming by former President Donald Trump’s supporters was “a discredit to the Constitution.”
Unlike current members of Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation, Fraser wasn’t yet ready to get fully — or at least publicly — behind Trump with the party’s primary season still in progress [in January, when MPR published]. He declined to offer an endorsement in the presidential race with voting ahead of Minnesota’s March 5 primary already in motion.
Not Paul Gosar nor Matt Gaetz, but not a threat to Amy's reelection either. While a Navy vet, he's not Steve Bannon, which cuts well in his favor.
His viewing Klobuchar as a career politician shows a familiarity with politics in Minnesota, while having been elsewhere much of the past during his Navy career.
One particular MPR paragraph is of interest:
Republicans hope this time is different and plan to use her national ambitions as a campaign messaging point. Fraser brought up Klobuchar’s 2020 White House run in labeling the incumbent as “a failed presidential candidate.”
The Crabgrass view is Klobuchar does not and did not really position herself as presidential, but ran that 2020 campaign as part of the establishments' wanting to vex Elizabeth Warren's campaign ahead of the South Carolina putsch for Biden, where Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, both timely exited the contest while Clyburn came forward to bless Biden.
It was an inner party will to sidetrack Bernie and Warren, it worked, it was anti-progressive, and this Fraser guy as a Republican seems even more anti-progressive than Amy. Which IS anti-progressive. Minnesotans may love her but she's no progressive. And not presidential. (Among Democratic women Senators, Maria Cantwell is Presidential, while also not particularly progressive.)
__________UPDATE__________
Fraser has a facebook page. A little bit of looking, he'd ruin the BWCA and Rainy River watershed and wild rice waters, over inauspicous mining. A loser that way. And not really a winner any other way. Expect Klobuchar for six more, easily.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Strib just did an item on Fraser. This sinks him unless he were running in a primary against Stauber -
He's also critical of what he views as her lack of support for mining in northern Minnesota and said she's not a vocal advocate for Minnesota jobs. Klobuchar's campaign notes she's been endorsed by the steelworkers union and is a "strong advocate for trade enforcement to stop Chinese steel dumping."
Not here that long, learned to sing Jobs, Jobs, Jobs to whore for Iron Range votes.
Sorry Charlie, you're not the big tuna. Product differentiation, yeah. But no chance.
Strib in reporting says little about Klobuchar, and nothing really new in comparison to posting noted above. Fraser seems better than some Republicans - at least admitting that Biden won 2020, but BWCA is a national gem, the most popular National Park in the nation with tourism booming on the Iron Range because of it.
Let the billionaire Chileans and Swiss sulfide miners mine elsewhere. There's plenty of untapped ore worldwide. Sulfide mining is poison the way those money grubbers operate on the cheap. Their histories of rape and run mining is not a winning policy position on which a newcomer Minnesota politician should seize.
Statewide, proposed copper mining in vulnerable environments is unpopular, and a losing game. And the steelworkers back Klobuchar, as Strib noted.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Copper reserves, top five, in a five part series. Remainder of Top 20 (including the U.S. --- we're only No.9 between Congo at 10, India at 8. Let them mine in Afghanistan, it has the 6th greatest reserves, well more than our nation; and not much on an environment to ruin.)
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Somebody should clue Fraser into Prove It First conservative thinking - don't do it unless you can prove it will be lifetime trouble free. Not a money sink and threat to waters left for the public to cope with after the mining company's put a lock on the gate because profitability ceases.
Cluing him on that could open his eyes. Turn him into a Democrat. Once enlightened, Friends of the Boundary Waters could use his support.