Not all candidates campaign for themselves

Many candidates for elected office spend months spreading their message any way they can in hope of winning their race.

So what do candidates do when they don’t have an opponent?

For Minnesota House Rep. Steve Elkins, who ran unopposed in his bid for reelection to House District 50B, the 2026 campaign was much like his past campaigns.

That included canvassing his west Bloomington district. But sans a challenger for the seat, he was able to dedicate extra time to campaigning outside of his district, something he does each election season.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party identified 21 Minnesota House districts it identified as important battlegrounds. Several were districts held by a DFL legislator that warranted extra effort to defend. The remainder were districts the party was looking to flip from the Republican Party, according to Elkins.

Beyond the candidates and their campaign teams, party loyalists helped spread the word about the DFL candidate in select districts around the state. And Elkins traveled to all 21 of those battlegrounds at least once during the 2026 campaign to stump for the DFL candidate. His travels took him to Ely, Austin and Winona, and points in between. Some of those trips took him to areas of the state he hadn’t ever visited, he noted.

Concerns close to home were shared by residents around the state, according to Elkins. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity was a concern of residents in outstate communities as well as the metropolitan area, and concern about the potential development of data centers was expressed almost everywhere in the state, he added.

Campaigning for candidates outside of Bloomington provided a better perspective about what Minnesotans think, he said.

When campaigning, Elkins identifies himself as a member of the Minnesota House, which often surprises residents in districts outside of his own. It also impresses them that Elkins thinks enough of their DFL candidate to travel from Bloomington and campaign on the candidate’s behalf, he noted.

Elkins put extra effort into one particular campaign. He was assigned a “buddy district,” and worked on behalf of House District 54A Rep. Brad Tabke, who retained the seat two years ago by 14 votes in a race that sparked controversy when it was determined during a recount that 20 ballots had been mistakenly thrown away. In a rematch of the election of two years ago, Tabke won with 57.1% of the vote over Republican Party challenger Aaron Paul.

The added effort by Elkins and others didn’t translate to a sweep of all 21 districts, but the DFL held its six seats and flipped about half of Republican seats it targeted, Elkins noted.

House District 51B Rep. Nathan Coulter did have a Republican challenger, and campaigned to win his third election as east Bloomington's state representative. But he still made time to campaign for other DFL candidates around the state.

“I have a pretty safe district,” he noted.

Coulter campaigned in 25 districts, including his own, during the 2026 campaign.

A win in his district with 64% or 70% of the vote doesn’t change anything, but that 6-point difference in a competitive district is far more meaningful, he explained.

One of the districts Coulter campaigned in was House District 32A in the Blaine area, where the DFL challenger appears to have come up 22 votes short, pending a recount of the race. Republican Nolan West defeated DFL challenger Amanda Matchett by 22 votes.

How much does the extra effort of reps like Elkins and Coulter matter in a tight race? Elkins said one year he conducted an experiment in his district. He canvassed select precincts in his district while avoiding others to see if there was a discernible difference in support. The difference in support between the precincts he canvassed and avoided was about 15 percentage points, according to Elkins.

“We know that it makes a big difference in the House DFL caucus,” he said.