One Year after Riots, Twin Cities Marked by Lawlessness, Racial Division

Minneapolis — Speaking in La Crosse, Wis., before the Fourth of July holiday in 2015, Barack Obama directed the crowd’s attention a few miles west, across the Mississippi River.

Minnesota, the then-president noted, was proof of what blue state politics could achieve. The state’s Democratic leaders had increased taxes on the wealthy, raised the minimum wage, and pumped taxpayer money into all-day kindergarten and financial aid for college. And the state’s unemployment rate was still lower than Republican-led Wisconsin’s, and its median income was higher. Minnesota seemingly had cracked the code.