Center of the American Experiment

Minnesota Economy:The Minnesota Economy Project was launched in 2016. Its goal is to educate Minnesotans to the fact that the state's economic performance in recent years has not been good, in order to build public and legislative support for lower taxes and less onerous regulation. Since 2016, the Center has published an annual analysis of Minnesota's economic performance in the 21st Century. We have publicized the findings of each paper with press conferences, radio and television appearances, op-eds in dozens of newspapers, radio ads on dozens of radio stations, three internet videos that have now exceeded 2 million views within the State of Minnesota, town meetings and other public appearances, and posts on the Center's web site and Facebook page. In 2021, we published a study on how taxes affect migration. The study showed that Minnesota loses highly productive residents to lower-tax states. For example, while our state has seen net inflows of domestic migrants in the income category from 0 to $25,000 every year since 2011, it has seen net outflows at every income level above $50,000. In 2022, we have continued to produce material, both on our website and in a wide range of media outlets, making the argument for pro-growth tax policy. We have taken this argument across the state in speeches to groups from Hibbing to Austin.We published three reports on Minnesota's economy in 2022. Our February report called for the state to give what was then a historic $7.7 billion surplus back to taxpayers, in the form of permanent tax cuts. In June, we published another report showing that the high cost of child care in Minnesota is mainly due to onerous regulations that the state places on the child care industry. And in September we published a report quantifying the economic costs of government policy responses to COVID-19. We found that states like Minnesota, which enacted a stringent COVID-19 shutdown, fared worse economically.On health care, we published a report in 2022 examining the tradeoffs to federal drug price control proposals in Congress which concluded that, overall, the loss of new, life enhancing drugs and the negative impact on the U.S. drug industry's global leadership position outweigh any alleged benefits. We also published policy briefs and several articles discussing how Minnesota and North Dakota can strengthen and expand federal price transparency requirements on hospitals to give health care consumers better pricing information and improve competitiveness and efficiency in the health care market.In addition, our health care work focuses on analyzing and commenting on how federal regulatory proposals will impact health care markets, especially the impact on health care cost and access for the average American consumer. In 2022, we provided comments with detailed analysis on four different proposed federal rules related to Medicaid, Affordable Care Act waivers, health insurance premium subsidies, and insurance market rules.Our policy goals include abolition of the estate tax; spending restraint to allow tax cuts; personal and corporate income tax rate cuts; regulatory reform; and increasing competition among health care providers and insurers. Other Center projects, such as our energy work, will also contribute to a stronger Minnesota economy.

Forums:American Experiment continues its tradition of addressing important and timely topics through public forums. In 2021 we held 46 events--40 in-person and 6 virtually. A large portion of our summer event programming was devoted to the Raise Our Standards Tour. We went across the state of Minnesota, putting on 22 programs to educate Minnesotans on Critical Race Theory, and what is being taught in our schools. The tour gained national and international publicity, but more important, it was widely covered in the communities where we held events.Overall, more than 7,000 Minnesotans attended our events in 2021. Twenty-six of the events took place in Greater Minnesota. In 2022, American Experiment hosted 45 events across the state of Minnesota and in neighboring states. Fifteen of these events were in the Greater Minnesota area and in a number of others, we collaborated with organizations in Wisconsin, Iowa and North Dakota to bring our anti-CRT tour content across the Midwest. Over 7,100 people attended our events in 2022. We also hosted forums with our own policy experts, scholars, authors, elected officials, and well-known commentators. Forum topics covered everything from energy to education to criminal justice. We are proud to bring fact-based education on important policy topics to Minnesota and beyond.

Thinking Minnesota Magazine: Thinking Minnesota, our quarterly magazine, is an important communications vehicle for American Experiment, with a circulation of more than 100,000. The Center's goal is to continue to build circulation while using the magazine to spread conservative ideas and promote the Center.Sharp content and compelling graphics have driven the popularity of Thinking Minnesota. In order to reduce the net cost of the magazine we sell ads in the magazine, and also solicit contributions to help keep Thinking Minnesota free.Our magazine also features the Thinking Minnesota Poll, a top-notch, professional poll conducted by Meeting Street Research. For each issue, we survey Minnesotans on the topics that are covered in our magazine, so that legislators and others will know what Minnesotans think on key issues.Thinking Minnesota broadly advances the policy goals on which American Experiment is working. It also promotes the Center and exposes new potential donors to our work.

Education:In 2021, we traveled to over 20 cities across Minnesota to educate parents on the current state of our public school system. These informational and empowering events received statewide, national, and international coverage, and empowered Minnesotans to get more involved in K-12 education. In 2022, we expanded our work to sponsor similar education events in other states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, and North Dakota. These were paired with papers and publications.

Energy:In 2022, our Energy Initiative continued to work to protect Minnesota families and businesses from policies that would increase the cost of energy. We educate Minnesotans about how adding weather-dependent resources like wind and solar energy to the grid drives up the cost of keeping the lights on. Our policy goals include preserving existing power plants to the benefit of ratepayers and the reduction or elimination of wind and solar energy mandates. Our energy team has developed a model that accurately estimates the true cost of wind and solar energy projects. We have used this model to analyze such projects in Minnesota as well as a number of other states--Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Dakota, Arizona, West Virginia, Washington, and others. We have often done this in collaboration with policy organizations in those states.

Educated Teachers/Employee Freedom:The Educated Teachers Project seeks to inform Minnesota's teachers about the fact that they are no longer legally required to support the state's teachers union, and about the alternatives to union membership that are available to them. The project also informs educators on how union dues are spent by Education Minnesota, the state's teachers union.The project's pressure on Education Minnesota contributed to an expansion of the annual "window" when educators can opt out of membership from a narrow seven days to 30 days. The project has helped thousands of Minnesota teachers to exercise their right to opt out of union membership, and union membership has declined, as has union revenue. Our policy goals include replacing the opt-out "window" with an opt-in requirement, and pushing for legislative action on annual union recertification measures to give teachers true workplace democracy.

Greater Minnesota Initative:The Greater Minnesota Outreach initiative seeks to extend the Center's influence outside the Twin Cities metro area. We help encourage and facilitate the trend toward conservatism, in addition to expanding the Center's fundraising. In 2021, we saw enormous gains. We increased our Greater Minnesota chapters to three (Rochester, Owatonna and Duluth). The program featured 23 events in cities in Greater Minnesota. We expanded our fundraising apparatus, while also increasing our network of contacts. And we continued our outreach by once again having a booth at the annual FarmFest trade show. In 2022, we added a fourth chapter in Mankato. We conducted 14 events in Greater Minnesota cities. In addition to increasing readership of our Thinking Minnesota magazine, we again attended FarmFest, the annual agriculture trade show.Our policy goals include accelerating the process whereby rural Minnesota is becoming more self-consciously conservative across a broad range of issues, and giving a voice to Minnesotans who live outside the metro area.

Institutional Promotion:In 2022 the Center continued a concerted effort to boost our brand reputation and awareness of our programs by utilizing radio, billboards, and online advertising, as well as a marketing partnership with University of Minnesota athletics, to reach millions of Minnesotans across the entire state.

Non-profit Community Support:The Center takes a leadership role in the conservative, free market movement by making grants to other worthy non-profits doing important work.

Spending/Golden Turkey:The Golden Turkey Award is a light-hearted contest to bring attention to wasteful spending by Minnesota's state government and allow Minnesotans to weigh in on the silliest spending of the year. The winner for 2022 was the Minnesota Department of Education for their poor management and oversight of a pandemic-related Feeding Our Future food program. Indictments related to the program have identified more than $250 million in fraud, and that number is likely to grow as the FBI and U.S. Attorney continue their investigation. Fraudsters at non-profits like Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition used computer programs to generate fake children's names and enroll them in the federally-funded free meal program. For each award, American Experiment nominates four projects and conducts a weeks-long vote on a landing page housed on our website. We promote the voting with a marketing campaign that includes email, social media, digital ads and outdoor advertising.

Young Leaders Council:Our Young Leaders Council (YLC) aims to engage and empower young people in the conservative movement through professional networking and development opportunities. YLC members share a desire to promote a free and thriving Minnesota grounded in limited government and individual freedom. As a branch of Center of the American Experiment, YLC connects young people to business leaders, legislators, policy experts and political voices both locally and nationally.

Public Safety:American Experiment launched a public awareness campaign in June 2021 to show support for law enforcement in Minnesota during the ongoing public debate over the role of police in our communities. The campaign included Facebook ads, digital ads and a radio campaign in the Twin Cities metro area during June and July. The campaign also included 35 poster sized billboards across the greater Twin Cities metro area and one large billboard at a high traffic intersection. The billboards simply read Support Our Police, Sign the Petition. Minnesotans were encouraged to visit the website SupportMNPolice.com, where they could sign a petition to support law enforcement, see crime data, learn about our recent polling on Minnesotans' views on crime and law enforecement, and browse related news reports and commentary. Almost 10,000 Minnesotans signed the petition to support our police.In 2022 American Experiment's public safety policy fellow completed a comprehensive analysis of Minnesota's crime rate and found that in 2020, for the first time in history, Minnesota's serious crime rate exceeded the national average. As a result of these findings we initiated the "High Crime MN" campaign to bring attention to the issue through live events and on-line seminars. Gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen used the data from "High Crime MN" in his campaign, including at the Minnesota State Fair. Our public safety policy fellow also monitored the actions of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission and reported on its proposal to eliminate the custody status point in the criminal history computation at sentencing, which would reduce Minnesota's already-weak criminal penalties for large numbers of convicted felons. We established a public awareness campaign on the issue which resulted, in a matter of days, in thousands of public comments, in the form of emails, being sent from our web site to the commission. This campaign was persuasive and resulted in the commission tabling the proposal.

North Dakota:In order to expand the Center's work into North Dakota, we officially launched fundraising efforts in 2021 for that purpose. In 2022, we fully launched American Experiment North Dakota. We hired an Executive Director for the state and conducted two different tours of speaking events during the year. We launched a new web site, AmericanExperimentND.com, devoted specifically to events and our activities in that state. We also continued to purchase advertising on a number of North Dakota media outlets in order to advance our messaging. In late 2022, we inaugurated a campaign to support the oil and gas industries in North Dakota. We produced 30 second and 51 second versions of a digital ad in which North Dakotans express their support for oil and gas, along with scenic footage and basic facts about the contributions of those industries to North Dakota's economy. Those videos have now been seen more than 222,000 times in a state whose population is around 780,000. We also erected billboards on North Dakota's major highways, urging citizens to support North Dakota oil and gas.