It’s not often talked about this much during the election cycle. But the state auditor race between incumbent Democrat Julie Blaha and Republican challenger Ryan Wilson has bucked that trend for a variety of reasons.
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“I think that there's an interest in the auditor's race because of multiple issues that have been raised over the last few years,” says WCCO political analyst Blois Olson. “Whether its cost overruns at Southwest Light Rail, the way in which we spend education money, and then Feeding Our Future.”
Wilson has criticized Blaha for not being more involved in stopping the Feeding Our Future fraud while Blaha has said it was outside the scope of her office, which historically is true. The office was created to audit local governments, not state governments.
That idea, however, the roles of the office and how each candidate will approach them, has been central to the race.
“When I'm state auditor, I won't just answer the questions that we have to answer, that we need to answer, but the questions of Minnesotans want answered,” says Wilson.
Blaha accuses Wilson of chasing headlines.
“You cannot have an auditor that decides how an audit should work based on a headline,” Blaha says. “You have to follow the standards. That's why people trust an audit, because it's not about the headlines. It's not about making political points. It's about following the standards.”
Olsen explains the crux of their differences in a job that is often considered to be nonpartisan.
“I think Wilson has set it up, that he's going to be a little more aggressive or activist in the way he approaches public spending,” Olson says. “Where Blaha I think views it as a traditional auditor that when the reports come in, you review the reports and you either flag, audit concerns, or you approve the report.”
In the most recent polling done by KSTP and SurveyUSA, Wilson held a 5% point lead over Blaha, 44% to 39%, but still a large 14% of the survey remained undecided. Wilson would be the first Republican to hold the position of state auditor since 2007.
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