WASHINGTON — A Republican presidential candidate has not won the state of Minnesota since Richard M. Nixon’s victory there in 1972. But President Trump has long viewed it as the one that got away.
Mr. Trump barely set foot in the state during his 2016 campaign, and his field organization on the ground was nonexistent: The lone Trump campaign staff member working the state was moved to Colorado before Election Day. But Mr. Trump lost Minnesota to his former rival Hillary Clinton by 1.5 percentage points, or less than 45,000 votes.
“We almost won it,” Mr. Trump said during a visit this year to a trucking company in a Minneapolis suburb. The difference between a victory and a loss, he said, would have been coming to the state to give “one more speech.”