The Community

Chapter 1 of The Briefing: Tom Emmer (R-MN-06), Part One — The Cost.

The suburbs fade into small towns. The small towns fade into farms.

Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District covers the outer ring of the Twin Cities — Sherburne County, Wright County, Carver County, parts of Anoka, Benton, and Stearns. The western edge is rural — Monticello on the Mississippi, where thousands of trumpeter swans gather along the river in winter and kids grow up fishing from the park docks. Buffalo sits between two lakes, its downtown still lined with the local shops and restaurants that have been there for generations — the kind of main street where the owner knows your name. Delano straddles the Crow River, a town of about six thousand with good schools, low taxes, and what it claims is the oldest Fourth of July celebration in the state.

Waconia wraps around the shore of the second-largest lake in the metro, a place where families put boats in the water in May and don’t pull them out until October. In between is a community of 793,533 people who make things, grow things, build things, and take care of each other.

The community is predominantly white — 86.6%, according to the Census. There are small and growing Hispanic, Black, and East African populations, mostly in the St. Cloud area and the eastern suburbs. It is a conservative community. It has sent a Republican to Congress in every election for more than two decades, and it voted for Donald Trump each time he ran. The churches are Lutheran, Catholic, evangelical. They are where the prayer groups meet, where the funerals are held, where the community organizes when something goes wrong.

Manufacturing is the largest employment sector. Across the district, 49,255 workers are employed in manufacturing — building transit buses in St. Cloud, assembling medical devices in Anoka County, processing food across Stearns County. Small businesses fill in the gaps between the big employers. Construction, healthcare, retail, then agriculture. The median household earns $98,171 a year. The median home is worth $318,900. The homeownership rate is 80.4% — well above the national average.

In cities like Blaine, Andover, and Ham Lake, many residents drive south into the Twin Cities every morning for work. The pattern is visible in the numbers — the average wage for local jobs is $64,212, while the median household in these communities earns $90,027, often with two incomes making the difference. The community sleeps in one place and works in another. The money flows in along the highway. The hours flow out.

The population is young. The median age is 37.3. There are 181,593 residents under 18. Neighbors know each other. Their kids play together, go to the same public schools, and cheer on the high school football team on Friday nights. Parents fundraise to build the hockey rinks and then volunteer to run them. Anoka has held its Halloween parade since 1920. Monticello holds Riverfest on the Mississippi every July. The county fairs draw families from three towns over — Wright County’s has run since 1870. People hunt in the fall, fish on weekends, and teach their kids to do the same. Most of the community turns out for the State Fair in late August. There are grandparents who remember what the farms looked like before the housing went in. Parents commuting an hour each way.

Between 2017 and 2022, the counties that make up the district lost 1,253 farms — roughly one in four. Most of that land became housing tracts and subdivisions.

More than 33,000 veterans live in this community. An estimated 11,100 of them carry service-connected disabilities — injuries and conditions earned in uniform that require ongoing care, ongoing medication, ongoing attention. The St. Cloud VA Medical Center employs between 1,200 and 1,500 people serving them. These veterans are neighbors, coworkers, and hockey coaches. Their service is a visible part of the community’s identity.

The community is aging. Retired teachers, retired machinists, retired nurses — people who paid into a system for decades and now depend on it to work.

Healthcare costs are rising. Most families get coverage through an employer, but the cost is the cost, and someone pays it. Statewide, the share of Minnesotans without health insurance rose from 3.8% to 5.8% between 2023 and 2025 — a 53% increase. Nearly 79,000 residents in this district are enrolled in Medicaid — roughly one in ten.

Across the four counties with complete district-level SNAP data, 37,773 households receive benefits. That number grew steadily from 2019 to 2023 — a span that includes the pandemic, the inflation that followed, and the slow recovery from both. The increase was not a spike that receded. It held.

According to Feeding America’s 2025 estimates, Minnesota’s food insecurity rate is 10.4%. This community falls below the state average, but even here, an estimated 70,000 people do not have steady access to enough food. Many of the food shelves that serve them are run by churches and volunteers.

The poverty rate is 4.1%. Most people here work long hours. They commute long distances. They own their homes and file their taxes and send their children to school.

When Washington makes decisions about every one of these lives, these families have a single voice in the House. One office. One vote. One person who can write the laws, sit on the committees, and stand on the floor of the House of Representatives.

793,533 people. One representative.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019–2023 5-year estimates; Census County Business Patterns 2022; CMS Medicare enrollment data; Minnesota Health Access Survey 2023, 2025; Minnesota DHS SNAP enrollment 2019–2025; Feeding America Map the Meal Gap 2025; USDA Census of Agriculture 2017, 2022; individual employer data (New Flyer, Medtronic, Jennie-O/Hormel, St. Cloud VA).