Somewhere between a campaign stop and an endurance sport, a Minnesota congressional candidate will spend eight hours Saturday trying to shake more hands than any politician in history — a feat that, if he pulls it off, has more to do with grip strength than policy platforms.
Matt Little, a former state senator and the Democratic nominee in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District, plans to start at the DFL booth at the Minnesota State Fair at 11 a.m. and work the fairgrounds until 7 p.m., aiming to top New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's Guinness World Record of 13,392 handshakes in eight hours, set in 2002. That works out to roughly 29 handshakes a minute, sustained, for the length of a full work shift — a pace that leaves little room for small talk.
Richardson's mark itself unseated a longstanding record set by Theodore Roosevelt, who reportedly shook 8,513 hands at a White House reception in 1907, according to reporting from the Star Tribune. Little's campaign says staffers will track his tally with mechanical clickers and film the entire attempt for Guinness verification, standard practice for endurance-style records that can't be independently observed after the fact.
I like competitive activities but I also love shaking hands. I do think that is the foundational building block of our democracy.
— Matt Little, Democratic candidate, Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District
Little, who faces Republican state Sen. Eric Pratt in November for the seat being vacated by Rep. Angie Craig, has reportedly been training for weeks with hand-gripper exercises and temporarily dropped push-ups and pull-ups from his workout routine to protect his hands and wrists ahead of the attempt, according to NOTUS. His personal best, set at a parade, is a comparatively modest 1,000 handshakes.
Whether or not Little breaks the record, the attempt has already done what campaign stunts are designed to do: put an obscure Guinness category, and an even more obscure congressional race, in front of an audience that would otherwise have no reason to notice either.
