REGIONAL— The 2022 mid-terms were supposed to feature the comeback of the GOP, but that’s not how the voting played out in Minnesota and many other parts of the country on Tuesday.
Minnesota’s DFL Gov. Tim Walz cruised to a comfortable seven-point win over Republican challenger Scott Jensen, and he did so with the help of voters in St. Louis County, who backed Walz by a nearly 20-point margin. DFL Secretary of State Steve Simon won by an even bigger ten-point margin over Kim Crockett, a Republican election denier. Meanwhile, DFL attorney general Keith Ellison was locked in a much tighter race with Jim Schultz, although it appeared he would hang on by a margin of just over 20,000 votes.
Voters in St. Louis County backed Democrats in statewide races across the board, but that was primarily on the party’s continuing strength in Duluth and on the Iron Range. While Republicans had talked about turning the Iron Range red, major cities in the area, including Hibbing, Virginia, Eveleth, and Ely, backed DFLers in statewide races nearly across the board, albeit by margins that pale in comparison to the DFL’s glory days in the region.
North of the Range, however, the shift toward Republican support continued. With a few exceptions, rural townships across northern St. Louis County went for the GOP, in some cases by two-to-one margins. Townships like Embarrass, Owens, Leiding, Crane Lake, and Babbitt went overwhelmingly for the GOP candidates in statewide races, while a few townships, notably Fall Lake, Eagles Nest backed the DFL candidates (see full returns by precinct, page 9).
The biggest bright spot for the GOP came with Pete Stauber’s re-election to Congress from the Eighth District, by a 57-43 percent margin, although that was solely on the strength of Stauber’s support in more southerly parts of the district. In the Arrowhead, voters backed Stauber’s DFL challenger Jen Schultz by substantial margins. She won St. Louis County by a 57-43 margin and took Cook County by a better-than two-to-one margin. Schultz also edged Stauber in Lake County, 51-48 percent.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night in Minnesota was the apparent DFL takeover of the state Senate. That means Gov. Walz will have a DFL controlled Legislature to work with for the first time, an outcome that political observers in the state were not predicting. That surprising DFL upset appears to have hinged on DFLer Grant Hauschild’s narrow win in Senate District 3, as he became the 34th member of the body, by defeating Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich.
“The most interesting thing in the new senate majority will be who they pick for their leader on Thursday,” said retiring state Sen. Tom Bakk, of Cook, a former Senate majority leader himself. “They do not have a vote to spare so they will have to find a consensus leader. That is going to be hard.”
The DFL, meanwhile, is expected to maintain control of the Minnesota House, which would leave the party back in full control of state government for the first time since the Dayton administration.