Primaries in House Seats Special Elections

Minnesota Report

The primaries in today’s Special Elections in St Paul (64A) and Woodbury (47A) will have no impact on the House legislative majority, the body will remain tied. The main reason being the fact no Republican filed for the House Seat in Woodbury. In St Paul, in spite of their being one token Republican filer, Dan Walsh, who lacking a Republican challenger is already on the Special Election ballot, the seat will remain in DFL hands because St Paul still is clearly DFL town.

The race to watch tonight will be in House District 64A, where there is a DFL endorsement, and the results of this Primary will effectively be the new house member. We are most interested in whether or not the DFL Party endorsement will prevail. The turnout is expected to be fairly light, because effectively, the contest is not changing anything dramatically other than the person who wins the race.

We are not sure what the electorate in this race will entail. The district spans from Summit Avenue, where many of the districts’ most affluent people live, but will they show up? Will the youth of today show up for a mid-December party primary, where St Thomas and St Catherine’s are in the district, we doubt it. The question is how to motivate an electorate for a party primary is hard, but if as they claim on the party website, if the Might 64 can produce more than a 25% turnout in District 64A, it will be impressive.

We expect the DFL endorsement still has value as an advisory to the electorate but, this election will determine this to some degree. Meg Luger-Nikolai (DFL-64A, St Paul) secured the DFL endorsement from a tepid group of delegates. The 70 people who rendered the endorsement, were all who showed up from the 120 available from the 2024 election cycle. With the threshold being a 60% majority she secured the requisite number, which was at least 42 and as is normal a call for a unanimous ballot occurred and then a majority of the vote rendered this decision.

Luger-Nikolai list of endorsements in this race including her potential predecessor St Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her (DFL), Senator Erin Murphy (DFL-64, St Paul) and seat mate Rep Dave Pinto (DFL-64B, St Paul). Her experience as a labor lawyer has rendered her a spate of endorsements from labor groups: The Education Minnesota Professional Organization (TEMPO), Inter Faculty Organization (IFO), Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), AFL-CIO, Education Minnesota, Saint Paul Fedewration of Educators Local 28, Teamsters Joint Council 32 and SEIU Minnesota State Council.

She has the position of front runner.

In the field, there are others. On the Alt-Left side of the field is Dan McGrath (DFL). He comes from the Progressive Minnesota spate of organizers and helped found and became the first Executive Director for TakeAction Minnesota, which was often referred to as TakeCredit Minnesota. Will his past progressiveness inspire voters and translate into a significant electoral turnout, its not likely, but it would be great to be proven wrong.

Beth Fraser may also be seeking the left side of the electorate as a LGBT member, Stonewall endorsed and past campaign finance advocate. She now serves as a staffer for the Senate Elections Committee, and is a past Deputy Secretary of State. We will be interested to see, what actually performance her campaign receives in votes. Our estimation in not a vast number, and a low percentage.

Lois Quam is a prolific funder to other campaigns, and as one of the advocates for the Clinton Administration on healthcare, while married to former Rep Matt Entenza (DFL-64A, St Paul) she was able to offer up the largess of her experience from United Health Group which scored her a deep finance resources. She help construct the MNCare system and became the CEO of Blue Cross CA. She secured the endorsement of MN Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL-MN) and newly elected city council member Molly Coleman (DFL-St Paul).

With affordability being the current buzzword, we wonder what the future for HMO’s are, or should be. Again, seeing her electoral result will be an interesting view.

Matt Hill (DFL) seems to be running as the moderate in the field. He discusses uncomfortable topics he hears while door knocking like the issues about fraud at the hands of bad actors, and occurring on the watch of a resident of the district Governor Tim Walz (DFL-MN) and the rise in crime in St Paul.

He operates a business, which is estate planning and has served the Ramsey County Board members in a number of capacities. His path is the more arduous one and we’ll see how much of an appetite the votes have for a political pragmatist.

Last but not least John Zwier (DFL). In this case we ask one question, John who?

Candidates filed for House District 64A

Candidate	Party
Beth Fraser	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
John Zwier	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Matt Hill	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Dan McGrath	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Lois Quam	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Meg Luger-Nikolai	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Dan Walsh	Republican

Candidates filed for House District 47A

Candidate	Party
Shelley Buck	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
David Azcona	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Juli Servatius	Democratic-Farmer-Labor

In this case whomever wins the primary wins the seat.