This is too close for comfort for the GOP

| 3:00 pm EDT August 12, 2022
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Tuesday, we here in Minnesota had our primary election for the 2022 midterms. I and thousands of other Minnesotans did our civic duty and headed to the polls to vote. The results are in now and they didn’t have many surprises. Gov. Walz rather handily survived his primary challenge, getting 97% of the Democratic Farmer-Laborer (DFL) vote. The race in MN-5 between Rep. Ilhan Omar (who is my Rep. in Congress) and challenger Don Samuels was quite a bit closer, but Rep. Omar survived her primary challenge as well.

One interesting race was the special election in MN-1 to replace the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn. Republican Brad Finstad won with 51% of the vote over DFL candidate Jeff Ettinger who had 47% of the vote.

Given the political bent of southern Minnesota it’s not particularly surprising that Finstad won, but the results still do give me some hope for 2022. The results were probably closer than what the GQP would consider comfortable. It wasn’t a blowout win for the GQP and shows there is plenty of support for the DFL even in southern Minnesota. I hope the people of MN-1 take some comfort in that and work to: (a) spread the message about the good the DFL is doing in this country; and (b) get as many DFL voters to the polls as possible.

In Minnesota and other states where the primary season is over, it’s now time to focus on winning the general election. Hopefully, now the DFL will unite behind our candidates and work to send them all on to victory in November.