DFL candidate David Gottfried defeated Republican opponent Paul Wikstrom in a special election on Tuesday to fill a vacant seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Gottfried earned 70 percent of the votes cast in House District 40B, which spans Roseville and a portion of Shoreview. About 13,000 people turned out for the Tuesday special election.
The special election was triggered after a Ramsey County judge ruled in December that Democrat Curtis Johnson did not actually live in the district and therefore could not take his seat in the House, even though he had won the general election a month earlier. In that Nov. 5 election, Johnson defeated Wikstrom by 30 points, with a little more than 24,000 votes cast.
House returns to 67-67 tie between GOP, DFL
Gottfried’s special election win brings the House to a 67-67 tie between Democrats and Republicans and will trigger a reset between the caucuses under a bipartisan power-sharing agreement reached in February.
Under that agreement, Rep. Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, will remain speaker of the House. The committees and other leadership positions in the chamber will be restructured to reflect the shared balance of power between the DFL and GOP. A new fraud oversight committee will remain in GOP hands.
“It was always going to be an uphill battle to win in a dark blue Democrat seat, but we look forward to having the House back at full strength. I want to thank Paul Wikstrom for running an incredible race and ensuring that District 40B is represented by someone who actually resides in the community,” Speaker Demuth said in a statement Tuesday night.
Gottfried is expected to take the oath of office and take his seat next week, as soon as the results are certified. It will be just the second time the Minnesota House of Representatives has been tied between the two major parties.
The Associated Press called the race about 30 minutes after polls closed at 8 p.m., even as the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website had yet to report any returns on its “election results” webpage.
Soon after the Minnesota DFL Party posted a statement to social media congratulating Gottfried for winning the special election.
“As a proud Minnesotan, I’m honored to congratulate David Gottfried in his crucial special election victory,” said Ken Martin, outgoing DFL Party chair and newly-elected Democratic National Committee chair, in a public statement. “Since November’s election, Democrats continue to fight and win in communities across the country.”
Media reported DFL win an hour before MNSOS returns were visible
Some Minnesota-based media outlets began reporting Gottfried had won the race well before 9 p.m.
The New York Times, which often covers special elections across the country, was reporting precinct results before 9 p.m. The Minnesota Secretary of State’s election results webpage did not display any returns for the race until around 9:45 p.m.
“Usually AP or other news orgs have stringers camped out at the polling places and can report in-person voting totals before they hit our site,” a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office told Alpha News, noting that Ramsey County doesn’t use modems to transmit results but instead drives them to a central location.
“So the timing for reporting may be slower than locations that transmit digitally,” he said.
Republican raised nearly six figures in a heavily-Democratic district
While Republican activists were optimistic in recent days that Wikstrom’s campaign was able to raise more than $87,000 in individual contributions from donors (outpacing Gottfried’s $67,000), those closest to the campaign knew Wikstrom’s special election run in 40B would continue to be an uphill battle in the heavily-blue district.
Gottfried’s special election campaign was actually his second attempt, too.
He initially made a run for the seat one year ago, when he challenged Curtis Johnson for the DFL endorsement. Johnson won the endorsement at the Senate District 40 convention last April. Gottfried quickly backed Johnson and even door knocked for him last fall, after Alpha News broke the story that Johnson was still residing in his Little Canada home—outside of the House District 40B boundaries.
Following the Alpha News story, other media outlets began reporting the controversy. Gottfried told a Star Tribune reporter just two weeks before the Nov. 5 election that “he was aware of the residency allegations but didn’t bring them up in the endorsement contest because he felt they were untrue.”
“I don’t put a lot of merit in anecdotal evidence,” Gottfried was quoted as saying in the Star Tribune story published on Oct. 25. “To the best of my knowledge, the claim that Curtis doesn’t live in the district is false.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
