Rep. Tom Dippel, a Republican state legislator, kicked off his campaign for a battleground Minnesota Senate seat on Monday. The seat, District 41, encompasses a portion of the southeast metro area and includes Cottage Grove, Hastings, Lakeland, and Afton.
Dippel’s entry into the race sets up a potential high-stakes rematch for one of the most closely-contested Senate seats in Minnesota. In 2022, Dippel ran for the same seat against Democrat Judy Seeberger. Dippel lost that election by just 321 votes, less than one percent of the vote.
In turn, Democrats held a 34-33 majority in the Senate and legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, gave illegal aliens access to state services, increased the size of state government by 38%, and spent a record budget surplus.
Two years later, Dippel won a swing seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives by 110 votes. His victory helped House Republicans achieve a 67-67 tie in the chamber and break the DFL’s complete control of state government.
“We have recently seen single-party control of our state government spend an $18 billion surplus, raise taxes another $11 billion, and increase the size of government by an astounding 40%, while our current State Senator was the deciding vote that made life harder for families, businesses, and students,” said Dippel in a campaign announcement.
Dippel is a small business owner and father of six children. He has served on two education committees during his time in the legislature. Along with Seeberger, one of Dippel’s primary focuses has been dealing with PFAS chemicals in the district’s water supply and working to build new water treatment plants in Hastings.
While Seeberger does not appear to have formally announced her reelection campaign, her campaign social media accounts are active. The first-term state lawmaker is a firefighter-paramedic and is the vice-chair of the Senate’s commerce and consumer protection panel.
In recent months, Seeberger has drawn attention for two eyebrow-raising decisions given her status as as swing-district senator.
The first was a social media post which criticized Education Minnesota, a statewide teachers union that consistently supports Democrats. In her February post, Seeberger accused the union of being rude to her, her staff, and enlisting Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy’s staff to scold Seeberger “for not bending over backward to accommodate” the union.
“Your status as a big DFL donor doesn’t give you license to be a bully,” Seeberger said to the union. “Do better.”
Additionally, Seeberger recently endorsed her colleague, Sen. Omar Fateh, in his bid for Minneapolis mayor. Fateh, who has become a national figure in recent months, has drawn comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Like Mamdani, Fateh is Muslim and aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.
“I see how hard [Omar] works everyday and I’m excited to endorse him for Mayor of Minneapolis,” said Seeberger. “We need more leaders like Omar.”
In the 2025 Minneapolis mayoral election, Fateh has campaigned on a political platform that includes support for a city income tax, rent control, increasing the city’s minimum wage to $20, and keeping the Minneapolis Police Department from interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The election for Senate District 41 will take place in November of 2026. In that election, all 201 state lawmakers in the Minnesota Legislature will be on the ballot. Additionally, voters will decide who they want to serve as their next governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and representatives in Congress.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
