Minneapolis special election tonight will end tie in state Senate

A special election in a Minneapolis Senate district Tuesday will end the partisan tie in the chamber where Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican members have been operating on a power-sharing agreement since the legislative session started on Jan. 14.

The Senate is now at a 33-33. The election is in Northeast Minneapolis’ Senate District 60, which DFL Sen. Kari Dziedzic held until her death in December, a Democratic stronghold.

DFLer Doron Clark is running against Republican Abigail Wolters. Clark won a competitive primary election on Jan 14, where he received 38% of the vote. The more than 2,000 votes he received in the primary is nearly 10 times the total number of votes cast in the GOP primary Wolters won.

Polls close at 8 p.m. More information on voting can be found on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website.

DFL and Republican caucuses in the Senate started operating on a power-sharing agreement on the first day of the 2025 Legislative session,

Under the agreement, they elected Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis and Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, as “Co-Presiding Officers.” They also split Senate committee seats between the parties and appointed co-chairs. Party relations in the chamber have been smooth when compared to the ongoing power struggle in the House. But the calm showed some cracks Monday, one day ahead of the election, as Republicans moved to expel Woodbury DFL Sen. Nicole Mitchell from office.

Mitchell is accused of breaking into her stepmother’s house last year and is set to go to trial for felony burglary after the end of the legislative session in May.

While Republicans had pushed to remove her last year, they held off for the first two weeks of the 2025 session.

Senate DFLers shut down the Republican push to remove Mitchell with a procedural vote and they aren’t scheduled to reconvene until Thursday. Some Democrats have called for Mitchell to resign, but it’s unclear if there are enough to give Republicans the 42-vote threshold they need to remove a colleague from office.

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