Democrat Xp Lee received a particular election on Tuesday for a seat beforehand held by the late Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated in June, and within the course of restoring a tie within the Minnesota Home.
Lee received the seat over Republican Ruth Bittner with 61% of the vote.
Mark Vancleave / AP
The election to switch Hortman, a former Minnesota Home speaker, passed off about three months after she and her husband had been gunned down of their residence by a person impersonating a police officer in Brooklyn Park, a suburb northwest of Minneapolis. State Sen. John Hoffman and his spouse Yvette additionally had been shot of their residence, however survived.
Vance Boelter, 57, faces federal and state homicide, tried homicide and different expenses within the June 14 assaults.
Tuesday’s particular election between Lee and Bittner additionally follows one other act of political violence, the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah final Wednesday. The shootings have been a priority amongst voters within the district — and for each candidates.
Lee stated he desires to calm the “charged environment” within the wake of Kirk’s loss of life.
Bittner stated the violence briefly gave her pause about working for workplace, however she concluded that “there is no option to remedy this drawback if we shrink again in concern.”
Lee, a former Brooklyn Park Metropolis Council member, simply received a three-way Democratic major in August. Bittner, an actual property agent, was the only Republican on the first poll for the seat within the closely Democratic district.
“This victory is my ‘thanks’ to this group for all the things it has given me and my household. Each household in Minnesota deserves the alternatives I’ve had. Proper now, these alternatives are getting too far out of attain. I will do all the things I can to make a brighter future a actuality for all of us,” Lee stated in an announcement on his victory.
Lee’s win restores a 67-67 tie and protect a power-sharing deal that existed for many of the 2025 legislative session after the 2024 elections price Home Democrats their majority.
Hortman brokered that settlement, which ended Democrats’ three-week boycott. Below the deal, she agreed to finish her six-year tenure as speaker and let Republican Lisa Demuth take the place. Hortman then took the title speaker emerita. Most legislative committees turned evenly cut up between Republican and Democratic members, with co-chairs from every celebration.
The tie within the Home meant some stage of bipartisan settlement was required to cross something on this 12 months’s session.
An upset by Bittner would have given Republicans management of the Home for the primary time since 2018, and put them in an excellent stronger place to pressure concessions from Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and a Senate that Democrats management by just one vote. Walz on Tuesday introduced his marketing campaign for a 3rd consecutive time period, one thing no governor in state historical past has achieved.
Practically three months after Hortman’s killing, the Home Democrats selected Rep. Zack Stephenson as her successor to steer the caucus. Stephenson was Hortman’s marketing campaign supervisor in 2004, and she or he turned his mentor and good friend within the ensuing years. He was first elected to the Legislature in 2018.
Two extra particular elections shall be held Nov. 4 in a pair of Minnesota Senate districts.
One is to fill the seat vacated by Democratic Sen. Nicole Mitchell, of the St. Paul suburb of Woodbury. She resigned in July after she was convicted of burglarizing her estranged stepmother’s residence. The opposite is for the seat of Republican Sen. Bruce Anderson, of the Minneapolis exurb of Buffalo, who died in July.
Provided that the districts are closely Democratic and closely Republican, respectively, management of the Senate is not anticipated to vary. However the Democratic candidate for Mitchell’s seat is state Rep. Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger, of Woodbury. If she wins, the governor should name one other particular election to fill her Home seat.
View the outcomes beneath.
