DFL poised to take Minnesota Legislature, eye trifecta

And again, Hennepin County is sort of the outlier, but it's big. When that happens, you're going to see a big change in some of these numbers. Minnesota Senate, District 3, that's in northeastern Minnesota, 55% reporting in, 51.2 for Grant Hauschild and Andrew Zupanich with 48.6. You guys, Tim and Blois, you have more information on those. Senate races here in Minnesota. In fact, maybe some news to break here tonight. We've been talking about this all night long and some of the trends that have been happening. All 201 seats in the Minnesota state legislature are up for re-election tonight. And we've had a situation for the past two years now where the Minnesota House has been tied with Lisa Damuth as the speaker and the Minnesota Senate a one-vote majority for the DFL. Well, as of tonight, that's That's probably going to be changing. According to your sources, we may have a DFL trifecta again. I have four Republican House seats flipping to the Democrats, one in St. Cloud, one down in St. Peter, one in the northern suburbs. The Elliott Engen open seat, Jim DeMay, is expected to win there. And we already called Jeff Witte, the Republican down in Lakeville, losing. So that would mean four. They only needed one. They only needed one. And there's four that they've flipped. And Democrats have predicted ...probably expanded their lead to keep a trifecta with more than one vote in the Senate because there's at least two races, both in Anoka County. Michael Kroon, the senator from Blaine, is trailing Chris Ford. And Jim Abler, the longtime senator from Anoka, is trailing Angela Nelson with over 90% of the votes in. And the margin is pretty big. Now, I want to say we've been talking about the trifecta. What is unknown in that yet is who will become governor of the state. But we are still waiting for a lot of votes in Ramsey County. We're still in wait for all of the votes in Hennepin County. And when those finally are dumped in tonight, we may see that lead in the governor's race change in favor of Amy Klobuchar. So there you see the latest total right there, with just 56 reporting so far. And Lisa Damuth currently with the lead. So there's, based on those numbers with 1.2 million votes counted, there's at least 1.3 or more million votes. Still not counted. And a lot of those are going to be Hennepin County, Washington County, Ramsey County. Absolutely. If we can, I want to go back to some of the state races that we have here. And Ryan, I believe that was List C that we're talking about. If you guys can call that up and we'll walk through some of those important key Minnesota Senate and House races that we are watching. OK, we're going to start at the top here. Okay, Senate District Number 3. And this is a rematch of the 22 election with Grant Housechild, won by just 703 votes. And so far, he is up, again, by a very narrow margin with 55% of the votes coming in so far. That's a district where Governor Walz issued his executive order on mining. Senator Grant Housechild had to... Call out Governor Walz and say that he did not approve of the governor's order. All right, in Senate District number four, this is up in the Detroit Lakes area, again in northwestern Minnesota. Ron Kupik won by just 1,700 votes back in 2022, and he's cruising so far to what looks like could be another narrow victory again here tonight. That is one seat Republicans felt very confident that they were going to flip. All right. Let's go to the St. Cloud area right now. And this is Senate District 14. Eric Putnam won with 52 percent of the vote four years ago. And so far this year, it looks like he may be expanding that lead. Representative Bernie Perryman, a popular small business owner up there. Republicans thought that she was their best candidate in that race. All right. Let's go to Senate District 24 now. This is down in Rochester. And this is an open seat because Senator Carla Nelson, who has long held this seat, she is just a. Political brand down in the Rochester area, and she retired leaving this open and a chance for the Democrats to actually maybe gain a seat here. But with 75% of the vote total so far right now, Nels Pearson looks like he may go on to victory. Pearson previously served in the House, and this is a Senate district where one half is a Republican district, one half is a Democratic district, but the Republican half is solidly Republican. All right, let's go to Senate District. 32 now. This is that flip we talked about up in the Blaine area. Chris Ford is a retired Minneapolis firefighter. He serves on the Blaine City Council. Michael Kroon was a well-liked Republican senator. This is an upset. This is where you start to see the trend we're seeing nationally leach into the suburbs of Minnesota. All right, let's go to Senate District 33 now, and this is in Stillwater in northern Washington County. Karin Housley has long held this seat now, 0% reporting so far, but this has been a relatively safe seat for Karin. It is. She's very well known out there, the wife of Hall of Fame hockey player Phil Housley. Nat Smith is a young attorney, young family out there. This isn't one One of those seats that if this one flipped, then it is a... Huge tidal wave in Minnesota. Yeah, Karin, very well-respected real estate agent in the Stillwater area there and a longtime member of the Minnesota State Senate. Now, Senate District 35, and this is one we kind of earmarked early because Jim Abler won by just 186 votes four years ago, and the DFL heavily targeted him in this race. And look at the vote totals so far. Angela Nelson's a teacher. She's been running against him for about a year and a half. One of the things that the Senate DFL did They launched their candidates a year, a year and a half early, and they really got them on the ground early. And when Metro Surge happened, their candidates were ready to organize. All right, let's go up to the Maple Grove area, Senate District 37. And again, this is an open seat. No vote totals coming in yet from this portion of Hennepin County, but Warren Limmer. The longtime Republican Senator from Maple Grove is retiring, and that leaves open this seat that the Democrats hope that they can take advantage of. So this is the Hastings area, Senate District 41. Judy Seaburger is the incumbent. She faces Tom DePell. This is a rematch of four years ago. Only 28% of the vote in here, but Seaburger is trailing. This was a race that had how many votes last time? 321? 321 votes four years ago that Seaburger won by. So we'll be watching this race throughout the night as more vote totals come in. All right. With that, we're going to toss it back to Randy and Kelsey.