Osmek, Pugh, Metsa, Hawj win high-profile contests amid low voter turnout

David Osmek (Staff photo: Peter Bartz-Gallagher)

The fields in all 201 Minnesota legislative contests this fall are now set after more than 40 primary races across the state were settled on Tuesday. In some instances, DFLers and Republicans won contests in partisan strongholds and have almost assuredly secured their place in the Legislature next session. In others, incumbent lawmakers were ousted by intra-party challengers.

As expected, voter turnout was very low. Official figures from the secretary of state’s office were not immediately available, but the race-by-race vote totals illustrate the public lack of interest in the contests. In the Minnesota Senate, DFL St. Paul Sen. Dick Cohen registered his party’s highest vote total with 5,797, while Mound City Council member and acting Mayor Dave Osmek tallied the largest GOP vote at 2,885. Turnout in those two districts stood at 13.77 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

Many Minnesota House primaries produced winners with three-figure vote totals. In the House 43B Republican primary, Kevin J. Klein won with just 336 votes — the lowest figure for any winning legislative challenger.
Despite the volatility that can attend low-turnout elections, the legislative primary docket yielded few surprises. In the season’s most dramatic and wide-open contest, Osmek beat Rep. Connie Doepke by a mere 107 votes out of 5,663 votes cast in Senate District 33 on Tuesday. The race to replace GOP Sen. Gen Olson in the western suburbs has been the most-watched contest at the Legislature since Doepke, a well-regarded former business executive first elected to the House in 2008, lost the GOP endorsement to Osmek in May.

Doepke was subsequently targeted with half a dozen negative literature pieces from conservative groups outside of the district, including a last-minute mailing from Koch brothers’ group Americans for Prosperity that pictured Doepke side-by-side with President Barack Obama. The mailer suggested that she didn’t fight hard enough against “Obamacare” while she was in the Legislature.

Doepke made a few missteps of her own during the campaign, suggesting in one mailing that she had the backing of U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen. The move earned a swift rebuke from Paulsen, who had openly backed Osmek.

In the same district, another incumbent Republican fell to a more conservative newcomer. Twenty-two year incumbent Steve Smith of Mound, the longest-serving member of the House GOP caucus, received just 30 percent of the vote in losing to Cindy Pugh, co-founder of the Southwest Metro Tea Party group.  Pugh had the backing of GOP House Speaker Kurt Zellers in the highly conservative district, while Smith, a pro-union Republican, had several labor groups working on his behalf.

Bucking that trend, incumbent GOP Sen. Julianne Ortman easily trumped a Republican primary challenge from activist Bruce Schwichtenberg in Senate District 47. Though Ortman, who currently serves as Senate deputy majority leader and chairs the Taxes Committee, was unable to earn the GOP endorsement back in May, she still beat Schwichtenberg with more than 58 percent of the vote in the primary.

On the other side of the aisle, two three-way scrums for DFL stronghold seats in the House shook out in a fairly predictable manner. In House District 6B DFL primary, union organizer and campaigner Jason Metsa beat activist Lorrie Janatopoulos and construction worker Dave Meyer in a race to take retiring Rep. Tom Rukavina’s seat in the House. Metsa was favored to win after earning the endorsements of most of the major unions and Rukavina himself.  Metsa won with more than 53 percent of the vote, with Janatopoulos tallying 41 percent.
Longtime activist Raymond Dehn came out the victor in a three-way primary in North Minneapolis’ House District 59B, which is open after Rep. Bobby Joe Champion opted to seek a Senate seat.  Dehn, who had the backing of unions like MAPE and Congressman Keith Ellison, beat out former Hennepin County staffer Terra Cole and attorney Ian Alexander with a 37 percent plurality of the vote.

In a last-minute DFL scrum to replace first-term Sen. John Harrington, who retired unexpectedly after session, DFL activist Foung Hawj was the surprise victor in St. Paul’s Senate District 67. Hawj (pronounced “Herr”) beat out former St. Paul City Councilman Tom Dimond and former legislative staffer Robert Humphrey with 44 percent of the vote.

In his 2010 primary run for the same seat, Hawj managed to garner only 11 percent of the vote in a crowded field, and Humphrey was the favorite to win this time around after getting the backing of Harrington and labor unions. Humphrey came in second with 39 percent of the vote, with Dimond bringing up the rear at 16.6 percent.
Incumbent DFL Sen. Lyle Koenen managed to fend off a primary challenge from Willmar-area DFL businessman Larry ice to run in west-central Senate District 17 this fall. In a DFL primary in the 17B House race, Education Minnesota local president Mary Sawatzky beat activist Jessica Rohloff with 65 percent of the vote.

In House District 11B, both major parties were involved in primary races.  Redistricting had paired Rep. Roger Crawford, R-Mora, with Rep. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, but neither incumbent sought re-election. On the DFL side, former Rep. Tim Faust of Cloverdale claimed 59 percent of the vote in beating Pine City planner Nathan Johnson. Faust will face Republican nominee Ben Weiner, a berry farmer and U.S. Army National Guard Sergeant who beat Pine County Commissioner Mitch Pangerl in a close primary race Tuesday.

Here’s a roundup of how all the legislative primaries turned out: