Stu Lourey (son of Tony, grandson of Becky) wins DFL primary

[WhiskeyGrinder]

SD11 (Pine and Carlton counties, and a little bit of St. Louis County) is having a quick-turnaround special election to fill the spot vacated when (now former) Sen. Tony Lourey was tapped to be HHS director by the Walz-Flanagan team. Stu Lourey beat Michelle Lee last night in the special election DFL primary. Special election is February 5. Lourey will face 11B Rep. Jason Rarick.

https://www.stulourey.com/

[question everything]

1. And he lost. Sign of that region going red?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. It's a divided district -- the northern half has a DFL rep, the southern had Rarick.

Special election with super low turnout, so it's hard to draw larger conclusions. Rural Minnesota has certainly been giving the DFL problems lately, in general, and population shifts in the south have boosted Republican numbers in it.

In 2018, the SD split on the statewide races: Klobuchar, Smith, Walz, Wardlow and Stauber all won it. Trump won it in 2016.

[dflprincess]

3. The DFL always has lousy turn out for special elections.

There was one in my House district 5 years ago (or so). The DFL rep had resigned and the Republican won the district. Latter than year in the scheduled general election the same two candidates ran and the DFLer took the seat back. Strangely enough in last fall's election it was the same match up again (maybe the Republicans couldn't find a new candidate) and the DFLer won with an even bigger margin this time.

And, the weather wasn't so great yesterday.