Republicans colored the Iron Range political map a deep shade of red Tuesday, Nov. 5, flipping the long-coveted House District 7B seat by a double-digit margin and sending a clear referendum on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party’s control.
The decades-old political shift became a complete political realignment, one that seems unlikely to change course for at least a generation or two of voters, continuing a trend seen across rural parts of the nation and Minnesota in recent years.
It wasn’t just Republicans finally sweeping the Range seats and defending the House 3B district adjacent to the region, or that they ended the DFL trifecta by wiping Democrats out of Greater Minnesota.
Instead it was how assertively they realigned the Range.
Republican Cal Warwas won House 7B by more than 3,100 votes and ceded only three of the 57 precincts in the district. DFLer Lorrie Janatopoulos didn’t carry a single city, historically the strongholds of the Iron Range DFL that delivered victories for nearly a century.
Rep. Dave Lislegard (DFL-Aurora) won re-election in 2022 by less than 500 votes, setting this year up for a full Republican shift after he retired in May after three terms.
Lorrie Janatopoulos talks with supporters at a separate watch party in Chisholm on Tuesday. (Submitted photo) Iron Range Today declared the 7B race for Warwas — with just 16% of precincts reporting — after he prevailed in Gilbert, Biwabik and Virginia, and tied in Chisholm, to cut off virtually every reasonable path to victory.
If the result was surprising, it was largely due to the Janatopoulos door-knocking machine. In a mere five months, she ran up more than $100,000 in fundraising to outpace Warwas and Lislegard’s past campaigns.
In the end, it appears the DFL party saw the writing on the wall in its internal polling. Outside groups backing the party spent $6,000 toward Janatopoulos, while outside money from GOP groups poured $195,000 into the race for Warwas.
Results also show the depth of split-ticket voters Lislegard successfully courted for three election cycles, a coalition that led him to routinely outperform most other Democrats on the ballot and win alongside Republicans, with a strong rate of Trump-Lislegard or Stauber-Lislegard ballots in past years.
That alliance didn’t stay with Janatopoulos and the DFL in 2024.
Warwas outperformed Republican President-elect Donald Trump by nearly 500 votes in the district, while Kamala Harris and Tim Walz picked up more than 340 votes than Janatopoulos, meaning split-ticket voters elected more often for a Harris-Warwas ballot.
Republican’s foothold on the Range was strengthened in House 3A, where incumbent Republican Roger Skraba turned a 15-vote win in 2022 into a 3,600-vote margin over DFLer Harley Droba. The party coupled the win with Natalie Zeleznikar’s narrow defense in House 3B.
The Harris-Walz ticket itself under performed expectations in the state with a victory margin trending over 4%, compared to President Joe Biden’s 7% win in 2020. A nearly 16-point win for U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL) belied that more than two dozen counties flipped toward controversial Republican challenger Royce White.
Klobuchar campaigned this year for the first time since redistricting in 2022, and moved from mid-double-digit margins on the Iron Range to single-digit victories in 2024. White flipped Itasca and Koochiching counties for the first time against the senator, and also carried the Eighth Congressional District by less than 2%.
Voting map for the U.S. Senate race. The counties in dashed-red flipped from Klobuchar to White. (Screenshot from the Star Tribune story linked above) High turnout was the case in many areas of the state. In the Eighth Congressional District, turnout rates trailed 2020 by two points, yet more than 89% turned out to vote.
DFL operatives noted high turnout in the Eighth District used to benefit Democrats, but has shifted dramatically toward a Republican advantage after Trump’s 2016 election.
Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber again won re-election in the district, defeating two-time DFL challenger Jen Schultz by more than 16 points, increasing his vote share for the third straight contest since he was first elected in 2018.
A Red Wave, but no cascading effect
When Walz returns to the state from an unsuccessful run for vice president, he’ll come home to even more changed electorate than when he left, especially outside the Twin Cities metro.
This year was widely seen as the state’s referendum on the DFL trifecta that delivered a suite of progressive policies last session, and Walz may need to strike a more moderate approach this session, like the one that carried him through a primary and into the governor’s mansion in 2018.
DFL leadership will also be tested on how it balances Greater Minnesota districts clearly aligned against the seven-county metro majority in the caucus, which could push to further its influence.
Republicans rode the so-called Red Wave to flip seats across Greater Minnesota, but statewide and in metro regions outside the Twin Cities, they didn’t see the same success.
Key wins in larger races should provide Democrats a reason for broad optimism moving ahead to 2026, based on Tuesday’s results.
Harris-Walz won the state despite under performing. Klobuchar won handily even as she shed Greater Minnesota regions. The Second Congressional District had been a toss-up for numerous cycles, but Democrat Angie Craig won by 13 points.
If this was the best-case scenario for Republicans, they succeeded to end the trifecta, but pending recounts, may have failed to flip the House. Democrats kept control of the Senate, and the divide of the state between the metro region and Greater Minnesota heavily favors the DFL in the midterm.
Even in Senate District 3, where DFL Sen. Grant Hauschild will be up for re-election in the midterm, there’s a good chance for Democrats to hold the seat.
Skraba was a popular incumbent in House 3B and over performed everyone candidate but Stauber in the district. In Ely, Harris (+3%), Klobuchar (+15) and Schultz (-0.20) performed well next to Skraba (+9).
Zeleznikar (+0.60) defeated 71-year-old Mark Munger in House 3B, but Harris (+4) and Klobuchar (+18) had stronger performances, while and Schultz (-0.26) was also strong. This suggests candidate selection could bring it back into the DFL in 2026, with the Senate seat standing a chance to stay with the party.
Down-ballot, Range voters also wanted change
Incumbents and established candidates in down-ballot elections felt voters’ pull for a new direction.
Change was a message heard throughout rural parts of America and Greater Minnesota as state and national campaigns challenged voters on whether they were better off than in elections past.
It apparently resonated in municipalities across the Iron Range, where residents showed an appetite for new leadership and voted accordingly, even if they oust incumbents.
Longtime Eveleth Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich lost by 25 points to a late write-in candidate, Adam Roen, who pulled in around 56% of the city’s vote. Karl Oberstar Jr., who’s served multiple stints as mayor of Gilbert, survived by just 46 votes to write-in Ben Crosby. Oberstar lost in 2022 after successful runs in 2018 and 2020.
Steven B. Johnson and Julianne Paulsen, incumbents in the three-seat Virginia City Council race, placed second and third respectively, separated by one vote. Fourth place finisher and newcomer Jared Siebert was right on their heels, 14 votes behind Paulsen. Newcomer Annie Bachschieder topped candidates in the race with a strong performance and 400-plus margin vote margin over Johnson.
In Cook, incumbent Mayor Harold Johnston lost to challenger Daniel Manick by 26 points. Cook saw a bevy of activity this election after June flooding severely impacted the city’s downtown area and prompted questions of the council’s response. Ron Bushbaum was appointed to a city council seat there this summer, and he won one of the two full-term seats, with newcomer Jesse Scofield winning the second over incumbent Lisa Root.
In Babbitt, two incumbent city councilors lost re-election bids (current Mayor Duane Lossing ran for and won a council seat), while Councilor Joseph White lost his bid for mayor to Andrea Zupancich, a former Senate District 3 candidate.
Editor’s note/disclaimer: Jesse Scofield works at Lake Country Power with Iron Range Today co-founder (and author of this story) Jerry Burnes. This is Iron Range Today’s first coverage of the Cook race.