Med City Beat has spent the past two months researching and preparing for Tuesday’s election, with 16 local races on the ballot for Rochester-area voters. There are still some outstanding mail-in ballots to be counted, but Olmsted County election officials have told us they do not expect a significant number to trickle in over the next five days.

As a result, we are confident in calling winners for all local races. Overall, seven new faces will represent the Rochester area when the winners are inaugurated early in 2021.

Here are our takeaways from a historic night in Rochester politics, up and down the ballot.

Presidential Election

The state of Minnesota kept its streak of voting Democratic alive Tuesday (the longest such streak in the nation — 12 straight, all the way back to Richard Nixon in 1972), quelling hopes of a Republican flip after President Donald Trump visited the state five times — the last of which coming in Rochester four days before the election.

At press time, Olmsted County swung further to the left in 2020 (by percentage) than any other large county in Minnesota, supporting Joe Biden by 11 points (54-43 percent) after siding with Hillary Clinton by less than one percentage point in 2016.

Most major population centers in Minnesota followed suit and shifted toward Biden by roughly five to 10 points over 2016 totals, offsetting the President’s slight gains in rural areas and handing Biden a seven-point victory — plus all 10 of Minnesota’s electoral votes — before Election Day was over.

According to data unearthed by MinnPost, the city of Rochester itself swung even harder for Biden than the county’s totals — the former vice president leads Trump by roughly 14,000 votes (59.4-38.2 percent) inside the Med City’s limits.

First Congressional District

Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn has won re-election to the U.S. House over Dan Feehan, with the Secretary of State’s website giving the GOP incumbent a 3-point victory — that’s good for 10,000 votes.

Interestingly, a third-party candidate may have decided this race: Bill Rood, running for the Grassroots — Legalize Cannabis party, currently sits with 21,263 votes (5.8 percent).

It’s pure conjecture to assume all of Rood’s voters would side with Feehan over Hagedorn if given the chance, but some of the third-party candidates in other races have openly admitted they had been recruited by Republicans to run and siphon votes from their DFL opponents.

Minnesota Senate

Rochester’s shift towards the left was seen in the two Minnesota state Senate races, where DFL challengers came closer than ever before to upsetting established multi-term GOP incumbents.

Sen. David Senjem has earned a sixth term in office, prevailing over DFL challenger Sara Flick. Flick’s performance, however, may be the most surprising result of this election cycle in Rochester. The first-time candidate earned 48.6 percent of the vote and is currently within 1,300 votes of Senjem’s total.

Senjem has not come this close to defeat in his 18-year senatorial career — in fact, he has enjoyed double-digit blowouts in every state senate election he’s entered in except one, when he won re-election by eight points over Judy Ohly in 2012.

Across town, the race for Senate District 26 was expected to be very close, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside money pouring into Rochester in the hopes of ousting Sen. Carla Nelson. Sen. Nelson will survive, however, currently holding a lead of roughly 900 votes (just under 2 percent) over DFL challenger Dr. Aleta Borrud.

Like Senjem, Sen. Nelson has never faced an election this close since winning election to the Senate in 2010. Most recently, she won by 12 percentage points in 2016.

While both GOP senators narrowly won the support of their districts, the same could not be said for their party-mate looking for control of the White House. Joe Biden received 2,700 more votes than Donald Trump in District 25 and a whopping 4,700 more in District 26 — after Trump carried both districts in 2016, by less than 650 votes combined.

Will the two senators be able to withstand an apparent blue shift in Rochester in the years to come? We will find out in a shorter time than many may have anticipated, with both Senjem and Nelson (and all other Minnesota state Senators) only earning two-year terms in this election.

District boundaries will also be re-drawn before the 2022 midterm election, further muddying the political waters for two of the longest-tenured Rochester representatives.

Minnesota House

Rochester was represented by two Republicans and two Democrats in the Minnesota House for the past two years, and Tuesday’s results keep the status quo alive for another two-year term.

In District 26B, the closet of any local legislative race, incumbent GOP Rep. Nels Pierson maintains a 340-vote lead over DFL challenger and former KTTC meteorologist Randy Brock. Final absentee ballots are still coming in; however, the final result is unlikely to change.

The other three state House races ended up drama-free: GOP Rep. Duane Quam earned a sixth term as the representative for District 25A, beating Kim Hicks by 14 points; DFL Rep. Tina Liebling nearly doubled challenger Gary Melin’s vote total, earning nearly 64 percent of the vote in District 26A; and District 25B will remain under DFL representation after Duane Sauke’s retirement, with Liz Boldon winning by 16 points over Kenneth Bush.

Rochester City Council

The City Council will look profoundly different by January, with a majority of seats going to first-term candidates.

Brooke Carlson narrowly defeated Kathleen Harrington in the race for the Council President seat, taking the seat by roughly two percentage points (1,412 votes). Carlson will replace outgoing President Randy Staver, representing a shift toward a more progressive future for the council’s most powerful seat.

Only one incumbent sought re-election to the Council in 2020, and his efforts to win another four-year term have fallen short.

Michael Wojcik, the longest-tenured council member, was voted out after 12 years representing Ward 2. Challenger Mark Bransford won 55 percent of the vote, clearing Wojcik’s total by over 1,000 votes, marking a strong rebuke of the polarizing council member.

With neither incumbent seeking re-election in Wards 4 and 6, voters chose the more progressive option in both races.

Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick won 56 percent of the vote in Ward 4, defeating challenger Katrina Pulham and winning the seat currently held by Mark Bilderback. In Ward 6, voters elected Molly Dennis by four points over Craig Ugland.

Tuesday’s results give three of the seven Council seats to women, although two of the seats (President and Ward 4) were essentially guaranteed that fate after the August primary.

Rochester School Board

It was a tough night for incumbents inside the Rochester School Board, with two of the three incumbents losing by double-digit percentage points and the third barely eking out a victory.

School board chair and Seat 3 representative Deborah Seelinger is out after two terms, falling to Karen MacLaughlin by 13 points. MacLaughlin was the only School Board candidate to garner more than 30,000 votes by the end of Election Day. Additionally, Dr. Jess Garcia unseated Mark Schleusner for Seat 7, winning the seat by 12 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Seat 1 incumbent Don Barlow survived a very close race with challenger Justin Cook, giving him a second term in office and making him the lone incumbent to move on.

It will be interesting to watch how the two new candidates coexist with Superintendent Michael Muñoz, after their comments on his performance in a Med City Beat election forum held in October. MacLaughlin and Dr. Garcia both called out a sense of ‘defensiveness’ among Board members and the superintendent when faced with questions concerning racial inequities (among other issues).

Olmsted County Board

The Olmsted County Board of Commissioners will look exactly the same in 2021 as it did in 2020, with all four incumbents cruising to easy victories — three of them over well-known names in the Rochester area.

(Gregg Wright ran unopposed for District 3 and won 98.4 percent of the vote.)

Stephanie Podulke was the only board member to not receive more than double the votes of their opponent, but just by a slight margin; Podulke won a third four-year term over real estate agent Robert ‘Bucky’ Beeman by 30 points. It’s nearly the exact margin she won with in 2012 to take control of the seat for the first time.

Jim Bier won his fifth full term as the District 5 commissioner by 35 points over Regina Mustafa, a lower vote share than his victory in 2012, and Mark Thein took home the largest margin of victory of the night - winning by 49 percentage points over Wale Elegbede.

Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted at the Olmsted County Election Office until 5 p.m. November 10. Check the most up-to-date results on our website, and check out precinct-level data for city races on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website — updated every evening at 6 p.m.

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.

Cover photo: Biden speaking on Wednesday / licensed via Getty