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Dispatches from 135 Minnesota legislative races (134 House, one Senate) have been hard to hear over the presidential-political din. But I didn’t miss reports about the comments of retiring DFL state Rep. Gene Pelowski of Winona in August — and neither did the Republicans striving to regain State Capitol control.
“It would be a good thing for Minnesota if one of the two houses flipped,” Pelowski said at a Minnesota Rural Electric Association summit in Bloomington, as reported by Alpha News. “I think we do need divided government to simmer things down.”
Those remarks caused a minor stir. Advertently or not, Pelowski — the longest-serving member of the House DFL majority caucus — had endorsed a favorite theme among GOP legislative candidates.
Republicans have been arguing that Minnesotans should bring back something they experienced in all but two years between 1990 and 2022: a state government in which one or both of the two legislative chambers was controlled by a party other than the governor’s. (No matter who wins the presidential race, Minnesota’s governor in 2025 will be a DFLer.)
Pelowski later clarified that he’s solidly behind Sarah Kruger, the DFL candidate to succeed him in District 26A. It’s one of a handful of swing districts that are likely to determine control of the House, which now has a 68-63 DFL edge with three vacancies.
But the veteran DFLer had given aid and comfort to Republicans in other districts while invoking the spirit of an earlier era in state politics.