GOP’s Finstad wins another term representing southern Minnesota’s First District

U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad on Tuesday won another term representing Minnesota’s First Congressional District.

Finstad, a Republican, by a wide margin beat DFL challenger Rachel Bohman, a lawyer and former Rochester Township board member who also ran elections for Hennepin County, to win the southern Minnesota seat.

Finstad said late Tuesday he was “humbled and blown away by the support” he received to serve his second full term in Congress.

“I just want to say thank you so much for giving me this opportunity and the trust that they’re putting on me to do this for two more years,” he said.

In Rochester, Bohman held a DFL watch party in a building at the Olmsted County Fairgrounds where party watchers slowly but surely became subdued as the night wore on. By 11 p.m., DFLers only took up about half the seats at tables set up inside Floral Hall.

“We knew that we were always the underdog,” Bohman said while going around, talking with DFLers and posing for pictures.

Some DFLers were glad to hear Bohman appeared to outperform recent Democratic challengers in some rural counties, which Bohman attributed to the 35,000 miles she put on her car in recent months traveling over southeast Minnesota.

She said Tuesday she wouldn’t make a decision that night on whether to run again. Instead, she said she was grateful for the volunteers and supporters who helped her campaign.

“I’ll always care about the good people of southern Minnesota and be building on those relationships,” Bohman said.

The First Congressional District covers southern Minnesota and is largely rural but includes Rochester, Austin, Mankato, Owatonna, Winona and Worthington. It’s historically been politically purple but has leaned Republican in recent years after DFL former U.S. Rep. Tim Walz ran for governor in 2018.

While bigger cities like Rochester and Mankato still reliably lean blue, the rest of the district has by and large turned conservative – a stiff challenge for Democrats to overcome as they lose ground in rural areas.

Republican Jim Hagedorn, who lost to Walz in 2014 and 2016, won the district in 2018. He held the seat for almost two terms before he died in early 2022. Finstad succeeded Hagedorn in a special election in August of that year.

Finstad said Tuesday he doesn’t believe the election serves as a mandate for him to pursue Republican ideals but rather to work on issues improving constituents’ lives across the board. He pledged to work on more economic initiatives, including renewing an upcoming tax bill and energy policies that would incentivize southern Minnesota farmers.

“There’s a lot of those issues that I think could give my constituents more faith and more direction that we’re seeing the [economic] tides turn,” Finstad said. “We feel that there’s more of an economic growth model than a stagnant model.”

Finstad, of New Ulm, is a fourth-generation farmer who was the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s state director for rural development in Minnesota during the Trump administration.

He served in the Minnesota House from 2003 to 2009. He also spent time as executive director of the Center for Rural Policy and Development and in a leading role with the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association.