EDITORIAL: Primary day House vacancy finally filled

Aug. 11—It will take a few more days to dot the i's and cross the t's of certifying the results, but southern Minnesota will soon have a congressman again after months without representation.

Republican Brad Finstad, a former state representative from Brown County, emerged Wednesday morning the winner of the special election to fill the seat opened in February by the death of Jim Hagedorn. Finstad, who edged out Jeremy Munson in the special primary, also more soundly defeated the Lake Crystal legislator in the regular primary.

Finstad's margin over Democrat Jeff Ettinger, the retired Hormel chief executive, in the special election was slightly larger than Hagedorn's margins in his two victories, and larger than the votes siphoned off by two "pot party" candidates on the ballot. Finstad and Ettinger will square off again in November.

When Finstad is sworn in later this month, he will be, literally, the lowest-ranking member of the House — a member of the minority caucus (barely — his arrival will cut the Democrats' margin to three) — with no seniority. But assuming he wins the regular election in November, he'll start edging his way up the seniority list, and the GOP is generally projected to win control of the House starting in 2023.

We hope that Finstad will, unlike his predecessor, espouse his conservative values without belittling the constituents who disagree with him. We regard it as a good sign that, unlike Hagedorn or Munson, Finstad does not challenge the validity of President Biden's 2020 election.

The Republican Party's willingness to support former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud is a genuine threat to American democracy, and Finstad would do well to avoid that pit.

There were some other primary results of note, mainly in Hennepin County, where U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar narrowly survived a challenge from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis City Council member. Omar is unlikely to be threatened by the GOP nominee in November, but her slender margin of victory Tuesday suggests she has found the limit to how far left the 5th District is willing to see its representative go.

This is the reality of strongly one-party districts; they tend to wind up with that party's most extreme office holders. We saw it on the other side several election cycles ago in the 6th District, where Michelle Bachmann's antics regularly turned the state's safest Republican seat competitive.

A less heralded but still important contest saw two experienced women emerge from a crowded field for the Hennepin County attorney's job. Mary Moriarty, who was ousted as chief public defender in the state's largest judicial district, won a plurality in a crowded field of candidates seeking the post being vacated by Mike Freeman. Former judge Martha Holton Dimick edged House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler for the second spot on the November ballot.

Crime and policing are heated issues in the state's largest county, and the prosecutor's job is right in the middle of that debate, so that figures to be a heated contest.