Two special elections that will decide control of the Minnesota Legislature began to take shape on Tuesday, as more than a dozen candidates filed to run for vacant seats in the state House and Senate.
Ten Democrats filed to run for the safely blue Minneapolis state Senate seat that became vacant last week after DFL Sen. Kari Dziedzic died from ovarian cancer.
Democrats Doron Clark, Peter Wagenius, Iris Altamirano, Mohamed Jama, Monica Meyer, Joshua Preston, Amal Karim, Emilio César Rodríguez, Clay Morgan and Harold Melcher are poised to face off in a special primary election for the Senate seat on Jan. 14. Republicans Jonathan Kraemer, Abigail Wolters and Christopher Zimmerman also filed to run for the seat so there will be a GOP primary as well.
Clark and Wagenius were the first to enter the Senate race Tuesday morning. The 47-year-old Clark chaired the Senate District 60 DFL for two years, works in Medtronic’s ethics department and coaches track and cross country at Yinghua Academy, a Mandarin Chinese immersion school in Minneapolis.
Wagenius, 54, is the son of longtime former state Rep. Jean Wagenius. He’s the legislative and political director for Sierra Club Minnesota, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
Altamirano ran for the Minneapolis School Board in 2014 and Meyer is the political director at Gender Justice. No further information was immediately available about them or the remaining candidates who filed to run late Tuesday afternoon.
The Minnesota Senate will be evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans until a special election for the open seat is held on Jan. 28.
Another special election will be held the same day, Jan. 28, to fill a Roseville-area House seat. Democrat Curtis Johnson won election to the seat in November, but a judge found him ineligible to serve because he failed to meet the state’s residency requirement.
