Dem
47
GOP
53
There was a special election yesterday to fill the seat left vacant by the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman (DFL-MN). It's a very blue district, and that's before you account for the likelihood of a "sympathy" dynamic. So, it's hardly a surprise that Xp Lee (DFL-MN) won in a rout, taking 61% of the vote to 39% for Republican opponent Ruth Bittner.
In case you are wondering, Xp is short for Xiongpao, and is pronounced as if it were written X.P. These days, dumping the periods is all the rage; maybe he's an aspiring VPOTUS. Lee has a compelling personal story; he is Hmong and was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. His campaign slogan was "Tuaj pov npav rau kuv!" We wouldn't insult readers' intelligence by translating something so elementary, so we'll just note that we couldn't have said it better ourselves. If you'd like to see a video of Lee, speaking in Hmong, and pronouncing his first name, you can click here (spoiler alert: Hmong apparently does not have a word for "primary" or "Democrat.")
Lee's victory means that the Minnesota state House is once again evenly divided, 67-67, and that the power-sharing arrangement that was worked out early in the term—by Hortman, in fact—will continue. The Republicans could theoretically have "seized" the majority for the 3 months or so that Hortman's seat was open, but they thought better of doing so. Good on them for being collegial. It's called Minnesota nice.
Incidentally, Donald Trump has been in a little bit of hot water because he did not order flags lowered for Hortman when she died, but did grant that honor to Charlie Kirk. He has offered two explanations for this in the past 48 hours, either that he would have lowered the flags if Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) had asked, or that he is not familiar with who Hortman was, and so could not possibly have known that a flag-lowering should be considered. These two explanations are not entirely in conflict with each other, though we'd say neither reflects well on Trump.
Next week will be the special election in Arizona, where Adelita Grijalva will be chosen to replace her deceased father. And... oh, all right. Just in case there is a reader or two out there whose Hmong is a little rusty, it translates as "Come vote for me!" (Z)