One night in August, a MinnPost reporter parked by the stately Andover home of Mike Gamache, an Anoka County Commissioner who was staging a volunteer night for Angie Nelson, a DFL candidate for state Senate.

Isak Terrill, a spokesperson for the Senate DFL Caucus, greeted the reporter before he had even hit the door. Terrill had texted minutes earlier, making sure he could find the place.

Inside, a table full of volunteers introduced themselves and offered up bowls full of snacks. There was also Amy Peterson, a Senate DFL Caucus organizer. Terrill said that in addition to statewide employees like Peterson and himself, each close Senate contest had the equivalent of two full-time staffers.

Last Tuesday, Nelson defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Abeler, winning with a little less than 54% of the vote. 

Abeler – who has served in the Legislature since 1998 – did not have any staff and biked by himself door-to-door in the 35th District. “My local people were all volunteers,” Abeler said. “The caucus had field staff that I shared with others.”

When lawmakers meet again on Jan. 12, the Minnesota Legislature will go from as close as can be to decidedly Democratic. Depending on the results of recounts, the DFL Party will enjoy a 20 to 22 member advantage in the House and an 11 to 15 person cushion in the Senate. 

Sure, this happened because Minnesota is part of a country that saw its biggest shift in voter party preferences since Watergate. But there may be a local story here, too, about how the parties differed in their fundraising and ground game. 

More than anti-Trump 

To be clear, backlash against President Donald Trump’s economic and immigration policies – namely Operation Metro Surge – gave DFL candidates wind at their backs . 

It would also be hard to tell the story of the “multigenerational tsunami” on election night without invoking the war in Iran, said Ryan Dawkins, a political scientist at Carleton College. 

“At no time in recent memory can I think of a situation where you can more directly connect people’s economic anxieties to specific policies enacted by the incumbent administration,” he said.

These issues –  not punishing Democrats for social services fraud under the Tim Walz governorship – carried the day. But the DFL had more than resentment against Trump on its side. 

Republicans enjoyed an advantage in independent expenditures in many close races. Independent expenditures – sometimes known as outside spending and dark money – are mostly used for ads. 

There are prohibitions toward other uses – like directly coordinating with a specific candidate.

Related: Party like it’s 2023: Just a few years after the ‘trifecta,’ the DFL retakes the Legislature

However. 

Minnesota Democrats had a huge advantage – 3-1! – in money raised for the parties’ respective legislative caucuses. 

(These funds are named the House DFL Caucus and Senate DFL Caucus, and the Senate Victory Fund and House Republican Campaign Committee).

Yes, like independent expenditures, there are intricate rules governing use of these caucus kitties. 

But there are more ways this money can be used than independent expenditures, according to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board. 

These include direct contributions to candidates of up to $10,000 and, more critically, unlimited contributions to three or more candidates, known as “multicandidate expenditures.”

For example, caucus cash can go to hiring five field organizers in close races, as long as those organizers spend some time on three different campaigns. 

A House DFL operative said these multicandidate expenditures allowed them to recruit roughly 150 field staffers. 

Related: Minnesota, Wisconsin among at least 5 states where Democrats earned new trifectas

A Senate Republican caucus spokesperson said Republicans did have the largest field team and fundraising effort ever, but declined to provide details. 

“Democrats have a turnout machine,” said Steven Schier, a political science professor emeritus at Carleton. “This is a fixed characteristic of state politics the last 20 years.”

Candidates like Nelson could sell themselves as individuals as staffers championed her case. Nelson – field organizer in tow with a list of homes still worth visiting – convinced someone on a rainy election afternoon to vote for her because it turned out they went to high school together. 

Abeler, meanwhile, lamented he was no more than his party affiliation. 

“I had thought my race was going to be more unique given who I am and how hard I’ve worked,” Abeler said. “I didn’t think the blue wave would hit so far in my race.”

3 to 1

Again, Republicans had a leg up in outside spending. 

For example, groups dumped more than $2 million into trying to oust Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-St. Cloud. But campaign finance data showed this money went mostly to attack ads that inundated mailboxes, phones and radio airwaves with information critical of Putnam rather than information about his GOP opponent’s positions. The negativity was palpable, and drew criticism from DFL and Republican candidates alike.

“A lot of the Republicans’ messaging was that Minnesota is collapsing – that it has become a terrible place,” Schier said. “Those sort of blunt attacks on the state are not going to sit well with residents.” 

Simon Glaser, who flipped Senate District 24 in the Rochester area for the DFL, also said negative ads – such as those blaming the DFL for an unsubstantiated crime wave – backfired.

“Those targeted races generally went our way and I think it’s because people are getting tired of the rudeness and brashness and negativity,” he said.

Putnam and Glaser benefited from a well-funded ground game. The DFL House and Senate caucus war chest was about $16.4 million for 2026, compared with the Republican’s $5.9 million.

Related: Maple Grove is growing. Is it also turning blue?

Of the 2,472 contributions to the DFL caucuses, the largest was a series of donations from the DLCC Victory Fund, a national Democratic fundraising organization, that added up to $2.4 million. Meanwhile, a public employee union organization, the AFSCME Working Family Fund, steered $1.55 million to the DFL while another union-linked organization, Education Minn PAC, contributed $1.31 million. 

Together, these three PACs alone gave $5.26 million, nearly as much as total contributions to Republican caucuses.

The GOP caucuses received 1,429 contributions and garnered no big-dollar amounts approaching the ones that went toward the DFL. 

Building America Greatness gave $250,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee on Sept. 11. Building American Greatness followed suit with $250,000 to the GOP’s Senate Victory Fund on Sept. 14. Each was a one-time contribution. (It’s unclear from the data whether this was a spelling error or these are two separate entities.)

Beyond these top contributions, the parties raised money in very different ways. 

The GOP leaned more on individual donors. About three in 10 dollars came from an individual, compared with about one in 11 for the DFL. The biggest individual contributor to the GOP caucuses was media mogul Stanley Hubbard with $175,000, according to contribution data. 

A note about the data: To find each legislative caucus’ biggest contributors, we assigned every contributor a unique ID based on entity name and contributor ID, then combined their contributions. Some PACs may be registered under multiple names and IDs, so their total giving to a caucus may be higher than shown. Individuals and contributors listed as “other” lack contributor IDs and were excluded from our analysis. 

What effect did this have on Republicans in the suburbs?

Probably a bad one. 

Look at Shakopee, where DFL Rep. Brad Tabke turned a 14-vote win in 2024 into a 14% win in 2026 in House District 54A. 

Overall, many competitive districts in 2022 and 2024 became comfortable holds or flips for the DFL, or far-too-close-for-comfort wins for Republicans in once-safe seats.

An enthusiasm gap was noticeable this year, Tabke said. Money for the campaign helps, but what good does it do if no one is motivated to canvass a community for a candidate? 

He thinks outrage, and organization, around Operation Metro Surge carried over to November. Tabke was one of the more active lawmakers responding to the crisis, including monitoring ICE agent activity with other constitutional observers in his city.

Some advised him not to wade into such an explosive issue in what appeared to be a swing district. Again, he won by 14 votes two years ago. Tabke didn’t care.

“This is how Democrats organize on the neighborhood, grassroots level,”  he said. “This is who we are.” 

Danny Nadeau hails from Rogers, a town on Interstate 94 just northwest of Maple Grove whose population has climbed from 700 in 1990 to over 13,000 today.

A Republican, Nadeau was first elected in 2022, picking up over 53% of the vote even in a strong year for the DFL following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to let states make their own abortion laws. 

Related: A tech investor spent millions on ads opposing DFLers running for the Minnesota House and Senate 

Nadeau said  he came into his own the last legislative session, taking the Republican lead on legislation to bail out Hennepin County Medical Center and helping on efforts to modernize technology used by county social service administrators. 

Nadeau described 2026s House’s even split between the parties as a helpful “guardrail.”

But on election night, DFL challenger Jason Heaser beat Nadeau by a 4% margin. 

“I knocked on more than 15,000 doors,” Nadeau said. “Time and again I heard, ‘Danny, I really like the way you are but I will not vote for a Republican until the current administration is over.’”

No amount of field organizing could make voters forget who was president. But Nadeau saw self-inflicted wounds as well. 

Specifically, “how the Somali population was talked about” in outside attack ads was not only distasteful but a lousy political strategy following Operation Metro Surge, Nadeau said. It also went against his own ethos “to create a government that’s respectful and kind.”

Rookie Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, suffered the same fate as Nadeau – high-profile bipartisan legislation, in Kreun’s case co-authoring the new Office of the Inspector General, not translating into electoral success. Chris Ford knocked off Kreun with over 53% of the vote. 

Kreun declined to comment. Ford, meanwhile, credited his campaign team. 

“I had a field organizer, a campaign manager and comms people,” he said. “The DFL did go all out and support me on that.”

The blue wave hits Greater Minnesota

Glaser, a Rochester teacher running for office for the first time, flipped District 24, which retiring Republican Carla Nelson won by 15% in 2022. District 24 includes parts of Rochester, the more rural Dodge County and rural parts of Olmsted County.

“We did a ton of work and outreach both in Rochester, but also in Dodge County,” Glaser said. 

He found a unifying issue between rural farmers and city dwellers: health care.

“Health care was the top concern,” he said. “For good reason. The health care system is broken. We all know that it’s broken.”

District 24 was one of several Senate or House districts to flip in Greater Minnesota, including seats covering:

• Winona
• Hermantown
• St. Peter
• Cloquet
• St. Cloud
• Northfield

The Hermantown House race saw DFL challenger Aaron Schweiger knock off incumbent Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar, R-Fredenberg Township, garnering 53% of the vote. 

Related: House candidates hope to restore DFL foothold in northeastern Minnesota in key races

Like Abeler, Nadeau and Kreun, Zeleznikar is a three-dimensional political character, someone who has spent umpteen hours on the phone with the Minnesota Department of Human Services, seeing if Medicaid providers in her district are still getting reimbursed. 

Like Abeler, Nadeau and Kreun, Zeleznikar could not quite convey this message. 

“I think I lost just because I have an R after my name,” Zeleznikar bemoaned. 

In Northfield, meanwhile, farmer Mark Legvold won a Senate seat, beating Republican incumbent Bill Lieske by 1.5%. 

An August morning on his farm included a MinnPost reporter flanked by two DFL staffers. Volunteers planned the afternoon’s door knock in Randolph inside Legvold’s home as he prepped his combine for harvest.

Lieske met the same reporter one-on-one over lunch at his chiropractic office in Lonsdale shortly afterward. Instead of a party staffer arranging the interview, the reporter set it up directly with Lieske.

Being able to contact a candidate directly is the ideal for a reporter. But the lack of middle people on the Republican side also seemed symptomatic of less organization and support surrounding candidates.

Data reporter Amira Sweilem contributed to this report.

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