Underdog rakes in six figures in pivotal House election
Republican Paul Wikstrom’s race against DFLer Dave Gottfried will determine if balance is restored in Minnesota government.
By Hank Long. Alpha News – March 7, 2025
Paul Wikstrom doesn’t want to undercut the efforts he and his team of volunteers made during his first run for the Minnesota House of Representatives last fall. It was an uphill battle in a heavily-blue district where he lost to DFL opponent Curtis Johnson by more than 30 points.
But the Republican candidate for the House District 40B special election that will take place on Tuesday, March 11, classifies his “second act” as much more than a token underdog campaign.
“We earned a lot of people’s attention the last few months,” said Wikstrom during an uncharacteristically balmy midweek door-knocking blitz with campaign staffers and volunteers.
“We worked very hard last fall,” Wikstrom attested. “But the amount of resources and energy we have been able to bring to the voters of 40B this time around are making an impact that we just weren’t able to accomplish in the general election. Our race is the only ballgame happening right now. And it’s a very different ballgame.”
That might be an understatement.
Six-figure fundraising for a Republican in a heavily blue legislative district
The 40B special election has been under the political spotlight since early January as Republicans have found themselves with a temporary 67-66 advantage in the Minnesota House. That was thanks in part to a successful lawsuit Wikstrom filed in November where he challenged the residency of DFL opponent Curtis Johnson. That paved the way for a special election contest for a now open seat that spans Roseville and a portion of Shoreview, and an opportunity for Republicans to assert an outright majority in the House for the first time since 2018.
Over the last 10 weeks, Wikstrom, a manager in the aerospace and medical device industries and longtime Shoreview resident, has raised more than $87,000 in individual contributions in his special election bid.
Those fundraising numbers rival any Republican or Democrat who ran for House during the 2024 general election cycle. His Democrat opponent, David Gottfried, has collected just more than $67,000 from individual donors. Total fundraising for each campaign topped just more than $100,000, with Gottfried raising a total of $105,000 since the start of the year to Wikstrom’s $103,000.
GOP underdog won 2016 special election in Bloomington
While Republican campaign insiders say they have been pleased with the fundraising effort and ground game that Wikstrom has been able to deploy, they wonder whether that will translate to a win on Election Day. It would be major upset if Wikstrom were to come out on top.
But it wouldn’t be completely unprecedented.
The last time a Republican won a special election in a solid blue district took place in February 2016, when Bloomington realtor Chad Anderson defeated DFL opponent Andrew Carlson by 130 votes.
That Bloomington-area district was +15-20 for Democrats during the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections cycles, but Anderson defied the odds by turning out just enough voters to best Carlson in the special election to replace longtime DFL legislator Ann Lenczewski, who won her 2014 race by 30 points.
In that 60-day special election cycle, Anderson raised about $13,000— $90,000 less than Wikstrom has banked for his special election in just more than two months.
Later that fall a rematch between Anderson and Carlson resulted in a 7-point margin of victory for the Democrat.
While Wikstrom’s battle remains uphill, he has been afforded the help of a full-time campaign manager, a number of grassroots volunteers and even Republican elected officials dropping in to door knock and make phone calls. Turnout will be the deciding factor, according to politicos closely monitoring the campaigns. If Republicans and moderate independents get out the vote, and Democrats stay home, Wikstrom has a chance, they say.
House District race was an afterthought, until it wasn’t
The special election race is something that nobody—especially Democrat leaders in the Minnesota House—expected to happen.
It was triggered in the final days of 2024 when a judge ruled that Johnson wasn’t eligible to take a seat in the legislature because he didn’t actually live in the district. One week later Johnson announced he would abide by the court’s ruling.
Paul Wikstrom visits with a Shoreview resident during a door-knock outing on a balmy evening late last month. | Alpha News
Last November, when Wikstrom filed the petition challenging Johnson’s residency, former DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman told the media that “Curtis Johnson is a resident of District 40B” and that she expected the case to be dismissed without merit.
Wikstrom’s legal team pressed on and on Dec. 20, a district judge ruled in favor of Wikstrom’s petition.
Wikstrom had decided in late December to run for the seat again. And Gottfried, a “pro bono specialist” at a local law firm, was the DFL candidate to emerge from among a handful of Democrats during a Jan. 1 local endorsement convention.
Gottfried had initially made a run for the seat one year ago, when he challenged Johnson for the DFL endorsement. Johnson won the endorsement at the Senate District 40 convention last April. Gottfried quickly backed Johnson and even door knocked for him last fall, weeks after Alpha News broke the story that Johnson was still residing in his Little Canada home—outside of the House District 40B boundaries.
Following the Alpha News story, other media outlets began reporting the controversy. Gottfried told a Star Tribune reporter just two weeks before the Nov. 5 election that “he was aware of the residency allegations but didn’t bring them up in the endorsement contest because he felt they were untrue.”
“I don’t put a lot of merit in anecdotal evidence,” Gottfried was quoted as saying in the Star Tribune story published on Oct. 25. “To the best of my knowledge, the claim that Curtis doesn’t live in the district is false.”
Fraud, restoring balance in state government becoming focus of race
Alpha News has attempted to contact Gottfried for comment multiple times in recent weeks with no response from him or his campaign team.
While the DFLer, who married into a powerful labor union family a few years ago, has a track record as an outspoken activist in DFL and labor circles, he has tempered his tone in mailers his campaign is circulating to voters.
When he was running for the DFL endorsement one year ago and again in late December, Gottfried’s mailers focused on his status as a “Queer, union-member, environmentalist and community organizer” whose top priorities were “universal health care,” “reproductive health rights,” increased “climate change mitigation” efforts and expansion of affordable housing.
A sample of recent campaign literature that Alpha News has obtained focuses less on his progressive bona fides and more on generalities such as working for “care we can afford,” “a fair deal for workers,” “our rights protected,” “adapt to climate change,” and “a place to call home.”
In a campaign email Gottfried sent out to supporters last week, he asked for last-minute donations for a “special election that will determine control of the Minnesota House.”
“There’s a lot at stake here. If we don’t win this seat, Republicans will be in charge for two whole years,” Gottfried wrote.
By contrast, Wikstrom has been campaigning on his promise to help restore balance to state government and combat waste, fraud and abuse in state spending.
“We have a serious problem with fraud in Minnesota right now, in the sense that it’s having a real impact on residents who need those services and programs that are being undercut by the food fraud and daycare fraud schemes that have been uncovered,” Wikstrom said. He pointed out that Republicans have been able to create a fraud accountability committee with their one-seat advantage.
“The opportunity we’ve seen to create some accountability on the fraud issue in the state House has been a huge win for Minnesota,” Wikstrom added. “We know we need to just keep focusing here on knocking on doors and asking voters in 40B to help us restore balance to government.”
That message has resonated with Dave Sina and Deb Hartung, two of Wikstrom’s core members of an ever-expanding voter outreach team that has been knocking on doors during the unpredictable winter weather.
“I’ve known Paul for a long time, and he is the kind of guy who has stepped up to help others, and that makes you want to help make a difference for him in a race like this,” said Sina, a longtime area resident who has been active in political circles.
For Hartung, it is the first time she has knocked on doors and asked residents to vote.
“I’ve certainly voted Republican for a long time,” said Hartung, a Roseville resident. “But I’ve never been actively involved in a campaign before.”
“When I saw what Paul and his team did to challenge the status quo, and all the sudden, you see politicians being held accountable, I knew I couldn’t just sit home. If I don’t just get out there and help make a difference, what is the good of complaining? We have a chance here to actually make a difference in St. Paul.”
TOPc PHOTO: Dave Sina, right, and Deb Hartung have been core members of Paul Wikstrom’s voter outreach team over the last 10 weeks as the Shoreview resident has raised more than $87,000 from individual donors in his bid to upset his DFL opponent. | Alpha News