Star Tribune
Twin Cities sorority members and Howard alumni host parties for Harris as results tick in
Black sorority members gathered to watch election results Tuesday night at a Golden Valley house party while at the same time alumni from historically Black colleges met in St. Paul to see whether Vice President Kamala Harris would shatter several glass ceilings to become the nation’s first female Black president.
Harris has been a member of the nation’s first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., since she attended Howard University, where the sorority was founded. Her candidacy has galvanized Black sorority members nationwide, who have thrown parties and events across the country to get out the vote. Harris’s presidential run has also empowered those who have attended historically black colleges and universities or HBCUs.
“I just think it’s so significant. … We are on the verge of electing the first woman president, the first Black woman president,” said Kareem Murphy, 52, of Minneapolis, at a watch party at Pimento Jamaican Kitchen in downtown St. Paul on Tuesday. “But she’s a black college grad. She’s a HBCU grad. She’s a Howard University grad. It means the world for us to come into community to celebrate this moment.”
Murphy, a 1994 Howard University graduate, is a member of a Twin Cities Howard University alumni group who helped organize the watch party at Pimento, where attendees danced and ate as they waited for voting results to be tallied.
As polls began to close throughout the United States, about two dozen Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters held a “sister circle” at an apartment party room in Golden Valley as they supported each other while anxiously watching election results trickle in between spontaneous line dances and a buffet of chips, brownies and snacks.
Stephanie Burrage, 56, president of the sorority’s Minneapolis-St. Paul chapter, said the sorority has done a lot to get out the vote. As a nonprofit, the organization isn’t allowed to endorse candidates but instead, it focuses on voter education.
Burrage worked for Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, as the state’s chief equity officer before leaving last summer. She has met Harris.
“I have been with her previously, and what I have witnessed of her ability to share her plan to discuss what she will do for the American people, I have been impressed with,” she said.
Less than half of the results in the presidential race in were reported in Minnesota just before 11 p.m. The first race call in Minnesota — Seventh District Rep. Michelle Fischbach’s re-election — came after 10 p.m., two hours after polls closed.
So what caused the delay in reporting results? In 2023, the deadline for receiving absentee ballots was extended from 3 to 8 p.m. That change is causing results to be posted later, said Cassondra Knudson, the spokeswoman for Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.
“Most counties are expected to process the absentee ballots received by 8 p.m. before reporting any election results,” Knudson wrote in a statement about the deadline changes.
So far, some state races have almost all of the results posted, while others have a long way to go to be called. Nearly 1.3 million absentee ballots had been accepted, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office. There are nearly 3.7 million registered voters in Minnesota.
PARK RAPIDS, MINN. — In western Minnesota’s deep-red Seventh Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach easily won a third term.
Democrat A. John Peters challenged Fischbach, a Donald Trump loyalist from Litchfield who was first elected in 2020 when she ousted DFLer Collin Peterson, who held the seat for 30 years. Fischbach, 58, has since amassed one of the most conservative voting records in Minnesota’s delegation.
She won in 2022 by about 40 percentage points and nearly 30 percentage points in the August primary. She was ahead by similar margins in early returns.
Fischbach said in a statement before the victory that “the election will validate the work I’ve been doing on behalf of the good people in western Minnesota. I am honored to be their voice in D.C. advocating for decency, common sense, and our rural way of life.”
Audrey Brasel, 37, a nurse practitioner in Park Rapids, voted for Fischbach after her shift Tuesday night at Essentia Health-Park Rapids Clinic. She cast an all-Republican ballot.
“Those leaders are the people that align with what I believe and just want to preserve, I guess, the standards of our country and preserve our freedom,” Brasel said.
Peters, 76, of Browerville, twice ran unsuccessfully for Minnesota Senate. He was hoping to get 35% of votes. Polls gave him a 1% shot at winning.
The Seventh Congressional District is Minnesota’s largest by land area, spanning 38 counties from the Canadian border nearly to Iowa.
The contest played out largely in the fastest-growing Twin Cities suburbs and exurbs such as Lake Elmo, Shakopee, Lakeville, Chanhassen and Blaine, as well as in St. Cloud, Duluth and the college towns of Winona and St. Peter.
Early results from St. Peter and North Mankato had Republican Erica Schwartz leading incumbent DFLer Jeff Brand, who has served two nonconsecutive terms representing District 18A. The seat has swung between the two parties for the past two election cycles.
DFL Rep. Gene Pelowski’s retirement after serving 38 years shook up the race for House District 26A, which includes the college town of Winona. FairVote MN’s Sarah Kruger ran as the DFLer against Winona City Council Member Aaron Repinski. Pelowski won comfortably in 2022, and Biden carried the district by 10 points in 2020, but Republicans said the area is trending conservative.
GOP Rep. Mark Wiens won the House District 41A seat in Lake Elmo and Afton by just 128 votes in 2022, and is retiring after one term. Former St. Paul police officer and DFLer Lucia Wroblewski ran for the seat against Republican Wayne Johnson, a former Washington County commissioner.
House District 54A in Shakopee is held by DFL Rep. Brad Tabke, the former Shakopee mayor, who ran against Aaron Paul, a Bloomington police officer. Tabke was one of a small bipartisan group of legislators leading a push to legalize sports betting in Minnesota, so his political fate could have dimensions much larger than his suburban district.
In House District 57B in Lakeville, Republican Rep. Jeff Witte ran for re-election in a district that sits smack in the middle of the Second Congressional District. That larger contest has meant both parties pumped resources into the area. Brian Cohn, a political newcomer, was the DFL’s nominee. President Joe Biden carried the district in 2020.
