Democrats pour $2.1m into one Minnesota seat in a week. Will Brad Finstad keep it?
A Democratic group is spending $2.1 million in the last week before the 3 November vote in a Minnesota seat that Republican Brad Finstad holds.
What happened
House Majority PAC, the main super PAC for Democrats in the US House, is spending $2.1 million in the final week of the campaign in Minnesota’s 1st District, where Republican Brad Finstad is the sitting member.
House Majority PAC is spending $2.1 million in the last week of the campaign in Minnesota’s 1st District. It is the main super PAC (political action committee), an outside spending group, for Democrats in the US House of Representatives. The district covers the rural south of the state, and President Donald Trump won it by 12 points in 2024.
Republicans have kept the seat since 2018, when Tim Walz left it to run for governor of Minnesota. Brad Finstad, the Republican member, faces Jake Johnson, a high school teacher. The same group is spending $380,000 on adverts in Indiana’s 5th District, where Democrats hope to remove Representative Victoria Spartz.
The state general election shall be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in each even-numbered year.
Minnesota Statutes, section 204D.03
That rule puts the vote on . Finstad won the seat in 2024 with 220,929 votes against 156,375 for Rachel Bohman, a lead of 17.1 points. If he loses now, Republicans lose a seat they have kept for eight years.
A week before election day, tens of millions of Americans have already voted. On Trump went to Mississippi, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982, to support Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. The New York Times described this as Republicans playing defence even in safe Republican states.
Sources: nytimes.com
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a member of Congress from the president’s party faced at least $1 million from the other party’s main national group in the last seven days before a midterm election. We found four such races, three in 2022 and one in 2018, in the spending reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Each time the money came from a party’s own campaign committee for Congress.
Show the other 2 cases
The Read
Finstad starts from a bigger lead than any of the four. He won by 17.1 points in 2024. Before the late money came in, the four had last won by 2.4 to 12.5 points, and the three who kept their seats won again by 5.4 to 6.1 points. Two of those earlier figures are on district lines drawn before 2022.
There are reasons for doubt. Three of the four races were in 2022 and the money came from the same Republican committee report. The only member who was a Republican under President Trump, Carlos Curbelo in 2018, lost. This year Republicans are defending even safe states, and the money comes from a super PAC, while in all four races it came from a party committee.
Disclaimer
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