By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
With just 5 days until election day, the campaign finance reports for state and local candidates are becoming available. KYMN has published dashboards for all the different local offices on our website in the election guide.
State House 58A
In the race for State House 58A, which includes Northfield, Lonsdale, and part of New Prague, the incumbent DFL State Representative Kristi Pursell maintains a fundraising lead, raising $75,000 this election cycle compared to Republican challenger Rita Hillmann-Olson $45,000.
Of the funds raised for both candidates, about half of individual contributions were considered “major donations” and were over $100, which means that additional information about the donor is provided. Using that information, it was found that of the reported donors for both candidates, the majority of their individual donations came from outside of the district. For Pursell, 44% of the reported donations came from within the district and for Hillmann-Olson 20% came from within the district.
When looking at expenses, Pursell has outspent Hillmann-Olson by $14,000, spending $62,197 on this election cycle.
Candidates in state elections, including state house, must submit their campaign finance report on October 28th; for all other local offices, including the Mayor, City Council, and school board, campaign finance reports must be reported 10 days before the election. Not all candidates and campaign committees have turned in their final reports. Additionally, local campaigns are only required to file a report if they raised or spent more than $750 in a year. Many incumbents do not meet that threshold because they already have purchased signs and other political items in previous campaigns.
We will continue to update the finance dashboards up through the election, this story is up to date as of Thursday at 5am.
Northfield Mayor & City Council
In the Mayoral election, Ruth Dahl spent about $5,000 before the primary election and another $5,000 leading up to the general election. Erica Zwiefel spent $1,900 before the primary and saw a large increase in fundraising and spending since spending $6,500 in the lead-up to the general election.
In the At-Large City Council race, candidates Brad Ness and David Delong have not raised or spent more than $750 in either the primary or general election, meaning the report has been filed for either candidate.
In the Ward 2 City Council race, at the primary election in August, Chad Beumer had spent about $1,900 compared to Emy Farley’s $760. Since then, Beumer has spent another $1,100 as of recording this story Farley has not filed an updated report.
Northfield School Board & Referendum
In the Northfield School Board election, all of the incumbents have not filed a report since they have spent below the $750 threshold. Challengers Maggie Epstein and Tristan Cox are the only two to have filed a report, and challengers Iris Lee and Andreas Thurnheer have not filed a report as of Thursday morning. Epstein has spent $900 this election cycle, and Cox has spent $1,500.
Four political action committees have been spending funds on the High School Referendum: two in favor of it and two opposed to it. Of all the groups the two in favor of the referendum have spent far more than then the two opposed. The Northfield Education Association, the local teachers union, has spent $24,000 campaigning in favor of the referendum and the NEA’s endorsed school board candidates. The largest expenses have been printing and mailing literature. The other group favoring the referendum is the Vote Yes campaign sponsored by Citizens for Quality Education, which has spent around $15,000 mostly on yard signs and mailing literature.
Among the groups opposed to the high school referendum is the Save NHS group, which has filed no campaign report to date, and the Association for Government Accountability, which filed a report earlier in the spring, where they spent $1,000.
You can view all of the reports on our website KYMN Radio DOT net under the special reports tab of the election guide.
