Having consulted Josh Martin’s guide to elections in Minneapolis and the Star Trib’s guide to who’s running for St. Paul, my primary takeaway is that we just do not have very many contested primaries this year (but some of the primaries have A LOT of candidates). This post is largely for my own reference. If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul and consult your own ballot (you can find it at the Secretary of State’s Find My Ballot site) and see a race I don’t list on your primary ballot, feel free to leave me a note in the comments.

US Senate

On all statewide ballots there’s a primary for US Senate.

DFL candidates:

Amy Klobuchar (incumbent)
Steve Carlson
Ahmad R. Hassan (the link is the URL that he listed in his campaign filing but it does not lead anywhere)
George H. Kalberer
Ole Savior

(Bad news for the people who hate Amy Klobuchar: I can tell you right now that there is no one here worth voting for. I mean, I’ll do my whole writeup, but you can find several of them in past posts and for real, absolutely none of them deserve your vote. If you hate Amy, you can write someone in, or, if you live in St. Paul, you can cross over and vote for whichever Republican would be least evil / most hilarious.)

Republican candidates:

John Berman
Joe Fraser
Patrick D. Munro
Christopher Seymore Sr. (link from the URL that he listed in his campaign filing, doesn’t work)
Raymond D. Petersen
Loner Blue
Royce White (endorsed by the MN GOP but couldn’t be bothered to list a website when he filed his campaign form)
Alycia R. Gruenhagen

That is in fact an impressive list of people competing to get humiliated by Amy Klobuchar! I’ll probably start with this race, some of these people are clearly going to be hilarious to write about.

US House

In Minneapolis, there’s a DFL primary for Congressional District 5, which you definitely want to go vote in as two years ago it was genuinely competitive:

Ilhan Omar (incumbent)
Nate Schluter
Abena A. McKenzie
Don Samuels

The Republican primary is uncontested.

In St. Paul, there’s a Republican primary for CD 4:

May Lor Xiong
Gene Rechtzigel

No one is running against the DFL incumbent, Betty McCollum, in the primary.

MN House

There is one contested Minnesota House primary in Minneapolis, 61A, which is an open seat. Three people are running:

Will Stancil
Katie Jones
Isabel Rolfes

Fascinatingly, not only is there no Republican primary in 61A, there’s no Republican running, period. So all the people on Twitter who told me how electable or not-electable Will Stancil was going to be can relax. Whoever wins this primary will, barring something so bizarre it triggers an energetic write-in campaign, win the seat because no one will be running against them in the general. If you live in 61A, turn out for this one! You’re going to have to live with whoever wins probably until they decide to retire!

There is one contested Minnesota House primary in St. Paul, 67B, but it’s much less consequential. It’s on the Republican side and here are the candidates:

AJ Plehal
Sharon Anderson

Minneapolis School Board

There’s a primary for a Minneapolis school board at-large seat — the top two candidates will advance. On the ballot:

Kim Ellison (incumbent, since 2012) (DFL endorsed)
Elena Condos
Shayla Owodunni

And for the primaries, I think that’s it? The primary election will be held on August 13th, and early voting starts on June 28th. The one genuinely complicated post (as opposed to “lol CHECK OUT THESE CLOWNS” which is going to be the general tone of the GOP US Senate Primary post) is MN 61A. I will definitely post about that race but also probably not until July.

In personal/writing news, I won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette for my (Minneapolis-centric) story, “The Year Without Sunshine,” which you can read online here if you’d like. And my newest book, Liberty’s Daughter, is available (signed!) at both Uncle Hugo’s and Dreamhaven.