Yesterday, Minnesota held primaries and a special election to replace the late Republican Rep. Hagedorn (MN–01). That race and two others had quite interesting results.

MN–01 is southern Minnesota and swung away from us in the 2018 election (which was elsewhere a great election for Democrats). Trump won this district by 10. In the special election, the Republican won by only 4. That is, a Blue swing of 6. The same two candidates are competing in the November general election for a full term. I strongly doubt this will be a pick-up, but a swing of 6 should have Republicans very nervous.

Two Democratic primaries also had unexpected results.

Rep. Betty McCollum (MN–04) was being challenged from the left, although she is one of the most active members of Congress on conditioning aid to Israel on settlement issues. (So, hard to get to her left on this issue without falling out of the mainstream.) McCollum was also left-of-center on BLM. Her opponent raised a fair amount of money and lost by almost 70. Not a typo. 70.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN–05) survived a primary challenge from the right. Her opponent Don Samuels picked up a number of endorsements from other elected officials. This happened the last two cycles but Omar crushed her opponents, anyway. This time she won by only 2½. I don’t think anyone expected this. The district is very Blue and this is unlikely to matter in the general election, but she’s going to face serious primary opposition from here on out.