With no DFL endorsement, race to replace longtime DFL rep from Winona is wide open

Candidates for the District 26A Minnesota House seat. From left: Sarah Kruger, Dwayne Voegeli, Aaron Repinski. (Courtesy photos)

Editor’s note: The Reformer is covering the 15 or so races that will determine control of the Minnesota Legislature. For a primer on the battleground races, including loads of easy-to-read data on the districts, read our first story in the series .

WINONA — Two Democrats and a Republican are vying to replace one of Minnesota’s longest-serving legislators in southeast Minnesota, long a Democratic stronghold that Republicans believe they can flip on their way to winning a state House majority.

Before announcing his retirement this year, DFL Rep. Gene Pelowski won 19 consecutive House races starting in 1986, and was a chair on the House Higher Education Finance and Policy committee.

District 26A includes Winona, a college town known for its liberal politics and thriving arts scene, plus a swath of more conservative townships and farming communities. It’s not a simple urban/rural divide: Southeastern Minnesota is also home to an influential environmentalist community, including many organic farmers.

Winona County, however, is no longer solidly blue: It was one of just 25 counties nationwide to vote for Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016, then President Joe Biden in 2020, and is likely a key harbinger of the ultimate outcomes — from the White House to the state Capitol.

Two DFL candidates have emerged to replace Pelowski: Sarah Kruger and Dwayne Voegeli.

The two candidates have similar policy platforms, both promising to continue Pelowski’s advocacy for education funding, and to vote in favor of abortion access, unlike their predecessor Pelowski, who is among the last anti-abortion DFL elected officials.

Kruger is the chief of staff at FairVote Minnesota, an organization that advocates for ranked-choice voting. She has a background as a DFL political operative, having run Jeff Ettinger’s campaign for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2022, which Ettinger lost to U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad by 11 percentage points.

Voegeli is a high school social studies teacher with extensive experience in local government. He has spent 10 years on the Winona County Board and volunteers with various local organizations, working with refugees and people experiencing homelessness.

“I am not a polished campaigner. I’ll own that,” Voegeli said, highlighting his decades of experience working with local governments, students and nonprofit organizations. He hopes to use that experience in coalition-building to have a bigger impact on issues like education and water quality, he said.

Kruger is well-connected to the political players at the Capitol through her work as an organizer and campaign manager — and she sees that as an advantage.

“If you went into an operating room, you would want a surgeon who’s done residency. If you got on board a flight, you would want a pilot who had a lot of flight time,” Kruger said.

At a March 23 DFL convention, however, neither Voegeli nor Kruger gathered enough votes to win the endorsement. Without an endorsement, the two candidates will go head-to-head in a primary election Aug. 13 — a promising sign for Republicans, who hope the intra-party battle will weaken the DFL candidate in November.

The race has become a proxy battle among DFL factions, with political operatives circulating accusations that Kruger was arrested in 2022 for removing a fence post installed by a neighbor on disputed property.

Kruger was never booked in the Winona County jail, according to jail records, and the charges against her were dropped. Kruger denied removing the fence post and told the Reformer she has never been arrested.

Voegeli’s critics have questioned his commitment to environmentalism by pointing to his approval of a few feedlot expansions — within the county’s tight limits on livestock operations — during his stint on the county board in the 2000s.

The race has divided education leaders: Pelowski endorsed Kruger, while his political allies at Education Minnesota — the state teachers’ union — endorsed fellow teacher Voegeli.

Republicans endorse businessman Repinski

The GOP overwhelmingly endorsed Winona businessman and City Council Member Aaron Repinski.

Repinski declined an interview with the Reformer. His campaign focuses on curtailing government spending; reducing crime by empowering law enforcement and prosecutors (despite the district’s low crime rate); and improving education by eliminating state mandates on schools, according to his campaign website .

Despite winning the GOP endorsement, Repinski faces his own primary challenge in Stephen Doerr, who ran against Pelowski in 2022 but has a flawed profile, as the Reformer reported then: He’s encouraged flying the Confederate flag, called Islam a “plague” and has a criminal record.

Doerr received 45% of the district’s vote — the closest any challenger came to beating Pelowski since his first general election in 1986 — despite no investment from the state party.

Key local issues

The district is grappling with how to rein in nitrates, a pollutant that seeps into groundwater from the area’s farm fertilizers. The proposed expansion of a local dairy has dominated local politics in recent years, and Voegeli was caught up in the fracas as a member of the Winona County Board.

Voegeli declined to discuss the proposed Daley Farm expansion — all board members were advised by their attorney not to speak about the issue while litigation is ongoing — but said he supports the county’s livestock cap, which limits the number of animals that can be on a single farm.

Both candidates support policies that would provide incentives or reward farmers for implementing conservation practices — as opposed to punishing those who don’t.

“Anything that we can do for our local farmers that would enable them to have access to greater resources — whether it’s through extension for no-till, cover crops, increasing buffer zones — would help incentivize people, especially farmers who are struggling right now, to be able to put practices into place that that help decrease the nitrate concentration,” Kruger said.

Because he didn’t agree to an interview, it’s unclear where the GOP-endorsed candidate Repinski stands on the issue. But a Republican-controlled House would almost certainly amplify the influence of the agribusiness lobby at the expense of environmentalists fighting nitrate pollution.

*A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Sarah Kruger as a lobbyist.

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