Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Democrats winning the special election for Hortman's Minnesota seat.

On Tuesday, Minnesota voters chose a successor for the widely beloved state representative, Melissa Hortman. Democrat XP Lee defeated Republican

Ruth Bittner. It looks like Lee won by more than 20 percentage points, which wasn't really a

surprise in the solidly blue district. Lee was born in Thailand after his family reportedly fled Laos during the Vietnam War.

Lee, who is a former Brooklyn Park City Council member, will fill the remainder of Hortman's term.

While the results weren't surprising, they were long awaited and added a small amount of closure

to two separate news items.

Lee's predecessor, Melissa Hortman, was the caucus leader, and the former speaker when she and her

husband, Mark, were killed in their home back in June in an act of political violence. Her memory

hung over the election in every possible way.

In his victory speech, Lee promised to work hard to honor her legacy and commented how, quote,

We did our best to make her proud, knocking on doors daily, making phone calls, and texting every neighbor we could.

This is understandably going to be the focus of the national news coverage of the election,

but there was also a pretty big political question being resolved in the state.

The 2024 election saw the Minnesota State House get evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

There was a power-sharing agreement in place that was brokered by former House Speaker Hortman.

Lee's win restores the 67-to-67 balance and maintains the power-sharing agreement. That agreement, which

evenly splits a lot of committees, is going to be incredibly important to the Democratic Party

almost immediately. Democratic Governor Tim Walz, who recently announced that he would run for

a third term, said he was going

to get a special session of the state legislature one way or another. The focus of the session is likely

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