Heintzeman, Slipy face off Tuesday in special election for state Senate seat
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A Legislature marked by churn in recent months gets its newest member Tuesday when voters in north-central Minnesota choose a new senator, about a month after an abrupt resignation opened the seat.
The winner of the special election will fill the District 6 seat left vacant by Justin Eichorn, who resigned last month after he was charged with attempting to solicit a minor.
The two candidates who hope to replace him had just a few weeks to try to sway voters. But the brief campaign revealed some stark political differences between Republican Keri Heitzeman, a staunch conservative who campaigned for President Donald Trump, and DFLer Denise Slipy, a relative political newcomer who says she will bring common sense to the state Capitol.
The results of Tuesday’s election won't change control of the Minnesota Senate. Currently, Democrats hold a two-vote majority.
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The district has favored Republicans in recent years, with both Eichorn and President Donald Trump winning comfortably in the last couple of general elections.
But voter turnout is a concern for both parties, as it tends to be lower in special elections. As a result, residents of District 6, which stretches from Brainerd and Baxter north to Grand Rapids, have been inundated by a flurry of campaign mailers and social media ads reminding them to vote.
Slipy: ‘It’s always been about community’
Slipy wears many hats: She is an environmental health and safety professional in the wind energy industry, a first responder in Crow Wing County and reserve police officer for the city of Pequot Lakes.
“It’s always been about community for me,” said Slipy, 51, who grew up in Indiana and moved to the Brainerd Lakes Area about a decade ago. She and her wife live in Breezy Point, and she has a daughter and grandchildren in Indiana.
Even before jumping into the Senate race, Slipy had been dipping her toes into politics. Last year, she helped campaign for Democrat Jen Schultz in her unsuccessful campaign against U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District.
“I’m a normal, everyday person,” Slipy said. “I was tired of seeing people mistreated, underserved, underrepresented.”
Slipy said she already was planning to run for the state House next year. Then in March came news of the arrest of Eichorn, followed by his resignation from the Minnesota Senate. Eichorn faces federal charges of attempting to solicit a 17-year-old for sex during a law enforcement sting.
“We constantly hear, ‘Our way of life, protect our way of life, family values,’” Slipy said. “Well, here's one of the ‘family values and our way of life’ people, and look what he's done.”
Slipy beat out three other candidates in an endorsing convention, and was the only DFLer on the primary ballot.
She will face Heintzeman in Tuesday’s special election in a district that votes overwhelmingly Republican. Eichorn won here in 2022 with nearly two-thirds of the vote, and Trump easily carried the district last year.
But Slipy thinks many voters aren't happy with the direction of the country. She calls herself a moderate and fiscal conservative who's committed to fighting for the underdog.
“I believe in a strong public education, where the teachers have what they need to teach, and where the students have what they need to learn,” she said. “I believe in rural health care. And with the Medicare and Medicaid cuts coming, a lot of the rural hospitals and clinics will have to close.”
Heintzeman: ‘The fraud needs to stop’
Heintzeman has been busy urging residents to get out and vote for her a second time this month. She easily defeated seven other candidates in the April 15 primary election with about 47 percent of the vote.
“I was very happy with the numbers, humbled by all the support,” she said in an interview Friday. “I felt the momentum coming into the primary, but you don’t know until you know.”
Heintzeman doesn't shy away from her conservative beliefs or support for Trump. She was director of his 2024 presidential campaign in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District.
She's a business owner, and married to state Rep. Josh Heitzeman, R-Nisswa. They have six children, whom they homeschooled.
Heintzeman said as she’s been knocking on doors and talking to voters during the campaign, she’s heard common themes.
“It’s the overtaxation and regulation. It’s the fraud and waste,” she said. “The fraud needs to stop. We just can’t afford that. Nobody can afford to just dump dollars where there’s fraudulent activity happening.”
Heintzeman said voters also are concerned about “the woke (agenda) in our schools and our businesses.”
“People are fed up with it, and they want somebody who’s going to go down there and say, ‘Enough with the nonsense,’” she said.
Slipy questions whether voters in the district want one family representing them at the state Capitol.
Heintzeman said before the primary, she didn’t think her marriage would be an issue for voters, and the results confirmed that.
“When I was talking to voters at doors, they were excited to know that we have very similar values, that we are going to represent the conservative values of this area, and that they could almost have a very good temperature of where I’m going to stand on an issue based on where my husband has been in the past,” she said.
Negative ads
The special election has drawn outside spending and negative campaign ads against both candidates.
A Minnesota DFL Party ad criticized Heintzeman for attending the Jan. 6 protest, when mobs of supporters of President Trump overtook the U.S. Capitol to protest the 2020 election results.
Heintzeman said she and her son did attend early in the day to show support for Trump and hear him speak, but left well before any violence occurred. She said she doesn’t regret her decision to attend.
GOP ads have accused Slipy of supporting a "radical agenda." She rejects those characterizations.
"If you don't agree with them, you're radical,” Slipy said. “There's a lot of things on both sides that I do not agree with. The extremes have to stop. But right now, they're the loud voices, and that's all that people are hearing.”
