However today’s vote in Minnesota turns out, the state is about to do something it never has: elect a woman governor.
Two paths to a historic first
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth are the two major-party nominees running to succeed Gov. Tim Walz, and Minnesota is guaranteed to end the night with its first woman governor. The two met on October 21 for a debate aired by FOX 9 in Rochester. A win for Demuth would carry a second historic first: according to the National Governors Association, as cited by FOX 9, she would also become Minnesota’s first Black governor.
How they got here
Klobuchar, 66, is in her fourth Senate term and was the first woman to represent Minnesota in the chamber. She started her career as a Hennepin County prosecutor, first won a Senate seat in 2006, and briefly ran for president in 2020; she now ranks third among Senate Democrats in party leadership. She won her party’s nomination in August with 89.7 percent of the vote. Demuth, 59, has been Minnesota House Speaker since 2024 — the first Black lawmaker to hold that role — after serving as minority leader and winning a House seat in 2018. Before politics, she ran a small business and served on the Rockville, Cold Spring and Richmond school board. She won her August primary with 44.3 percent, beating Trump-endorsed businessman Mike Lindell and the state GOP’s own endorsed candidate, Kendall Qualls.
Minnesota isn’t the only state writing a first chapter tonight
Minnesota is one of just two states where both major parties nominated a woman for governor this year, according to Pew Research Center — the other is Tennessee, where Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn faces Democrat Jerri Green. Several other states could also elect a first woman governor this cycle with just one major party fielding a woman nominee: Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms, Idaho’s Terri Pickens and Pennsylvania’s Stacey Garrity among the Democrats and Republicans running, plus Ohio’s Amy Acton, who could become that state’s first elected woman governor.
Why it’s taken this long
Pew researchers Anna Jackson and Katherine Schaeffer found that 17 states, Minnesota included, have never elected or appointed a woman governor, and 15 states have never sent a woman to the Senate — four states, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana and Pennsylvania, fall into both categories. Only 53 women have held a governorship across 33 states since 1925, and only 14 of the 50 states currently have a woman governor. The Senate has done only somewhat better: 65 women have served in the chamber from 35 states, and today’s 27 women senators are a record. Montana and Oklahoma are also fielding their first-ever women Senate nominees this cycle, Democrats Alani Bankhead and N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas.
What happens next
Minnesota voters decide the race today, along with the rest of this year’s ballot. Whichever woman wins, the outcome is already certain to add one more state to the list of those that have broken a barrier most of the country crossed decades ago.