by Dennis Dalman
Rustin Deters and Pat Lynch will be the two new Sartell City Council members come January, both having defeated third candidate Marshall Grams in the Nov. 5 general election.
Those two winners will fill the seats now held by Alex Lewandowski and Jill Smith who both declined to file for re-election.
Vote totals: Lynch 5,397; Deters 4,957; Grams 3,986.
School Board
Two incumbents (Tricia Meling, Matthew Moehrle) and one new candidate (Chelsea Thielen) won the election, defeating challengers Aaron Alexander, Michael Gruber and Michael Ringstad.
Vote totals from voters in the Sartell-St. Stephen School District: Theilen 5,683; Meling 5,197; Moehrle 5,040; Ringstad 4,757; Gruber 4,706; Alexander 4,060. In Precinct 2 (east Sartell), the voting results were just the opposite, with Alexander, Gruber and Ringstad being voter favorites. That same outcome occurred in St. Stephen where voters there preferred Alexander, Gruber and Ringstad for school board.
St. Stephen vote totals:
St. Stephen
Incumbent St. Stephen Mayor Lisa Marvin defeated challenger Edward Paul Peternell by a vote of 278 to 208.
Two other incumbents, running unopposed, were re-elected to the St. Stephen City Council. They are Stephen Trobec (399 votes) and Thomas Vouk (340 votes).
St. Stephen voters also favored State Sen. Michelle Fischbach of District 7 by a vote of 446 to challenger AJ (John) Peters’ 81 votes.
O’Driscoll, Perske
Two Sartell residents handily won re-election by the voters of Sartell and St. Stephen. State House Rep. Tim O’Driscoll, a Republican for District 13B, was re-elected, as was District 2 Stearns County Commissioner Joe Perske. They also won with other voters in the area.
O’Driscoll is set to serve his seventh two-year term as a representative; Perske is now ready to serve another term on the county board.
O’Driscoll’s challenger was Democrat Dusty Bolstad; Perske’s challenger was Dave Theisen.
Vote totals: O’Driscoll 10,774; Bolstad 7,505. Perske 9,984; Theisen 6,104
President Race
Bucking a statewide election trend, Sartell and St. Stephen residents voted heavily for Republican candidates in the U.S. Presidential race. By a vote tally of 5,802 to 4,525, Sartell voters preferred the Donald Trump-JD Vance ticket to the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz choice. In St. Stephen, it was an even wider gap – 439 votes for Trump, 85 for Harris.
Statewide, Harris-Walz won over Trump, with 51 percent of the vote. But nationwide, Trump-JD Vance scored a historic victory, winning (at last count) a total of 72,646,685 votes to 67,961,957 for Harris-Walz. Trump received a winning 295 electoral-college votes, 29 more votes than the minimum 270 required to win. Harris-Walz received 226 electoral votes.
Klobuchar
Another startling divergence from the statewide outcome is that most voters in both St. Stephen and Sartell preferred Republican challenger Royce White to Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar for U.S senator. White received 389 votes to Klobuchar’s 116 votes.
In all but one of Sartell’s seven precincts, most Sartell voters also favored White, with a total citywide vote count of 5,306 for White to 4,953 for Klobuchar. In Precinct 6, Klobuchar barely squeaked by, getting 619 votes to White’s 600.
Klobuchar won statewide by a vote of 1,791,459 to White’s 1,290,759. She also defeated two other alternative-party candidates. This will be Klobuchar’s fourth six-year term in the U.S. Senate.
Vote totals: Klobuchar 1,791,459; White 1,290,759; Whiting 55,427; Lacey 46,621.
Stearns County Ballot Question: On the Nov. 5 Stearns County ballots was a question on whether the county should initiate a county-wide sales tax of an additional .375 percent to help pay for a new County Justice Center. The question was approved by voters by a hefty margin of 62.5 percent yes to 37.75 percent (50,234 yes votes, 30,466 no votes).
Constitutional Amendment Ballot Question: The question for voters was this: “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to protect drinking water sources and the water quality of lakes, rivers and streams; conserve wildlife habitat and natural areas; improve air quality; and expand access to parks and trails by extending the transfer of proceeds from the state-operated lottery to the environment and natural resources trust fund, and to dedicate the proceeds for these purposes?”
Voters approved the question by 2,524,173 votes. The no votes were 530,173.
Other Winners
Other notable winners selected by voters in the general area as follows:
District 13A: Incumbent Rep. Lisa Demuth, R, representing House District 13A, was re-elected, defeating DFL challenger Cindy Aho.
Vote totals: Demuth 19,215; Aho 6,282.
State House District 14A: Incumbent Rep. Bernie Perryman, R, defeated DFL challenger Abdi Daisane.
Vote totals: Perryman 10,967; Daisane 8,464.
House District 14B: Incumbent DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott, St. Cloud, received 9,757 votes, just 28 votes more than challenger Sue Ek. However, that vote total later changed after more absentee ballots were counted, giving Wolgamott a 191-vote lead. Ek could still request a recount, but she would have to pay for it; if the difference in the vote count was 0.5 percent or less, that would trigger an automatic taxpayer-paid recount.
District 6: For U.S. House District 6, incumbent U.S. House Rep. Tom Emmer, R, defeated DFL challenger Jeanne Hendricks. Emmer will serve his sixth two-year term in the House, having first been elected in 2014 after Rep. Michele Bachmann, R, decided not to file for re-election. In the House, Emmer has served as Majority Whip since 2023.
Vote totals: Emmer 257,527; Hendricks 152,700.
Rustin Deters
Pat Lynch
Chelsea Thielen
Tricia Meling
Matthew Moehrle
