House candidates hope to restore DFL foothold in northeastern Minnesota in key races

TWO HARBORS, Minn. — When Melissa Hortman led Minnesota’s House DFL caucus, she kept a file of candidates ranked by how many doors they’d knocked over the last week.

She told people, “This is a list of the people I like and the order I like them in,” recounted Zack Stephenson, who succeeded Hortman after her murder last year.

Carrying on Hortman’s emphasis on door knocking, Stephenson now gets those numbers. “And I like Aaron Schweiger quite a bit,” he said of the DFL candidate for House District 3B.

One door at a time, Schweiger is challenging Republican incumbent Natalie Zeleznikar in a district spanning Two Harbors, Hermantown, Proctor and rural areas north of Duluth. He is one of two DFLers looking to unseat House Republicans in the 3rd District, with Aaron Kania facing Rep. Roger Skraba of Ely in 3A.

With an evenly split House going into this fall’s elections, DFL leaders see these northeastern Minnesota races as a chance to seize...