How a rural northeast Minnesota district could shape control of the state Senate

1 week ago 53

BABBIT — This town needs a dentist.

“We have a remodeled dentist’s office, but no dentist,” lamented Andrea Zupancich, Babbitt’s mayor and the Republican up against state Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, in the race to represent Minnesota’s Senate District 3, which spans 14,809 square miles and industries swaying between prosperity and peril. “We can’t find a dentist to come up here.”

I sit across from Zupancich in her z’Up North Realty Office. Before me are a painting of a moose, a moose silhouette and a placard that reads, “Not a creature was stirring, not even a moose.”

I ask Zupancich what is left to discuss. She brings up the dentist again.

“If someone wants to be a dentist here, it would be easy peasy to get new clients.”

I spent three days in late July in the third district, driving from Knife River to Ely to Babbitt back to Ely to Biwabik, and spent time with Zupancich and Hauschild.