Aric Putnam jokes that he won by a “St. Cloud landslide” in 2022.

His 1,400-vote margin counted as resounding in a place known for photo finishes, which is exactly what the DFL senator had in his first election win two years earlier.

Putnam went to bed on election night 2020 thinking he’d narrowly lost the race for Senate District 14. He woke up the following morning still thinking he’d lost, albeit by a more respectable margin.

By the evening, however, mail-in ballots had swung in his favor. The professor of rhetoric at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University went to the Capitol on the back of a 300-vote win. 

His victories came despite a recurring feature of St. Cloud-area races: a deluge of special interest money poured into the battleground district. This year is no different as Putnam tries to fend off attack ads aimed at vaulting a House Republican, Bernie Perryman, into the Minnesota Legislature’s upper chamber. 

Alongside this high stakes race, the St. Cloud area has two open House seats. In 14B, Republican Sue Ek is running again after a squeaker of a loss in 2024. Against her, DFL opponent Zach Dorholt is seeking a return to politics after outside spending saturated his races in the early- to mid-2010s.

Big money, big stakes

For understandable reasons, special interest groups are heavily targeting Putnam and two other Senate DFLers in Greater Minnesota. The road to a legislative majority could very well depend on the outcomes of his race in St. Cloud, Grand Hauschild’s in northeastern Minnesota and Rob Kupec’s in Moorhead.

In District 14 alone, spending on the race has topped $1 million. Independent expenditures against Putnam account for $733,695, according to campaign finance data.

Comparatively, outside spending hadn’t materialized against Perryman through September. She also had more special interest funding backing her than Putnam. 

If the scale of money pouring into the district is reminiscent of past election cycles, the tone of attack ads is different, Putnam said. For example, a negative ad by conservative group Renew Minnesota resorted to schoolyard name-calling.

“I teach, and every day my students are like, ‘I saw that ad that said you were an airhead 17 times yesterday,’” Putnam said. 

The 34th vote

Putting aside how attack ads portray him, Putnam describes himself as a progressive pragmatist who wields his key vote in a tightly divided Legislature to deliver results to his district. The DFL wouldn’t have had a majority without his 34th vote, and he knows it.

“St. Cloud gets kind of stuck, gets kind of left behind, and you can use that in our political environment as leverage,” he said.

Rochester as a regional center has the Mayo Clinic. Duluth as a regional center has tourism. St. Cloud’s calling card as a regional center used to be manufacturing, he said. “And now the manufacturing is gone,” he said. “So we’re in the midst of kind of trying to figure out our identity, and there are some growing pains with that.”

St. Cloud is evolving, what with a growing immigrant community and an economy in transition. Those characteristics make it distinctly American, Putnam said.

Elsewhere, colleagues in safer seats can spend more time on activism. In a purple district, he said he needs to get things done. 

Using this leverage, he said he secured funding for a University of Minnesota Medical School partnership with CentraCare, $2.5 million in workforce development funds and $12 million in this year’s bonding bill. It also helped him helm the Senate’s agriculture committee.

Related: Red state? Blue state? St. Cloud and other races that will likely determine party control at the Minnesota Legislature

Speaking of which, he said his committee leadership puts distance between himself and his opponent. Despite serving in a tied House and being friends with Speaker Lisa Demuth, Perryman chaired no committees, Putnam said. 

Compared to Perryman, he sees himself as a workhorse at the Capitol.

“I’ve authored more bills in two weeks than she did in two years,” he said.

He doubled down at a recent debate.

“I want to thank Bernie for passing a bill that did restrict cryptocurrencies,” he said. “I think you actually did pass it. That was one of the two or three bills you passed in the last four years.” 

Perryman declined MinnPost’s interview request. Paula Christensen, chair of Senate District 14 Republicans, said Perryman brings a combination of small-business ownership, community involvement and legislative experience to the table.

Perryman’s campaign page lists her as owner and operator of two Batteries Plus stores and the former part-owner and CEO of a beverage distributor. At the debate, she framed herself as bipartisan.

“I’m a problem solver,” she said. “I like to bring stakeholders together.” 

Briefly, here’s where the Senate candidates fall on key issues.

Fraud

Perryman tied Minnesota’s fraud cases to unaffordability. She advocated for top to bottom audits of state agencies, and at one point credited Putnam with sponsoring a bill to establish the Office of Inspector General, or OIG.

Putnam said Gov. Tim Walz’s administration didn’t take action against fraud soon enough. House Republicans didn’t help, though, by slow walking OIG legislation.

“The challenge was the speaker of the house, Lisa Demuth, decided not to hear it, not to talk about it,” he said. “ … Sometimes it’s easier to campaign on something than fix it.” 

Both candidates praised investments in outdated IT systems used by counties to administer public benefits.

Each of them said affordability is a key campaign issue.

ICE an issue in St. Cloud races

Outside of the Twin Cities, perhaps no Minnesota city was subject to heavier federal immigration enforcement during Operation Metro Surge than St. Cloud. It culminated in a confrontation between residents, many of East African descent, and federal agents outside Star City Mall in January.

While acknowledging the operation went too far, Perryman at the debate said she supports all law enforcement. “Mistakes were made, but I still say they also did what they came to do, and that was to protect us on the streets of Minnesota,” she said.

Putnam was on the scene at the mall, where he saw the man next to him get pepper sprayed in the back. ICE’s actions weren’t about law enforcement, he said. He called them unconstitutional, odious and a waste of federal resources.

Guns

A rhetorician in his day job, Putnam had an analogy ready for a question about gun control.

“Guns are a lot like cars in a number of ways,” he said. “You have to obey the speed limit but it doesn’t mean someone is coming to take away your Ford Fiesta.” 

Perryman turned the question toward mental health. That’s what’s driving some of the violence, she said in her debate remarks.

“My opinion is we need more increased access to mental health resources,” she said.

Data centers 

Perryman backed smart and fair data center development as a way to bring in tax revenue for schools and city services. She supports local control over the matter.

“I don’t feel mandates are the answer to these,” she said. 

Putnam said the best way forward is a one-year moratorium to figure out size, resource usage, noise, light and other data center considerations.

“We need to build infrastructure, but if people are going to be building things for themselves they need to pay us,” he said. 

Two House seats up for grabs in St. Cloud races

Perryman’s Senate run put 14A up for grabs. She won the district by 13% in 2024. 

Her DFL opponent in that race, Abdi Daisane, is trying again. Republican Mike Conway, a St. Cloud’s City Council president, is running against him. 

The sub-district covering more of the city of St. Cloud, 14B, is open because DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott turned down a reelection bid in favor of an unsuccessful run for state auditor. He won 14B by about 200 votes in 2024. 

Ek, Wolgamott’s opponent in 2024, had an opposite election night experience as Putnam. She thought she won the race with all precincts reporting.

The results page didn’t reflect outstanding votes, though, and upon refreshing it she fell behind. Experiences like that lead people to distrust the system, Ek said. She supports more restrictions on voting. 

“I would love to see us get back to one single day of voting, with some exceptions,” she said. 

Fraud and lowering taxes are her top campaign issues. She wants to reduce car tab fees, but not necessarily by adopting Demuth’s proposed $99 maximum fee in her gubernatorial campaign. 

Related: Cows, colleges and competitive districts: DFL, GOP eye key House seats covering Northfield and St. Peter  

“There’s some concern about that dollar amount, the low $99 car tab, because car tab fees fill a huge, huge dollar amount in the transportation budget,” Ek said. “So I suggested maybe there’s a compromise.” 

She contrasts her social and fiscal conservatism to Dorholt. As a St. Cloud School Board member, he signed a letter supporting transgender students playing sports based on their identified gender, she said.

At the time of the letter in fall 2025, Dorholt told St. Cloud Live that he signed it to show trans youth that “they are seen, they are heard and they are loved.”

Campaigning, Dorholt is more so focusing on cost of living issues and health care access. He’s a mental health professional by trade.

He’s also committed to eradicating dark money from politics. This conviction comes from his past campaigns in 2012, 2014 and 2016, the middle of which became the most expensive House race in Minnesota history. Fittingly for St. Cloud, his win in 2012 and losses in the next two elections were by thin margins.

Outside money robs candidates of the ability to share their own narratives with voters, he said. 

“In 2014, it felt like I was running for U.S. Congress, not running for state House,” he said. “It got so bad that there was one weekend in October where people received 12 mailers within a two-day period. Only two of those were from my opponent or me.”

If elected, he said he’d plan to introduce legislation to mitigate the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a ruling that unleashed outside spending on elections. His vision would follow similar steps taken by Montana and Hawaii.

“I think the people in my district would love to see relief,” he said. 

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