Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger will move from the Minnesota House to the state Senate after defeating Republican Dwight Dorau in Tuesday’s special election for Senate District 47, solidifying the DFL’s one-seat majority heading into the 2026 session.

According to preliminary results reported by the state Secretary of State’s Office, Hemmingsen-Jaeger received 13,527 votes to Dorau’s 8,383, with 36.89 percent of registered voters casting ballots. The DFL victory keeps control of the Minnesota Senate, 34-33.

At Tuesday night’s DFL watch party at Ray J’s in Woodbury, with Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy and Sen. Sandra L. Pappas in attendance, Hemmingsen-Jaeger described the anticipation before results came in as feeling like Christmas Eve.

“My number one priority is to protect the people of Minnesota and insulate ourselves as much as we can from the damage coming down from the federal government,” she said. 

“People getting kicked off of SNAP and getting partially funded is not enough. People are still going to go hungry. We need to be creative with our solutions that we can do to protect Minnesotans from those disaster cuts and those policies.”

Hemmingsen-Jaeger’s victory maintains DFL representation in a district that has leaned Democratic in recent elections. She carried her House 47A seat in 2024 with more than 60 percent of the vote, while former Sen. Nicole Mitchell won the Senate seat in 2022 with 59 percent before resigning following a felony conviction.

Shortly after around 90 percent of precincts reported Tuesday, Dorau called Hemmingsen-Jaeger to concede. The retired Air Force colonel and Johnson High School instructor said his campaign met its fundraising targets and advertising goals but acknowledged Hemmingsen-Jaeger’s team “clearly honed in on certain voters’ interests” that he did not.

“My future is going to be to go back to teaching our young kids, ninth through 12th graders at Johnson High School, and I’m going to keep teaching them, Air Force Junior ROTC, to be good citizens,” Dorau said. 

“I do not have any plans for politics in the future, other than staying actively involved at the local level.”

The result caps a high-stakes race that drew statewide attention. Republican Michael Holmstrom Jr. won the District 29 special election in Wright County, keeping that seat in GOP hands.