MARSHALL — While election results were incomplete at the time of publication on Tuesday night, State House of Representatives incumbent Chris Swedzinski held a solid lead over Democratic-Farmer-Labor party challenger Anthony M. Studemann. With 62 of 94 precincts reporting, Swedzinski held 70.7% of the vote.

While results were still being counted on Tuesday night, all 33 precincts in Lyon County had been reported with a clean sweep for Swedzinski. Votes were still being counted for precincts in Yellow Medicine, Lac qui Parle and Chippewa counties. At the time of print, Swedzinski held 12,033 votes to Studemann’s 4,967.

“We spent a lot of time in Marshall. That’s kind of the biggest town in our district, so how things go down there is a good test on how the rest is going to go, so we’re still real positive,” Swedzinski said on his campaign’s outlook late on Tuesday. “With Marshall in, now it’s more of the rural and small cities and we’ve historically done really, really well in a lot of the smaller communities throughout the district.”

Should the results hold, it would mark Swedzinski’s eighth time winning the Minnesota State House race since he was initially elected in 2010. He received more than 60% of the vote in each of the biannual elections except for 2012, which he won with 56.7% of the vote to DFL candidate Al Kruse’s 43.2%.

When asked what allowed him to secure the district’s vote, Swedzinski cited the conversations he’s had with people in the district regarding their concern about the direction of the Minnesota state government. Specifically, he said that with the possibility of the DFL controlling the governor’s office, the senate and the house, people have told him that they’re concerned about friends, neighbors and businesses moving across the district borders.

With his reelection appearing imminent, Swedzinski says he wants to work toward shrinking the reach of the state government following what he described as an unsustainable level of growth over the past several years. From a regulatory standpoint, he added that he wants to expedite the process of businesses getting permits from the state of Minnesota in order to encourage job creation.

“What we really want to be focusing on is the role that we have when it comes to taxing social security,” Swedzinski said. “That’s one of the things I’ve heard over and over and over is people’s frustration of they paid this money over their entire lifetime, they deserve that money back and the government needs to get out of the way and stop taxing it.”

Governor Tim Walz was against the complete elimination of the social security income tax, saying in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio that he wanted to see some of the state’s $18 billion projected budget surplus go toward funding paid family and medical leave.

Swedzinski said he also wants to lessen corporate, business and death taxes in order to help protect small businesses.

As a minority leader for the Climate and Energy Finance and Policy Committee, since 2021, Swedzinski also said he wants to repeal Minnesota’s “Clean Car Rule.” The policy, linked to California’s vehicle emission standards, was adopted under the Walz administration in 2021. Going into effect in 2025, the policy looks to promote electric over gas vehicles, though California’s phaseout of gas vehicles will not necessarily be applied in Minnesota.