Two of the closest Minnesota House races in 2024 were in neighboring districts in suburbs southwest of the Twin Cities.
In Shakopee’s 54A, it took a recount and courtroom drama to finalize Democrat Brad Tabke’s reelection by 14 votes. Republican challenger Aaron Paul’s lawsuit over missing ballots muddled the result into January before a judge confirmed Tabke’s win.
By then, DFLer Lucy Rehm’s 48B race was settled in the Chanhassen and Chaska area. A partial recount paid for by her Republican opponent, Caleb Steffenhagen, ultimately confirmed her 225-vote reelection.
Apart from tight elections, these districts share a trend of red-to-blue shifts over the last decade. Tabke and Rehm were the first Democrats to represent their areas in the House in decades.
Each district features a rematch this year. And although they share borders, they feature distinct points of contention on campaign trails.
Of course, the rising cost of living, the state’s fraud fallout and staple election issues like healthcare funding are prevailing themes there as with other competitive districts. But Shakopee’s candidates are also sparring over ICE, Flock cameras and data centers. In Chanhassen, they’ve debated about rights for manufactured home residents, cellphones in schools and flavored tobacco.
Out knocking on doors last Wednesday in Shakopee, Tabke reiterated his criticism of Paul from a recent forum. The Republican doesn’t want to talk about ICE, Tabke said, adding it wasn’t until the forum that his opponent said a word about it.
Federal immigration enforcement agents spilled into the suburban city, which has about double the percentage of foreign-born residents as Minnesota’s statewide rate, during last winter’s Operation Metro Surge. Tabke and constitutional observers, coordinating in a Signal chat, saw the impact it had on residents firsthand.
“One day people pointed guns at us constantly,” said Tabke, who served as Shakopee’s mayor before his time in the House. “They were taking and abducting folks off the street. There was no rhyme or reason to it. They were just taking people with brown skin.”
The outcomes in these swing districts could help determine House control and whether policies like a manufactured home bill of rights with a 3% rent cap increase becomes law.
Voters in House Districts 54A (Shakopee area) and 48B (Chanhassen/Chaska area) will decide the races between DFL incumbents Brad Tabke and Lucy Rehm and Republican challengers Aaron Paul and Caleb Steffenhagen.
Follow live election results on MinnPost.com after polls close on Nov. 3, 2026.
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He later helped coordinate the push against a proposed ICE detention center in Shakopee. The 1,500-bed plan was similar to one that did move forward in Appleton.
“The people of Minnesota got that stopped, so that was a really good thing and a very big win,” he said.
Shakopee residents don’t have short memories about ICE’s overreach, Tabke said. He hears voter concerns about it, along with consternation over personal data collected by Flock cameras and the looming prospect of hyperscale data centers in Minnesota.
And he hears anger at the president.
“What we’re seeing right now is a tremendous level of anger at President Donald Trump and his unnecessary war in Iran that’s causing the cost of everything to go up,” he said.
Paul, in a phone interview, said it feels like Tabke and he are campaigning in different places. Voters don’t bring up ICE, data centers and Flock cameras to him.
“I’m not saying they’re not important,” he said. “I’m just saying I’m not hearing them. It’s almost like we’re knocking in two separate cities.”
At the forum, the newly retired police officer called the federal government’s immigration enforcement plan in Minnesota an “unmitigated disaster.” DFL leadership and Tabke deserve some blame, though. He said Tabke and outside agitators didn’t help the situation in Shakopee.
“What’s frustrating, and this is my law enforcement background coming out, was there was no leadership from the DFL side,” he said. “Nobody wanted to swallow their price and say ‘How can we work together with the federal government to get them out of our state?’”
He accused Tabke of bringing up ICE, Flock and data centers to deflect from fraud and affordability issues.
Paul waded into politics in part in response to what he saw as an excessive growth of government and wasteful spending by the DFL’s trifecta leading up to 2024. Voters want relief, he said.
“Across the party lines, we’re hearing about fraud, affordability and high taxes,” he said.
Tabke and Paul agree on the likelihood of another close race in Shakopee. Lending further credence to the district’s swing status, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan and 2nd Congressional District candidate Matt Little visited the district Wednesday to kick off a door- knocking event with Tabke. Notably, Flanagan went over to Rehm’s area in Chaska the following day.
At the doors in Shakopee, voter Andrew Grasmick’s top concerns were hospital and healthcare funding. An emergency room nurse, he said he’s seeing staffing levels struggle to keep up with rising patient loads. The health system needs immediate help from lawmakers, he said.
“It’s scary,” he said of the state of health care. “My fear is it collapses.”
Around the corner in a subdivision, Santi Prasarnsuk said his priorities as a voter are affordability and safety. Gas prices came up quickly in his interaction with Tabke.
“I just want things to get back to normal compared to the last five to 10 years,” he said. “Right now it’s just kind of going the other way.”
Similar to when Tabke first won in Shakopee in 2018 – he said DFL leadership considered him a “bonus baby” at the time because they didn’t expect him to actually win – Rehm’s success in 2022 completed a gradual transition of her district into DFL hands.
“It was ready to flip,” she said. “It just needed that extra push, and I had a lot of help from the DFL, from Speaker (Melissa) Hortman at the time. She really championed my race.”
Hortman, who was fatally shot in 2025, flipped a suburban district early in her career, then held it until her death. The same changing electorate that lifted her into office in the early 2000s seems to have propelled Rehm’s election and reelection in the 2020s.
“Newer, more progressive voters are choosing to live in the suburbs, and I think that’s probably why we’re seeing so much change,” Rehm said. “I think we’re getting a lot of pushback from the people who have expected this area to stay Republican.”
Rehm’s political tenure started with a successful Chanhassen City Council run in 2020. She used purple on her signage, emphasizing the nonpartisan nature of the role.
Given her district’s purple political hue, Rehm retained the aesthetic in her successful runs for state House. A nod to how a representative needs to listen to constituents along the ideological spectrum? Yes, but she also noted it fits with Prince’s Paisley Park being in Chanhassen.
Her intentionality on color schemes explains why she noticed her Republican opponent’s signage this year. Steffenhagen’s signs are blue, rather than the red branding traditionally associated with the Republican Party.
As a representative, Rehm said she hears from Democrats who want Republicans to be held accountable for President Donald Trump’s damaging policies and from Republicans who want to talk about taxes.
Common ground isn’t hard to find with most people, Rehm said. She talks about standing up to corporate greed and keeping billionaires from buying our country, while also making sure taxes are used wisely.
“Roads and bridges and hospitals and schools and public safety, even if you’re a Republican you want your tax dollars to go towards the same things that I want my tax dollars to go towards,” she said.
Voters do bring up fraud to her, but she said more often they’re calling out corruption at the federal level. And she believes she aligns with her district in supporting abortion rights.
“They voted for a woman who believes that women should be able to make that decision, a very private decision, in consultation with their doctor,” she said.
Steffenhagen didn’t respond to MinnPost’s interview request. His campaign page is scant. An endorsement page yields “no results found.” The contact page lists a phone number leading to an automated “disconnected or is no longer in service” message.
At a League of Women Voters candidate forum, he led with being a born-again Christian. His Facebook profile lists him as working for Dangerous Men United, a nonprofit that helps “young men discover their identity, get free from porn and walk with God.”
At the forum, he said his top priority if elected would be removing cellphones from classrooms.
“As a teacher, we have to get rid of these devices in our class,” he said. “There is nothing more detrimental to student learning.”
A question on flavored tobacco drew general agreement between the familiar opponents. Rehm supported regulations on it to keep it away from children; Steffenhagen brought up his willingness to try restrictions with a sunset option.
“We can look at the data and see if it’s working or if it’s not working. That’s something that’s very reasonable to do,” he said.
A rent cap question elicited distance between the two. Steffenhagen opposes them.
“It’s not something that you can just give money out to groups of people and expect them to then go live the American dream,” he said. “What you’re doing is you’re incentivizing them to just remain status quo, which is fine if that’s what individuals want to do.”
Rehm supports a cap in the context of the manufactured home bill of rights legislation that she cosponsored with Tabke and other DFL lawmakers. The proposal, which included a 3% cap on rent increases, would protect residents in the district, Rehm said.
“I am most certainly in favor of capping rents on these places,” she said. “I don’t think corporations should determine whether or not a person can afford to live in a manufactured housing park. I think it should be reasonable.”
The legislation narrowly failed when a Republican backed out at the last minute, costing it majority support. With a win in 48B plus DFL gains this year, Rehm said she’ll want to revive it and get it over the finish line.
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