This story comes to you from The Minnesota Star Tribune through a partnership with Sahan Journal.
ST. CLOUD – Central Minnesota voters are sending the region’s first Somali-American legislator to the State Capitol next year, after Democrat Abdi Daisane flipped a state House seat long held by Republicans.
Daisane, 38, was elected to the House District 14A seat with 52% of the vote on Tuesday. Republicans had held the turf since at least 2002, through several rounds of redistricting.
“It is an incredible victory because we flipped a seat,” Daisane said Thursday. “But in addition to that, it’s a message of its own because I’m everything that a lot of politicians are campaigning against these days: I’m Somali-American. I’m a Muslim. I’m Black. I’m an immigrant.
Daisane’s win is notable because St. Cloud has long had the stigma of being unwelcoming — even earning the nickname “White Cloud” — despite growing increasingly diverse over the last two decades.
Somali residents make up about 8% of St. Cloud’s population, which is the third-highest percentage in the state following Minneapolis and St. Paul. From 2010 to 2020, the percentage of St. Cloud residents who consider themselves Hispanic or nonwhite doubled to 32%, according to census data.
District 14A covers parts of St. Cloud and neighboring St. Joseph, Waite Park and St. Augusta. Voters in the St. Cloud metro also elected Democrat Zach Dorholt to House District 14B and re-elected Sen. Aric Putnam, a Democrat, to Senate District 14.
“It is historic on two levels — the first Somali American [from the area] and really the first time this district has gone Democrat in the modern era,” said Pedro dos Santos, a political science professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University.
Daisane called it “an incredible statement that we reject divisions — that we don’t define belonging based on who you pray for and where you come from and where you were born.”
Daisane was born during the civil war in Somalia and spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Kenya. He lived in Nebraska before moving to St. Cloud in 2013 as a student at St. Cloud State University, where he studied international relations and obtained a master’s degree in public administration. Since then, he’s opened a child care business and done consulting work to help other entrepreneurs.
Daisane ran unsuccessfully for the House 14A seat in 2024, losing to the incumbent, Bernie Perryman, with about 44% of the vote.
But that experience likely served Daisane well in this election, according to Matt Lindstrom, political science professor at CSB/SJU and director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement.
“Many successful candidates do run, in fact, a couple times before they ultimately win,” Lindstrom said.
In addition to having some name recognition among voters, having an established base of volunteers and donors from a previous campaign likely helped Daisane in the polls, too, Lindstrom said.
Another helpful factor was not running against an incumbent. Perryman ran for the Senate District 14 seat this year, leaving the 14A House seat open.
Daisane’s opponent was Mike Conway, who serves as president of St. Cloud City Council. Conway said Thursday the results from the election are disappointing. Democrats won control of the Legislature, and other statewide races.
“It’s frustrating the way the state went,” Conway said. “So I’ll be curious to see if people realize in two years what they’ve done.
“I hope our governor can follow through with what she said she was going to do and not raise taxes,” he continued, “But I don’t see how the rest of her caucus is going to let her do that.”
In Minnesota and nationally, voters seemed to rebuke President Donald Trump, although he was not on the ballot. And concerns over the ICE enforcement surge in Minnesota and political campaigns that targeted Somalis might have energized Democratic and independent voters to go to the polls more so than in other midterm elections, Lindstrom said.
“You have the national tsunami or earthquake or wave or whatever you want to call it just rolling through,” he said. “This was kind of a referendum on the party in power.”
Data from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office shows fewer voters in District 14A cast ballots this year compared to the 2024 presidential election — from 80% of registered voters to 67%. But in this election Daisane gained about 700 votes over his tally in 2024, whereas Conway had about 2,400 votes fewer than Perryman did in 2024.
“The timing was just perfect on all these different levels,” Lindstrom said. “And [Daisane] won decisively.”
