Hauschild files for reelection in Northern Minnesota Senate race

Grant Hauschild filed for reelection May 28, setting up a rematch with Babbitt Mayor and business owner Andrea Zupancich in Minnesota Senate District 3, a seat he won by just 703 votes in 2022. The district stretches across Cook, Lake, Koochiching, Itasca and St. Louis counties, along with Grand Portage and Bois Forte, tying together Iron Range towns, North Shore communities and borderland voters in one of northern Minnesota’s most closely watched legislative races.

Hauschild, a DFL incumbent first elected in 2022, has said he wants the race to be about results, bipartisan leadership and keeping attention on the Northland. His filing came near the end of the state’s May 19 to June 2 filing window for 2026 state offices, and it formalized a campaign that is already shaping up around the same issues that dominated his first term: health care access, taxes, schools and the finances of rural communities.

At his January 12 reelection launch at Iron Workers Hall in Hermantown, Hauschild highlighted rural ambulance funding and extended unemployment benefits for laid-off steelworkers. Those are not abstract campaign themes in St. Louis County or on the Iron Range. Ambulance coverage remains a practical test of whether small communities can keep emergency services running, while layoffs at HibTac and Minorca continue to ripple through household budgets and local spending.

Hauschild has pointed to a 2024 bipartisan EMS package that included $24 million in emergency aid for rural ambulance providers and $6 million for a sprint medic program on the Iron Range. He has also highlighted a 2025 jobs budget agreement that extended unemployment benefits for roughly 630 laid-off steelworkers from HibTac and Minorca, along with a separate bipartisan budget deal that included $125 million in property tax relief for homeowners and seasonal recreation aid for Northland schools. In 2026, he introduced another property tax relief proposal aimed at refunds for nearly 600,000 homeowners statewide.

Zupancich, who announced her candidacy Dec. 29, 2025, is running as a Republican and has framed her campaign around rising taxes and fees, restoring balance in state government and bringing common-sense solutions to Northland families. The 2022 results show how little room there is for error. Hauschild won 22,052 votes, or 50.77%, to Zupancich’s 21,349 votes, or 49.15%. In a district this broad and this evenly split, the next senator will be judged less by slogans than by whether northern Minnesota sees real relief in taxes, schools, emergency services and state funding.