GOP U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach easily defeats primary challenger Steve Boyd

Republican U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach cruised to an easy victory over primary challenger Steve Boyd in her deep-red western Minnesota district Tuesday night.

Fischbach outraised and outspent Boyd in the months leading up to their primary, and she bested him by nearly 10,000 votes on Tuesday night. The congresswoman will almost certainly be elected in November to represent the conservative district. Fischbach defeated her last DFL challenger by about 40 percentage points in 2022.

“I am happy with this validation of the work I have done and will continue to do on behalf of the good people in western Minnesota,” Fischbach posted Tuesday night on X, after her victory. “I am honored to be their voice in D.C. advocating for decency, common sense, and our rural way of life.”

Fischbach has one of the most conservative voting records in Congress, yet she still attracted a primary challenge from Boyd, a staunchly religious small-business man from Kensington. Boyd blocked Fischbach from winning the GOP endorsement in April and had campaigned across the sprawling rural district for months. Anti-establishment activists rallied behind Boyd over the longtime politician Fischbach, whom they consider to be a political insider.

“I believe we need a change in our government,” Boyd said in a video posted to his Facebook account Monday. “The common complaint I hear about our current representation, Rep. Fischbach, is that they haven’t seen her. [She’s] not showing up to talk to the ordinary folks of the district.”

Before she was elected to Congress in 2020, Fischbach served in the Minnesota Senate for more than two decades and briefly served as lieutenant governor.

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Fischbach. The second-term congresswoman voted against Trump’s second impeachment and against creating a panel to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Boyd criticized Fischbach as being too “legislation-driven,” saying he would be more of a hardliner who takes principled stands on cultural issues. He said he would be willing to shut down the government to fix the border crisis, and that he would seek to join the highly conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Boyd had been sympathetic toward Jan. 6 rioters, hosting campaign events where some Minnesotans who were federally charged shared their own version of events. Some called Boyd a Christian nationalist, citing his overtly religious political rhetoric, and he didn’t reject that label. He once taught a “Biblical Citizenship” course created by the conservative Patriot Academy that included teachings on “the myth of the separation of church and state.”

Minnesota’s Seventh District spans the western half of the state, from the Canadian border down almost to Iowa. It’s one of the nation’s top-producing agricultural districts.