Hennepin County commission primary narrows Edina-area seat to two

The race for an open seat on the Hennepin County Board was narrowed to two Tuesday with state Rep. Heather Edelson and businesswoman Marisa Simonetti easily leading the pack of six candidates for the Edina-area seat.

In Tuesday’s special primary for the Edina-area District 6, Edelson won 3,096 votes, or 44%, and Simonetti got 2,214, or 32%, according to final unofficial results from the Minnesota Secretary of State. The other candidates in the race each got fewer than 1,000 votes.

Edelson and Simonetti will face off May 14 to finish the term of former commissioner Chris LaTondresse who stepped down in September to lead an affordable housing organization in St. Paul.

Other candidates in the race were political advisor Patrick Gage, community volunteer Janet Kitui, nonprofit leader Daniel Moret and Hopkins School Board member Jen Westmoreland.

The seat is up for election in November so whoever wins the special election will have to run again to keep the seat. Fewer than 7,000 of the nearly 126,300 registered voters in the district cast ballots Tuesday.

District 6 has 66 precincts and includes parts of Edina, Greenwood, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Shorewood and Wayzata. All of the candidates who filed live in Edina.

The Hennepin County Board has seven commissioners who oversee an almost $2.7 billion budget. The county is the second largest government in Minnesota, after the state, with about 10,000 employees.