The North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party holds its midterm election watch party at Kingpinz Entertainment Center in Fargo on Nov. 3, 2026. (Photo by Dan Koeck/For the North Dakota Monitor)
BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) – Democrats made small gains in North Dakota’s Legislature Tuesday, flipping some seats in Fargo and Grand Forks to boost their tiny minority.
Republicans will keep their longtime control of the Legislature by supermajorities in the House and Senate. Seventy-five of 141 seats were on the ballot. Two incumbents, both Republicans, lost election.
District 43 Sen. Jeff Barta, R-Grand Forks, lost reelection to Democrat Mary Adams, a Realtor who served in the House from 2018-2022 and lost House bids in 2022 and 2024.
Democrats Tyler York and Lucas Maughan won the district’s two open House seats, besting Republicans Jill Chandler and Mike Holmes. The House seats were open after Democratic Rep. Zac Ista declined to run again and Republican Rep. Eric Murphy lost his primary. Ista has been the House minority leader since 2023.
Democrat Nicole Derenne defeated Republican Connie Osowski in a special election for the two years remaining on a District 42 House seat in Grand Forks.
Republican Emily O’Brien held the seat from 2016-2025, when she resigned to become deputy commissioner of the state Health and Human Services Department. Republican Dustin McNally replaced her by appointment, but lost his primary to Osowski, whose husband, Republican Doug Osowski, holds the district’s other House seat.
In Fargo, Democrats Chris Tiongson and Stacy Heidenreich beat Republicans Jennifer Benson and Rich Slagle for two open District 41 House seats, though only 33 votes separated Heidenreich and Benson.
Republican Reps. Jorin Johnson and Karen Grindberg did not run. Lt. Gov. Michelle Strinden, a Republican, held one of the seats from 2018-2024.
One of the Legislature’s few rural Democrats defeated a fellow incumbent to hang on to her seat in complete but unofficial results Tuesday.
Rep. Alisa Mitskog, D-Wahpeton, won a fourth term for Richland County’s District 25 over Rep. Kathy Skroch, R-Lidgerwood. Skroch previously served from 2016-2022. She was appointed last year to fill out the remaining term of Rep. Cindy Schreiber-Beck, R-Wahpeton, who died in May 2025. Skroch also lost to Mitskog in 2022.
Skroch and Barta were the only incumbents in the Legislature to lose election Tuesday.
Mitskog, a chiropractor, serves on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Republican Terry Goerger won the other District 25 House seat as the top vote getter.
Goerger and House Republican nominees Blaine DesLauriers and Tim Mihalick of Minot-area District 3 and Steve Sauter of Bismarck-area District 7 – all of whom won Tuesday – were the subjects of a court case challenging their primary paperwork based on alleged errors. Three Republican officials sought to have their potential victories overturned and the seats filled by appointment. The state Supreme Court denied the case.
Democrat Anastassiya Andrianova has been elected to succeed Rep. Gretchen Dobervich in Fargo’s District 11, according to unofficial results. Republican Doug Sharbono appeared to win the other open House seat in the district by 160 votes. Sharbono defeated independent candidate Cara Cody-Braun as they vied to succeed Rep. Liz Conmy after the lawmaker’s death earlier this year.
Around two dozen North Dakota lawmakers chose not to seek reelection or were defeated in their primaries earlier this year. Three state reps ran unopposed for the Senate. Adams in Grand Forks and Republican Roger Brabandt of Minot-area District 5 are former lawmakers who will return.
Rep. Bob Martinson, R-Bismarck, who has served 50 years noncontinuously in the House as the most tenured incumbent lawmaker, won reelection to a final House term.
Most of the Democrats’ seats are ones representing districts in Fargo, which leans further to the left than most of North Dakota, and tribal reservations, where Native Americans tend to vote for Democrats.
Three seats for a joint legislative district encompassing the Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain reservations also were on the ballot. A federal judge ordered the joint district in early 2024 after finding the Legislature’s 2021 redistricting map violated the Voting Rights Act for Native American voters. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sent it back to a lower court earlier this year. Three Democrats ran unopposed for the seats.
Legislative term limits, which voters approved in 2022, won’t turn out any incumbents until 2028. North Dakota lawmakers are limited to eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate.
Due to retirements, House Republicans will choose a new majority leader, and the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which writes state budgets, will have a new chair.
Democrats also will elect new House and Senate minority leaders because those incumbents chose not to run again.
Lawmakers will be in Bismarck as soon as next week for two days of summaries of interim studies, followed by the Legislature’s three-day organizational session in early December. That’s when the House will elect a speaker, members will be sworn in and Gov. Kelly Armstrong will present his budget blueprint.
Lawmakers take office Dec. 1. The regular biennial session begins in early January.
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