In those cases when a Minnesota legislator has run for the other body (running for the Senate after serving in the House, or vice versa), how many times have they beaten incumbents?
Our librarians enjoy this sort of challenging question. Since it took a bit of sleuthing and a fair amount of time, we restricted our search to legislators who served in the past 50 years.
Legislators moving from the House to the Senate, or from the Senate to the House, won races against incumbents more frequently than we might have guessed. Of members who have served in the last fifty years, 18 of them defeated incumbents when moving from the House to the Senate. Three beat incumbents when moving from the Senate to the House.
How we calculated these numbers:
We chose 1961 as the 50-year cut-off date, since the Legislature did not meet in 1962. Although some of the legislators in our results list won their elections more than 50 years ago, they were still serving during the 50-year window. An example of that is Vladimir Shipka, who defeated an incumbent in 1958.
We created tables of those members who moved from the House to the Senate, and from the Senate to the House. Once we knew their names, and noted the year they switched bodies, we used the Library's list of scanned election results to figure out their opponent's names.
We checked the Legislators Past & Present database to see if the opponent was a legislator, and when that was true, checked to see if the legislator was defeated on the switch date.
Here are the tables of legislators who have switched in the last 50 years. Of those members serving in the past 50 years, 125 moved from the House to Senate and 18 beat incumbents. Six moved from the Senate to the House, and three beat incumbents. For those who defeated incumbents, the defeated incumbents' names are in red. House to Senate. Senate to House.