Voters in Tuesday’s primary election narrowed the candidates to be Hennepin County’s next attorney and sheriff.
According to unofficial results from the Secretary of State website, Mary Moriarty and Martha Holton Dimick garnered the most votes among seven candidates vying to replace longtime Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.
And, according to unofficial results, Dawanna Witt and Joseph Banks received the most votes among the three candidates vying to replace Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson.
The top two candidates in each race move on to the Nov. 8 general election.
With all 397 county precincts reporting for Hennepin County attorney, Moriarty received 36.36% of the vote and Holton Dimick (17.89% of the vote) was a distant second, edging out Ryan Winkler (16.29%). Behind Winker were Tad Jude (10.58%), Paul Ostrow (8.46%), Saraswati Singh (7.16%), and Jarvis Jones (3.26%).
Moriarty, 58, has spent her career as a public defender in Hennepin County, serving as the county’s chief public defender from 2014-2020.
Holton Dimick, 68, has spent her legal career in Minneapolis, most recently as a Minnesota District Court judge from 2012 until retiring earlier this year to run for county attorney.
Freeman is stepping away as the top prosecutor in the state’s largest county. He served two different stints as Hennepin County attorney from 1991-1999 and 2007-2022.
With all 397 precincts reporting for Hennepin County sheriff, Witt received 57.05 percent of the vote. Banks (22.46% of the vote) was a distant second, edging out Jai Hanson (20.49%) for the second spot on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Witt, 48, is a major in the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office. She leads the office’s largest bureau: Adult Detention and Court Services.
Banks, 51, has served at various times as chief of police for the Lower Sioux, the Upper Sioux, and the Morton, Minnesota, police departments. He has worked with the Twin Cities Recovery Project and the Black Butterfly project for young women.
On medical leave for the remainder of his lone term, Hutchinson did not run for re-election. He pled guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving stemming from an incident where Hutchinson crashed a county vehicle near Alexandria last December.
Both Moriarty and Witt received the DFL endorsements in May.