Duluth voters have chosen Roger Reinert to be mayor of Duluth.

Reinert lead Larson with 17,518 votes to 11,716 with 100% of votes reported.

“Whether you supported me or whether you didn’t, I am still a Mayor for this entire community” said Reinert to the crowd at his watch party at Clyde Iron Works. “What I love tonight is that I can look and I can see someone more to the right, I can see someone more to the left and I see a whole bunch of people in the middle that I don’t where their at and that is what I’ve always been about.”

Mayor Emily Larson conceded the race to Reinert during her election watch party Tuesday night.

“I called Roger and sincerely wished him well. Although we ran against one another and competed over our ideas, Duluth needs him to succeed, I truly hope he does and I will work to offer a graceful transition to the benefit of community,” said Larson.

Reinert said the way forward is by doing what he talked about doing on the campaign trail.

“We really want to focus on the city doing city things again,” he said. “And we’re going to focus on those five big issues that we’ve talked about for months that there really was not any kind of contest about. They’re the things that people said, ‘This is what I pay taxes for and where I want to see the city do better.’ So as we get into setting up the new administration, we’ll be aligning our leadership and our structure around that.”

He said he’ll be sending Larson a letter next week and requesting a transition space in City Hall.

“I really want a good transition to the next administration. I will request meetings with key leadership: the city administrator, the city attorney, the police chief, the fire chief, and our finance and budget staff. We are in the season of adopting the levy. We are in the season of getting ready for the next legislative session,” he said. “And we do not want to miss a beat, and we won’t if we are able to work together and make this the smoothest transition possible.”

53-year old Roger Reinert previously served on the Duluth City Council; being elected in 2004 and serving as council president twice. He then went on to serve in the Minnesota House of Representative from 2009 to 2019 and the Minnesota Senate from 2011 to 2017.

Reinert is a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves, a licensed attorney, owns a consulting firm, and teaches at the College of Saint Scholastica in Duluth.