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Rep. Jeanne Poppe (DFL-27B) spent part of her Tuesday evening at Steve’s Pizza in downtown Austin as the results began to come in. She said she felt good and was optimistic it would be a good evening, though she was a bit relieved the election was coming to an end.

“I’m like everybody else; I’m sick of seeing the ads and certainly the negative campaigning is never fun or good, but I’m pleased that people are very engaged,” she said. “I think this time around there was a lot more intensity; some people were maybe more in tune with what was going on. Hopefully that led to a higher turnout, which is good for democracy.”

Poppe added that she felt having so many local races prompted good voter turnout.

“I thought we had really good (local) candidates,” she said. “In many of the races you couldn’t go wrong. To have as many people running for School Board as were running says many good things. Those people are going to be charged with finding a new superintendent, which is a huge responsibility.”

In the end, Poppe said she was hopeful for victory along the DFL ticket.

“I think that we’re in some very stressful times and personally I think it’s important to bring people back into the legislature who have experience with working in the system and understanding how it all works,” she said.