Minnesota Senate candidate Jason Lewis discharged from hospital

Minnesota Senate candidate Jason Lewis (R) announced Wednesday that he was released from the hospital after undergoing emergency surgery for an internal hernia.

Lewis, who served in Congress for one term before losing reelection in 2018, was rushed into surgery earlier Monday after experiencing severe abdominal pain. Doctors later diagnosed it as an internal hernia, which can be life threatening if not treated quickly.

“I am walking, feeling well, catching up on work, and on my way back home to Woodbury,” the Republican candidate said in a statement after his release on Wednesday, adding that he would return to the campaign trail in the next six days before the Nov. 3 election.

Lewis’s campaign manager, Tom Szymanski, said in a statement Monday that the surgery “was successful and minimally invasive,” adding that Lewis would remain in the hospital for a couple days. 

“I would like to thank … the entire ICU staff at the Fairview Range Medical Center in Hibbing for safely performing my emergency surgery and also for the stellar care I received afterward,” Lewis said in a statement. “I would also like to thank everyone who prayed for me and sent well wishes” 

The emergency operation came just eight days before the election, in which Lewis is challenging incumbent Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). 

Smith wished Lewis a “successful surgery and a speedy recovery” in a tweet posted earlier on Monday. 

Most polling shows Smith with a comfortable lead over Lewis for the Minnesota seat, with the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average placing Smith nearly 6 percentage points ahead of Lewis among voters. 

However, a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll released last week showed a much tighter race, with Smith and Lewis statistically tied at 43 percent to 42 percent.