In the Republican primary on February 8, Stangeland defeated Richard Franson, "a frequent candidate who lived in Minneapolis, far from the district,"[1] with 97 percent of the vote.

[1] Stangeland ran against the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee Michael J. Sullivan, a former Walter Mondale aide, in the general election.

[1] Stangeland campaigned "on the theme that the heavily rural northwestern Minnesota needed another farmer, like Mr. Bergland, in Congress"[1] and won the election, receiving 71,251 votes to Sullivan's 43,467.

"[2] In January 1990, it was reported that Stangeland had made several hundred long distance phone calls from 1986 to 1987 on his Minnesota House credit card to and from the residences of a female lobbyist from Virginia.

[3][4][5] Nonetheless, his popularity sharply dropped and Stangeland lost the election to Democratic State Senator Collin Peterson, who had run against him twice before, nearly defeating him in 1986.