Minnesota Lawyer
Peter Wagenius
Long-time DFL operative and Minneapolis city hall staffer Peter Wagenius will run for the open state Senate seat in District 59.
Wagenius, 40, who is the son of Rep. Jean Wagenius, DFL-Minneapolis, is running in a special election to replace long-time senator and former majority leader Larry Pogemiller, who has been appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton to serve as director of the Office of Higher Education.
Wagenius’s resume includes being deputy field director for Skip Humphrey’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998 and co-managing R.T. Rybak’s first campaign for Minneapolis mayor in 2001. He currently serves as Rybak’s policy director. At city hall, Wagenius has been a central figure in transit projects and the recently concluded effort to shore up city police and firefighter pensions. He criticized the state’s tax system as being “more and more against the middle class.”
“People who work in cities, counties and schools,” Wagenius said, “know how much damage the Republican Legislature’s budget has done. We’ve had to clean up their messes and try to reduce the impact of their cuts. Their budget has weakened Minnesota’s quality of life: a few are doing well, but everyone else is still struggling. Meanwhile, the Republican-led Legislature is broken: it is stuck in stale ways of thinking and has done nothing to turn this crisis around.”
Dayton has called a special election for January 10. A special primary, which appears to be a likely event, will be December 6.
Also in the DFL field to replace Pogemiller is Jacob Frey, 30, who is has left his job as an attorney at Faegre & Benson to run in the solidly DFL district that includes the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota.
Rep. Diane Loeffler on Sunday ended speculation that she would run for the seat saying she will opt to seek re-election to her current seat.
“Seniority is important in the Legislature,” Loeffler said, “and walking away from four terms of seniority to the back of the line in a new body would be a restart that has consequences for both me and our area. So I have decided to stay enthusiastically serving our community and our city in the House of Representatives. While the four-year term of the Senate was tempting, running every other year keeps me connected to the people I serve.”
Wagenius’s campaign is being managed by Alex Falconer, who managed Jim Meffert’s 2010 unsuccessful bid against U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen in the 3rd Congressional District in the western Minneapolis suburbs.
