Minnesota Lawyer
St. Cloud attorney and legislative candidate Carol Lewis
St. Cloud attorney Carol Lewis has registered her campaign committee to run as a DFLer for the District 15 Senate seat currently held by GOP freshman Sen. John Pederson. In 2010 Lewis ran against King Banaian for an open 15B House seat, and lost by 13 votes.
Lewis said she is running again because “there has been an assault on the middle class in this country and in this state, and we need to have people who are willing to stand up and fight for the middle class and those who are less fortunate as well.”
Lewis served on the St. Cloud School board from 1997 to 2005, and says she has expertise in education and elder-care issues. Lewis wrote a thesis for her masters’ degree in gerontology on nursing home care and because of that, “I have ideas that could fairly easily be translated into policy,” she said.
In 2010, Lewis entered the House 15B race late, following the announcement that DFL Rep. Larry Haws would not be running again. She scored a primary victory over Zachary Dorholt, a former Haws campaign committee chair. However, in the general election, two poorly executed direct mail pieces sent by the local DFL didn’t help her as one appeared to play on Banaian’s ethnicity and the other ruffled the feathers of pro-choice supporters. The razor-thin election triggered an automatic recount, and ultimately confirmed Banaian’s victory.
