Senate President Michelle Fischbach has set a campaign schedule that’s heavy on greater Minnesota districts in the days leading up to next Tuesday’s general election.

GOP House Speaker Kurt Zellers will make stops in suburban and rural areas of Minnesota in the days leading up to next Tuesday’s Election Day. Among his stops will be races where a Republican incumbent is either retiring or running for Senate. He also plans to stop in districts that were created by redistricting.

The six major business-backed spending groups have poured more than $2.6 million worth of independent expenditures into legislative races as of October 22. Campaign finance reports released today show that a national GOP political group has pumped more than half a million dollars this month in the bid to preserve GOP control of the Legislature.

DFL legislative and party leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton plan to tour swing districts throughout the state in the six days before the Nov. 6 general election.

A national organization that focuses on electing Democrats to state legislatures has put four Minnesota candidates on its list of 60 races to watch.

The primary elections finalized the seats that will for certain be filled by new members when the 2013 Legislature convenes in January. In both the House and Senate there will be large freshman classes even if all incumbents seeking re-election win in November.

Republican Senate candidate Brandon Anderson needed $800, and quick, in order to qualify for the public subsidy for legislative candidates. So he proposed that he and fellow GOP candidates swap donations to each other to help them all qualify -- a move that has attracted the attention of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.

Sen. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, surprised Minnesota legislative campaign watchers by announcing he’s withdrawing his re-election bid. The news, which was broke by Minnesota Public Radio, came on the last day of the candidate filing period.

Dates have been set for several intra-party clashes for House and Senate endorsements. Some of the competitions are due to redistricting and some Republican incumbents are facing challenges from the right-wing of the party.

State Rep. Mike Beard barely survived a GOP endorsement challenge on Saturday in House District 55A. Beard faced a backlash for his support for retention elections of judicial contests. There were also DFL conventions in Districts 2 and 4.