For Branden Petersen, the past week has been, in his words, “unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.” It all started when the 27-year-old Republican senator from Andover told the Star Tribune that he’s likely to support a DFL effort to legalize gay marriage in 2013, just months after voters rejected a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

It was one of the first questions a voter asked of two suburban Minnesota House candidates at a recent forum: How were they planning to vote on the two proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall?

A late September poll from the Star Tribune found Emmer and Dayton running neck-and-neck in outstate Minnesota with 35 percent apiece, but a mid October KSTP/SurveyUSA poll put Dayton ahead in all regions.

On a Saturday afternoon in July, a dozen or so locals sat under a gazebo in Central Park in downtown North Branch. "Wanted: Karl Marx" posters were stapled to the gazebo, and a welcome sign and a waving Don't Tread on Me flag greeted members of the Old North Church Tea Party to what was billed as a candidate forum.

Emmer, now the GOP nominee for governor of Minnesota, has earned a reputation over his three terms at the Legislature as an abrasive lawmaker, even with members of his own caucus.

Tom Emmer's gubernatorial campaign has a new head of media operations. Public relations executive Carl Kuhl recently joined team Emmer as communications director.