Over the past decade, Senate District 47 — stretching around north metro area cities like Champlin, Coon Rapids and Brooklyn Park — has been a place where moderate Democrats could prosper despite the district’s slight GOP tilt.

“The Late Debate with Jack and Ben” got off to an inauspicious start. At the beginning of the debut broadcast in April, one of the microphones didn’t work for the initial eight minutes. The first words uttered over the air were, “Do you hear me?”

As the Minnesota Legislature prepares for a transition that will see 60 freshmen join the rolls of the state Senate and House, PIM continues with our series of post-election portraits of the 2011 class. In this latest edition, we look at seven more members of the incoming Senate Republican majority.

Late last week, three of the principal architects of the Republicans' Minnesota Senate takeover gathered in Sen. Amy Koch's office for one last time to talk about how they'd pulled it off.

Prior to the 2004 election cycle, Sen. Leo Foley was the only DFLer representing Senate District 47. But that year Democrats took over both House seats, and they have been able to keep hold of all three posts in the suburban district ever since.

Chaudhary's primary loss made him the body's fifth departing chair

Around convention time in the spring, Senate Minority Leader Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, boasted that his caucus would retake the chamber’s majority in November. Considering Senate Republicans’ 38-year stranglehold on minority status, and the 13 seats that his troops will need to gain to make good on the pledge, it amounts to a tall order.

As Minnesota’s Republican Party was giddily tweeting the news that the party had fielded candidates for all 201 seats in the state Legislature for the first time in 30 years, the Independence Party of Minnesota was quietly celebrating its own milestone: 16 candidates for the Legislature in 2010, seven in Senate districts and nine in House districts.

As the 2010 Minnesota Legislature kicks off this week, a half-dozen legislators, most of them DFLers, have announced that they don't plan to be back when the gavel comes down on the 2011 session.

Main Story: Bring on the challengers • House District 8B: Rudy Takala, a Republican from Pine City, is challenging second-term Rep. Tim Faust, DFL-Hinckley. • ...