Pity the mail carriers in House District 48A. They’ve already delivered a freight car’s worth of mailers to homes in this west-suburban swing district that includes Eden Prairie and Minnetonka.

The campaign finance reports released last week show that political action committees large and small have been funneling lots of money into legislative races.

In the wealthy swing districts of Minneapolis’ western suburbs, the gay marriage amendment that will appear on the 2012 ballot lands outside voters’ chief concerns of taxes, education and the overall health of the economy.

Today's 2010 campaign finance reports indicate some state legislative races were spendy affairs. We survey some of the marquee races.

In many cases, DFLers simply got caught in an undertow in districts that are fundamentally split in their political allegiances; in some, like rural Senate District 16, they handed back control of districts no one had expected them to win in the first place; in others, it appears, they failed to take steps to protect incumbents who faced discernible pockets of Republican opposition.

Republicans pummeled DFLers in the suburbs and greater Minnesota on Tuesday night to take control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time since the modern partisan era started in the early 1970s.

Session 2010's tempest over whether to take a federal deal that would have jump-started Minnesota's entry to a new federal Medicaid expansion hasn't subsided. It simply followed legislators out the doors of the Capitol and onto the campaign trail.

A bipartisan coalition of state legislators is soliciting the input of Minnesota owners of small businesses to help make the state a better place to do business.

A bipartisan coalition of state legislators is soliciting the input of Minnesota owners of small businesses to help make the state a better place to do business.