Amid a summer of choreographed campaign roll-outs for the governor’s office and Congress, a number of candidates are quietly preparing for next year’s legislative election, when the House DFL Caucus will look to defend its majority.

It’s not hard to see why campaign operatives from both political parties have had Minnesota’s newly drawn Senate District 53 on their radar since day one.

A ferocious pushback by Education Minnesota cast the 70,000-member statewide teacher's union in the role of session bogeyman. The union and its head, Tom Dooher, fought the bill to a standstill in the end; it lost by a tight 68-65 margin in the House, and did not reach the floor in the Senate.

When the 87th Minnesota Legislature convenes in January, it will seat 60 new members - the third-highest total of the past 40 years. Fifty-four of those new faces will be Republicans.

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.

A negative mailing arrived in Republican state Senate candidate Dan Hall's district last weekend that caught him by surprise.

Prior to the 2006 elections, the people of Senate District 56, which covers much of Woodbury and north-central Washington County, had an entirely Republican delegation in St. Paul. But when the votes were counted that year, the district's Republicans - two representatives and one senator -had all been swept out of office, victims of a pro-DFL swing that averaged 11 points in each of the area's three legislative races.

While the governor's race may be the marquee feature in this year's campaign season, the large number of swing districts in play at the Minnesota Legislature are the object of lower-profile but no less intense campaign spending machinations by a number of groups.

The power divide between DFLers and Republicans in the Minnesota House may look daunting on its face, but not so long ago the GOP held a similarly imposing majority.

An omnibus bill that proposes to shore up public pension funds by reaching into the pocketbooks of both public employees and retirees is teed up for end-of-session floor debate.