Sitting in his St. Paul office overlooking the Minnesota state Capitol, Republican Party of Minnesota Chair Keith Downey says there was a point in his life when, in his “wildest dreams,” he never would have imagined sitting at the helm of a state political party.

What began as a practically giddy collection of Republican activists at the Hilton Minneapolis Bloomington on Tuesday night turned into a scene of despair by the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Near the close of a fractious two-day Republican Party of Minnesota state convention in St. Cloud, Jeff Johnson took the dais to address the elephant in the room: the tensions between supporters of Ron Paul and other activists and party regulars.

A financial report released by the Republican Party of Minnesota on Monday found that there was no theft or illegal activity by former party officers but did point to a pattern of fiscal mismanagement that has left the party about $2 million in debt.

On Dec. 31 Republican activists from across the state will gather in St. Cloud to elect a new party chair. The meeting will cap a tumultuous end to 2011 for the state GOP. Earlier this month Tony Sutton suddenly resigned from the party’s top post. Revelations soon followed that the party is likely more than $1 million in debt.

Sawalich, who made an unsuccessful bid for the position in 2009, announced the news on his Twitter feed this morning.

Kelly Fenton is a veteran of Minnesota legislative campaigns. She ran popular freshman Sen. Ted Lillie’s successful campaign in Woodbury last fall and is president of the Minnesota Excellence in Public Service Series (MEPSS), a women’s leadership and political training program that has served as a breeding ground for successful legislative candidates.

After our story "Capitol party crasher" was published online late yesterday afternoon, Sen. John Howe contacted us to say we had misinterpreted a comment of his that appeared at the end of the piece. As published, the remark was framed to suggest that the state GOP had played a leading role in setting the initial Republican budget target of $34.2 billion. That is "factually inaccurate," Howe said: In referring to the "party," he meant legislative caucus leadership, not the Republican Party of Minnesota.