Catching up with four former GOP legislators.

Pam Wolf is not easily deterred. She first ran for the Legislature in 2004, losing a House race to incumbent DFL Rep. Connie Bernardy by 13 percentage points. Two years later, Wolf took on DFL Sen. Don Betzold, losing that time by 9 percentage points.

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

Freshman Republican Sen. Pam Wolf, who spent much of her first term at the Capitol working to repeal a seniority-based teacher layoff law, was one of 29 teachers in Anoka County that recently lost their job.

As promised, Gov. Mark Dayton has vetoed a key GOP education bill to repeal the state's so-called "last in, first out" law, which protects teachers with the most seniority when school districts are hit with layoffs.

It was one of those votes no one wanted to take. The state’s new maps dropped DFL senators and allies John Marty and Mary Jo McGuire into Senate District 66, forcing activists in the area to pick between them at a recent endorsing convention.

Johnson will challenge first-term GOP Sen. Pam Wolf, who in 2010 won in the current Senate District 51 with more than 52 percent of the vote.

Minneapolis DFLers lost another legislator last weekend. Freshman Rep. Marion Greene, who replaced former DFL House Speaker and gubernatorial candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher in the chamber, fell in an endorsement contest against DFL House colleague Frank Hornstein.

A year after Republican legislators joined forces with DFL Gov. Mark Dayton to enact changes to state education policy, the GOP’s 2012 K-12 agenda is foundering.

A bipartisan majority voted to send the bill to conference committee. Teachers have blasted the bill as an attack on tenure.