Rep. Larry Howes helped broker the end of a three-week government shutdown and Rep. John Kriesel took political risks and emerged as an important new presence at the Capitol.

When Republican state senators gather on Tuesday to elect a new majority leader, their top-of-mind priority will be to choose someone who can bail out a sinking boat and set it sailing in the right direction again. But the stakes will also be very high for a set of Capitol interest groups facing an historic chance to make years’ and countless dollars’ worth of lobbying efforts pay off.

Who wants to run the Republican Party of Minnesota? That’s the question that has been generating a steady stream of rumors and trial balloons since state party Chairman Tony Sutton suddenly resigned earlier this month.

Amid internal controversies over the Republican Party of Minnesota’s debt after state Chairman Tony Sutton’s resignation, party officers and insiders initially maintained that the state GOP was not legally required to pay the nearly $500,000 in legal fees racked up during the 2010 gubernatorial election recount.

At Saturday's gathering of the Republican Party's state central committee, Pat Anderson circulated two documents to delegates illuminating the party's current debt. The former state auditor and Republican National Committee member wanted party activists to have a clearer picture of the state GOP's financial obligations under chair Tony Sutton, who resigned on Friday.

On Saturday Republicans will gather in Bloomington for a meeting of the party’s State Central Committee. Among the agenda items for the roughly 350 delegates: electing a new deputy chair and approving the party’s 2012 budget.

A policy debate over the financial assumptions for the state’s public pension funds is brewing at the state Capitol.

A lot of things are changing for Dick Day. The former Senate Republican minority leader made a legislative career out of supporting slot machines at racetracks — better known as racino — during his 19 years in the chamber.

A steady downpour didn’t keep Indian gambling workers from flocking outside the state Capitol in St. Paul last April. At least 1,500 people gathered outside on the building’s steps, some arriving by the busload from reservations hours away. Clad in raincoats and shielded by a canopy of umbrellas, workers thrust signs into the air that read, “Rural jobs count too” and “Don’t gamble with my job!”

Moderate legislators are hard to come by these days. By most accounts, last fall’s election saw voters oust most of the middle-of-the-road DFLers in the Minnesota House and replace them with a spate of freshman Republicans elected on a strong right-wing wave that swept the nation.