It was one of the first questions a voter asked of two suburban Minnesota House candidates at a recent forum: How were they planning to vote on the two proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall?

On its face, the race for Minnesota’s Senate District 9 shouldn’t be competitive. The sprawling Senate district stretches across four socially conservative counties in central Minnesota that have voted overwhelmingly for Republicans in past races.

There is a lot of uncertainty about the 2012 legislative election season. Most significantly, nobody knows exactly what legislative districts will look like when the redistricting process — which is expected to drag on into February or March — is finally completed.

In previous legislative sessions, proposals to expand gambling have attracted more support from Republicans than DFLers. Given Minnesota's $5 billion state budget deficit and the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate, gambling proposals would seem to stand a much-improved chance of landing on the governor's desk as part of a budget agreement.

On the first day of the legislative session on Tuesday, many of the Senate's new Republican committee administrators were still receiving the keys to their offices and waiting for their phones to be set up. But for the most part, the top committee staffers who will help Senate Republicans govern in the majority for the first time since 1972 are hardly strangers to the Capitol.

Late last week, three of the principal architects of the Republicans' Minnesota Senate takeover gathered in Sen. Amy Koch's office for one last time to talk about how they'd pulled it off.

While most Minnesota politicos are devoting their attention to the race for the governorship this year, a smaller power battle is brewing in the state Senate. Many who frequent the Capitol halls in St. Paul predict there will be a spirited race for head of the Senate GOP caucus after the general election, a spot that is looking more desirable to Republicans given boasts within the party that the GOP has a shot at taking the majority in the chamber.

Hours after Tuesday's DFL primary, the Minnesota GOP launched a TV ad attack calling DFLer Mark Dayton "erratic" and wondering out loud what frequency he was on.

Two-term state Sen. Paul Koering, R-Fort Ripley, said he is no longer a Republican after losing Tuesday’s GOP primary, and he’s backing the DFL-endorsed candidate to replace him in the Legislature.

Mark Dayton rode a dominating performance in greater Minnesota to a narrow victory in Tuesday's DFL gubernatorial primary, edging party endorsee Margaret Anderson Kelliher by just over 6,500 votes out of over 440,000 cast. One-time House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, who spent over $5 million on his primary campaign, garnered just over 80,000 votes.