Matt Schmit has filed to run in Red Wing's Senate District 28. Jack Krage will run in Winona's Senate District 31.

Cordelia Pierson is the third candidate to file for the seat being vacated by Sen. Larry Pogemiller. Pierson is currently executive director of the Minneapolis Riverfront Partnership, a nonprofit group that focuses on riverfront revitalization.

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.

As Charley Shaw writes this week, the new Republican majority in the Minnesota Senate appears dedicated to projecting a considerably more conservative face when Session 2011 convenes in seven weeks.

Political action committees and legislative caucuses have already done mailings assailing the opposition. But now that the campaign has entered the final month, the rough-and-tumble race for the Legislature is kicking into high gear.

At some point this year, everybody who's anybody in the state GOP and the Senate Republican Caucus has stepped to a podium to proclaim 2010 the year they will finally take over the chamber.

Fourteen Republican state legislators, including gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer, received perfect ratings from Minnesota Majority for their voting records during the 2010 legislative session. Conversely, seven state senators, all Democrats, received zero ratings from the conservative advocacy group.

State Sen. Jim Vickerman calls himself the most conservative Democrat in Minnesota, and he has a voting record to bolster that claim. The seven-term lawmaker has represented Senate District 22 with a light hand since 1986. The rural area has, with the exception of Vickerman, consistently voted Republican over the last decade.

Chaudhary's primary loss made him the body's fifth departing chair

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.