Republican leaders at the Legislature unveiled $1 billion worth of cuts at a news conference Tuesday as they start to address what House Speaker Kurt Zellers called a "pretty insurmountable" $6.2 billion deficit. Cuts, however, are only half of the equation they bandied on the campaign trail.

Dayton's cabinet picks have leaned toward individuals with few close ties to the Capitol. But in assembling his legislative affairs staff, the DFL governor is relying on a roster of legislative veterans with established relationships under the dome.

Fiscbach said she doesn't expect Senate committees to take up the nuclear power plant moratorium repeal next week.

Terri Bonoff is the Senate DFL's new assistant leader. Bonoff, a suburbanite who is starting her third term, will be the Senate DFL's second in command behind Minority Leader Tom Bakk.

A ferocious pushback by Education Minnesota cast the 70,000-member statewide teacher's union in the role of session bogeyman. The union and its head, Tom Dooher, fought the bill to a standstill in the end; it lost by a tight 68-65 margin in the House, and did not reach the floor in the Senate.

The restructuring of the caucus and its chairs by a new leadership team is widely expected to produce a decidedly conservative shift on the part of Senate Republicans, who in recent years have built a more centrist track record than their increasingly conservative House colleagues.

In many cases, DFLers simply got caught in an undertow in districts that are fundamentally split in their political allegiances; in some, like rural Senate District 16, they handed back control of districts no one had expected them to win in the first place; in others, it appears, they failed to take steps to protect incumbents who faced discernible pockets of Republican opposition.

In some political attacks during this year's legislative campaign, the attacking party has been the one that's gotten bloodied.

State Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, will run a television ad during Monday Night Football. Bonoff is among suburban candidates who are taking advantage of cable television's geographically specific reach.

While the governor's race may be the marquee feature in this year's campaign season, the large number of swing districts in play at the Minnesota Legislature are the object of lower-profile but no less intense campaign spending machinations by a number of groups.