Ellen Anderson remembers the door she knocked on in 1992 that made her realize that her preconceptions about male voters might be somewhat inaccurate.

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

State Sen. Tom Bakk has had a few months to recuperate and reassess since dropping his bid for the DFL endorsement for governor back in March. Bakk, of Cook, was officially in the race for nearly nine months.

The Mark Dayton who stood before television cameras and reporters in his St. Paul campaign headquarters at 1 a.m. Wednesday looked much different from the man who met reporters there three hours earlier. He stood a little taller and was surrounded by more campaign volunteers and supporters. There was a slight smile on his face as he said he wasn't exactly declaring victory in the DFL Minnesota gubernatorial primary, but all signs pointed to a win.

The filing deadline has come and gone. Candidates for the Minnesota Legislature are hitting the stump. But Democrats in 13 House and Senate districts and Republicans in 10 others will have to win in August to compete in November. Here are 10 legislative primaries to watch.

As Minnesota’s Republican Party was giddily tweeting the news that the party had fielded candidates for all 201 seats in the state Legislature for the first time in 30 years, the Independence Party of Minnesota was quietly celebrating its own milestone: 16 candidates for the Legislature in 2010, seven in Senate districts and nine in House districts.

Local governments across Minnesota have taken a budgetary pounding from the Legislature in the past two years. So is it a coincidence that a striking number of this year’s crop of legislative candidates come from the ranks of mayors’ offices and city councils around the state?

If the phrase “sure thing” can be applied anywhere in politics, it might be appropriate in a small part of St. Paul, including Falcon Heights and a swath of territory north of Interstate 94.

State legislators have solved roughly one-third of the $1 billion budget shortfall they currently face in the 2010-2011 biennium.

Advocates pushing for an end to the state’s 16-year-old ban on nuclear power plant construction suffered a blow on Thursday when a bill to end the moratorium was amended in a way that “guts” the measure, according to the legislation’s author. But that’s unlikely to elicit much pushback from the energy industry, which is staying away from the debate this year.