Multiple sources have reported that former Wells Mayor Shannon Savick is seeking the DFL endorsement to run against Representative Tony Cornish (R-Lake Crystal).
The Faribault County Register first reported in Savick campaigns for 2012 election:
A lot of change can occur in a year’s time.
Just ask Shannon Savick, former mayor of Wells.
She won’t tell you exactly how old she is, but says the 65 pounds she has recently lost is a little bit less than her age.
Savick, who has been out of politics for less than a year, has decided to run for state representative in District 24.
“I have the time and energy it takes to campaign,” she says. “It’s the new me and I’m ready for a challenge.”
Her opponent would be a formidable one, incumbent Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder.
While the election isn’t until November 2012, Savick was at the Faribault County Fair shaking hands and passing out literature.
Read the rest in the Blue Earth paper. Politics in Minnesota picked up on the FCR story in DFLer launches bid against GOP Rep. Tony Cornish, adding the recent electoral history of the district:
The House District 24B seat, which covers Blue Earth, Waseca and Faribault counties, has favored Republicans in the past. In 2010, the area voted for Republican Tom Emmer over current Gov. Mark Dayton by more than 5 percentage points, and has swung for Republican candidates like John McCain, Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty over their DFL challengers.
Several of Cornish's challengers have come within striking distance however--and the district's borders will be redrawn before the 2012 election. In 2002, DFL representative Henry Kalis retired; in that banner year for Republicans in Minnesota, Cornish beat Sandy Lorenz by 571 votes; in 2008, John Branstad lost by 494 votes. Cornis won his other races by significant margins.
In the Mankato Free Press, Mark Fischenich reports in Cornish challenger emerges early:
Nine months ago state Rep. Tony Cornish won one of the bigger election blow-outs south-central Minnesotans have seen, but the dominant victory didn’t scare away his next challenger.
Former Wells Mayor Shannon Savick, the first challenger in the region to officially begin a 2012 legislative campaign, has formed a fundraising committee and begun campaigning for the District 24B seat held by the Good Thunder Republican for a decade.
Savick is dissatisfied with the way the state has dealt with recurring state budget shortfalls — including the tobacco revenue bonds and school payment shifts that ended the latest impasse last month.
In the Fischenich article, Savick points to the Branstad-Cornish race as a source of hope that Cornish is not invincible:
All of the districts south and west of Mankato have lost population compared to other districts in the state, meaning lines will need to be redrawn so that all lawmakers represent the same size population. That process, in the hands of the courts, is expected to take months to complete.
But Savick said the idea of facing Cornish doesn’t bother her, despite his 40 percentage point walloping of Democrat Joan Muth-Milks in 2010. Blow-outs reaching that threshold are a rarity outside of heavily Democratic districts in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Savick takes hope from the 2008 near-upset of Cornish by DFLer John Branstad (51 percent to 49).
“I think Tony can be beat,” she said.
Savick has some experience winning long-shot races. She’d only been in Wells for about a year when she found herself on the ballot for City Council.
Savick won that race, then went on to to be elected as mayor.
Photo: Tony Cornish.
In case any one else was wondering: under the GOP redistricting plan, Wells and Good Thunder remain in the same district, which would be 21A.
Posted by: Max Hailperin | Aug 15, 2011 at 07:16 AM