Bluestem isn't sure when a second-term legislator last served as Minority Leader in either the state House or Senate, but the 39-old-year state representative isn't particularly the freshest young face in the Minnesota House.
Veteran legislators Tara Mack and Andrew Falk both make sophomore leader seem a bit long in the tooth, and Tim Penny was already toiling in Congress before he ripened to Daudt's mature years.
Perhaps it's just the turnover in the Republican ranks--or the purges--that prevent the Republican minority caucus from finding a Paul Thissen among their thinned herd.
Two frames seem to be emerging about Daudt. Both seem rooted in his political ties to former minority leader Marty Seifert. The first is that Daudt is a comparative moderate, a view buoyed by his refusal to sign on to the Right-to-Work amendment. The second is that the selection of a Seifert favorite signals something about the on-going/fading feud between the Seifert and Emmer wings of the party.
Bluestem doesn't find those takes as mutually exclusive, but will withhold judgment about whether either narrative possesses useful explanatory power in the least. Instead, we offer a micro-book manuscript drawn from online news sources and the Nexis database.
Representative Sondra Erickson was his high school English teacher; he studied Aviation at the University of North Dakota, according to a short profile in the February 11, 2011 Session Weekly.
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Photo: Kurt Daudt. Via the Twin Cities Daily Planet.
Related post: Shrunken head claws way to top: MNGOP House caucus selects Kurt Daudt as Minority Leader
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