High stakes define Minnesota Senate special election coming up Tuesday

KERRICK, Minn. – Driving through this small farm town in rural east-central Minnesota, it would be easy to miss the fact that a special election is just days away. The typical trappings of campaign season - lawn signs, back-to-back attack spots - are few and far between. Talk of frozen pipes and a spike in winter ice cream sales, not politics, dominates chatter at the general store off Hwy. 23.

But the tiny Pine County township (population 63) is at the center of a hotly contested and consequential special election for a state Senate seat. A few miles up the road from the store, a half-dozen aides to Democratic candidate Stu Lourey buzz around a makeshift campaign headquarters off the kitchen of his family's farmhouse.

http://www.startribune.com/high-stakes-define-minnesota-senate-special-election-coming-up-tuesday/505277732/