House Majority Leader Matt Dean, a leader of the Republican takeover of the Minnesota House and of its battles with DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, survived a GOP endorsement battle with a fellow Republican House member on Saturday.
Dean, R-Dellwood, second in command to Speaker Kurt Zellers in the House, defeated Rep. Carol McFarlane, R-White Bear Lake, in a hotly-contested endorsement battle at Central Middle School in White Bear Lake.
Republican delegates to the newly-drawn House District 38B, which threw both candidates into the same district, gave Dean the needed 60-percent majority on the first ballot. The count was 70 for Dean to 42 for McFarlane.
The endorsement means Dean, not McFarlane, has the official party seal of approval headed into the primary and general elections in the summer and Fall. McFarlane signed a pledge to support the endorsed candidate but said after the vote that she was not yet ruling out running in a primary.
"I have a lot of thinking to do," she said. She noted that if she were to challenge Dean in a primary, the party would assess her a $2,500 penalty.
Neither candidate chose this battle. Dean, in is fourth term, and McFarlane, in her third term, represented neighboring East Metro districts until a judicial redistricting plan redrew the lines in February. That decision put both of them in the newly-drawn district 38B, which include all or parts of White Bear Lake and White Bear Township, North Oaks, Hugo and Dellwood.
"We have two people running today who both should be serving in the Minnesota Legislature," Dean said in his speech to delegates.He cited his work upholding the Republican-controlled Legislature's position in a budget battle with Dayton last year, which resulted in a 20-day partial government shutdown.
"We got stronger and stronger the more they pushed," Dean said. "We won, Dayton lost."
