Governor-elect Mark Dayton picked longtime Minnesota Senate counsel Peter Wattson to serve as his general counsel.

Wattson, who has worked for the Senate since 1971, is one of the state's experts on legislative rules, elections and redistricting.

While he has long served the Democratic Senate, he is no firebrand. Inside the Senate, he is treated as the final word on legislative legal issues. Wattson's appointment is hardly an outside-the-box pick for Democratic Dayton but does net him a rarely questioned legal expert.

Read some of Wattson's past treatises here.