Attorney Ed Matthews defeated upstart John Meyer, 24, to win the Republican endorsement for the Fourth Congressional District seat Saturday in South St. Paul.
Some 189 delegates voted unanimously that Matthews, 34, would make the best candidate to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum in the fall election. McCollum is seeking her fifth term and captured nearly 70 percent of the vote in her last election in 2006.
The Fourth District seat has been controlled by the DFL for 60 years, since Eugene McCarthy was elected in 1948. The district includes St. Paul, all of Ramsey County and some suburbs in Washington and Dakota counties.
In the Fifth District, Republican delegates unanimously endorsed Barb Davis White, an ordained minister.
She got the nod to run against Rep. Keith Ellison, a freshman Democrat. White hopes to accomplish what no Republican has done for decades in the Fifth District -- defeat a Democratic incumbent.
Law review editor
Some delegates felt that the best chance they had at defeating McCollum was experience. Matthews received his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law and was executive editor of the William Mitchell Law Review. He is a commercial defense attorney with Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis. In 2000, he sought, but did not win, the Republican Party endorsement for a legislative seat in Washington County.
He has said his priorities as the candidate for the Fourth District seat are to oppose congressional earmarking and to make the 2003 Bush tax cuts permanent. He also advocates replacing the current tax system with a flat tax and reducing the current corporate income tax, which he said would promote job creation and capital formation.
