'Young Gun' Torrey Westrom hopes to stir up 7th District race

In the late summer of 1987, a teenage Torrey Westrom was still expecting the lights to go back on.

Weeks earlier, the future congressional candidate rolled the family pickup on a country road. He avoided significant brain damage, but the accident destroyed Westrom's optic nerve, leaving the 14-year-old permanently blind.

But it was baling season, and the family was a man short on the farm.

"I remember my dad needing somebody to either drive the baler tractor or work the hay rack, and it wasn't going to work for me to drive," Westrom said. That would be the first of many summers Westrom would spend sightlessly throwing bales of hay.

Said Westrom: "When others have an expectation of you, you can have it of yourself a lot easier. You're willing to find a way to make it happen or get it done."

Now the Republican state senator and married father of three from Elbow Lake has taken on another challenge — attempting to unseat veteran Rep. ­Collin Peterson in the Seventh Congressional District, which spans a large swath of western Minnesota from the Canadian border nearly to Iowa.

Peterson is among the most formidable of the state's congressional delegation. For a dozen terms he has won handily in an otherwise Republican-leaning district. He is a Democrat who occasionally votes with the other side, particularly on fiscal issues. He is a zealous advocate for rural issues and the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, giving his sparsely populated district an outsized influence in an organization that runs on seniority. In 2012, Peterson won with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Westrom is the first known blind member of the Minnesota Legislature and the first blind speaker pro tem in the nation. He jumped from the House to Senate in 2013 and hadn't completed his first term when he announced he would take on Peterson. He's received solid backing from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), who promoted him and Eighth District challenger Stewart Mills to the top of its Young Guns program — an indication that they are expected to pose a significant threat to incumbents.

Westrom raised $466,538 through the end of July, while the NRCC has reserved more than $2.8 million in television advertising in the Seventh District, with the first ad expected to debut this week. It's a big investment in a race against an incumbent who hasn't faced a significant challenge in nearly two decades.

Tyler Q. Houlton, deputy policy director and policy press secretary for the NRCC, called Westrom "a very dynamic candidate … with a really compelling story to tell that's resonating with voters. I think Peterson's in for a rude awakening."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee does not list Peterson on its Frontline Program, which is designed to protect vulnerable incumbents. The Washington-based Cook Political Report rates the Seventh as leaning Democratic.

Westrom first won a state House seat in 1996, at 23. While working at the Capitol he also ran his own forage baling and rental property business and attended law school at night. Westrom said he does not want to be defined by his condition — but also isn't afraid to use it to unite a room. A few years back, he was in the speaker's chair during a contentious House debate when someone asked for a roll-call vote. Westrom seized the moment.

Westrom counts among his standout moments a bill he sponsored to extend radioactive waste storage at the ­Prairie Island nuclear plant in Red Wing. He said the effort benefited the economy and renewable energy, although the local tribal community argued ­heavily against it.

During his time in the Legislature, he's been a reliable conservative vote, opposing state-funded abortions, same-sex marriage and last year's income tax increase on the state's highest wage earners. He has supported ending the moratorium on nuclear power plants and requiring photo ID at the polls. He has voted against funding stem cell research and for alternative teacher licensing.

On the trail, Westrom expounds on the need for the Keystone XL pipeline, saying the delays are driving up oil transportation costs for farmers and affecting grain shipping from his district. Environmentalists have said the project could damage fragile ecosystems and create the potential for oil spills.

"We're talking about grain and propane, and how this is negatively affecting voters and families," Westrom said. "It's very important, and people can't understand why the leadership continues to falter."

At a candidate forum earlier this summer, Westrom criticized the Obama administration for the "unacceptable" Keystone bottleneck. Peterson said the Keystone XL needs to be built, but said a pipeline from North Dakota's oil-rich Bakken fields to Duluth should be the priority. In the meantime, Peterson said, railroads were working to improve capacity.

On a recent summer afternoon, Westrom strolled into Myron Larson's insurance office in downtown Alexandria, where the two warmly greeted each other. Larson expressed frustration with the Affordable Care Act, calling it "a real hollow law."

Down the street, at Cowing Robards, a mainstay sporting goods and screen printing shop, Westrom chatted with owner Dan Rooney, who said taxes and the cost of doing business make it hard to raise his employees' wages.

Rooney told Westrom, "I don't mind paying my share, but I want proper representation on those taxes when they're being spent."

Larson and Rooney both said they're backing Westrom. But Hal Miller, an employee at Alex Tailoring, is undecided.

"I think the whole thing is totally dysfunctional," Miller said of Congress. "The world … works on compromise and they seem to be the only people that don't understand that."