The congressman from the 3rd District is Erik Paulsen, a Republican first elected in 2008 to succeed his retiring former boss, Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad. Raised in the Twin City suburbs, Paulsen was the oldest of four children. He attended nearby St. Olaf College, where he met his wife, Kelly, in a math class. After graduation, Paulsen followed a lifelong dream to work a summer in Yellowstone National Park, and then returned to the Twin Cities to begin a career in marketing. He later took a job in Ramstad’s Washington office, where he worked for a year and a half before returning to Minnesota as the director of Ramstad’s district office. In 1995, he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, rising to majority leader in 2003. He was a leading supporter of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s no-new-taxes policy. While in the legislature, Paulsen also worked as a business analyst for the Minneapolis-based Target Corp. Read More

The congressman from the 3rd District is Erik Paulsen, a Republican first elected in 2008 to succeed his retiring former boss, Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad. Raised in the Twin City suburbs, Paulsen was the oldest of four children. He attended nearby St. Olaf College, where he met his wife, Kelly, in a math class. After graduation, Paulsen followed a lifelong dream to work a summer in Yellowstone National Park, and then returned to the Twin Cities to begin a career in marketing. He later took a job in Ramstad’s Washington office, where he worked for a year and a half before returning to Minnesota as the director of Ramstad’s district office. In 1995, he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, rising to majority leader in 2003. He was a leading supporter of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s no-new-taxes policy. While in the legislature, Paulsen also worked as a business analyst for the Minneapolis-based Target Corp.

Paulsen announced his candidacy for Ramstad’s seat in January 2008. He faced no competition for the nomination and got an early fundraising lead. Democratic newcomer Ashwin Madia, an Iraq war veteran, was his opponent in the general election. Madia had upset better-known state Sen. Terri Bonoff to secure the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nomination, and he soon pulled even with Paulsen in the polls, making it a very competitive contest. At the Republican National Convention in September in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Paulsen was given a speaking role to help raise his profile. In his remarks, he emphasized fiscal discipline and called himself “one of a new generation of Republican reformers.” On the stump, he emphasized his differences with Madia on taxes, contrasting his support for making the Bush-era tax cuts permanent with Madia’s position allowing them to expire for people with annual incomes over $250,000.

The campaign turned highly negative. The Democrats ran ads that attempted to link Paulsen to a Republican fundraiser at a Las Vegas strip club. Paulsen parried with ads accusing Madia of lying about his voting record and suggesting he would raise taxes. Republicans ran an ad in the final days of the campaign that the Madia camp said deliberately depicted Madia’s skin tone as darker than it is. Madia is of Indian descent. The two candidates were neck and neck in fundraising, each raising $2.7 million. A third candidate, businessman David Dillon, ran as an independent. The race was tight, but Paulsen emerged the winner, with 48% to Madia’s 41%. Dillon picked up a respectable 11%, drawing support in areas where Madia should have been strong. Even as Obama won the district that fall by 6 percentage points, Paulsen got strong support in Bloomington and Coon Rapids to ward off the national Democratic wave.

Paulsen was appointed to the House Financial Services Committee, where he established himself as a serious-minded, business-friendly Republican who, unlike his 6th District colleague Michele Bachmann, avoided partisan rhetoric. He tried without success in November 2009 to get the committee to strip the Treasury Department of the power to extend the Wall Street bailout program for another year. He got an amendment added to a small-business financing bill that passed the House in October 2009 to help medical technology startup companies, which he said face steep initial costs. He showed some independence by joining with Democrats on expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a credit card overhaul bill and a measure giving the Food and Drug Administration oversight over tobacco products. He also backed a measure adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal government’s hate crimes statutes.

But Paulsen was loyal enough to his party to snag a prized seat on the Ways and Means Committee in 2011. He quickly introduced a bill to repeal the medical device tax that was passed as part of the 2010 health care overhaul. A devout free trade enthusiast, he co-chairs an informal GOP working group on trade with Korea.

Heading into the 2010 election, Paulsen leveraged his numerous business connections to raise more than $2.6 million, with his former employer Target leading the way in donations. He easily beat Democrat Jim Meffert with 59% of the vote.