Wetterling drops from race

The breaking news today is that Patty Wetterling is dropping out of the Senate race.

Patty Wetterling will withdraw from the U.S. Senate race this afternoon and endorse Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, according to a DFL activist knowledgeable about the plan.

Where is Wetterling going? Will she run in the 6th?

Wetterling is said to have been wooed as a gubernatorial running mate and has been urged by some to enter the congressional contest in Minnesota's Sixth District, where she lost a hard-fought race against Rep. Mark Kennedy in 2004. Kennedy is now the presumptive GOP nominee in the U.S. Senate race, and has been amassing funds for what many say could be the most expensive race in state history.

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Wetterling, who came within 8 percentage points of Kennedy in 2004, has already thrown her support to the only announced DFL candidate in the Sixth District race, Elwyn Tinklenberg, former mayor of Blaine and transportation commissioner under independent Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Tinklenberg on Thursday said Wetterling had assured him repeatedly that she would stay in the Senate race. "I take her at her word," he said.

Good luck with that El.

Sen. Wes Skoglund, DFL-Minneapolis, who called Wetterling on the day U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton announced his retirement to urge her entry into the race, said Thursday that he hoped she was not being pushed out.

Skoglund said that he did not know whether she was going to withdraw, but that "if it makes her happy [to withdraw], that's fine. I just don't want to see her pressured out. There's been pressure on her to get out from the start."

Political newcomers, he said, "are a bit more vulnerable to that than people who've been around."

I would bet there was incredible pressure on Patty to get the hell out of the way. But from whom? The DFL? Klobuchar? Special interest groups?