Rick Nolan, Meet Ernest Lundeen

Rick Nolan’s plurality victory in the Minnesota’s 8th CD DFL U.S. House primary on Tuesday brings him one step closer to a return to Congress after a 32-year absence. If he wins his general election matchup against one-term incumbent GOP Chip Cravaack, his return would come after a gap in service from the U.S. House that is more than twice the longest gap in state history – a mark currently held by Republican-turned-Farmer-Laborite Ernest Lundeen. Lundeen won his first term in the House in 1916 but failed to get his party’s nomination two years later. In 1932, after a 14-year absence in U.S. House service, Lundeen won one of the nine at-large congressional seats created when the Gopher State could not agree on a redistricting plan in time for the November election.