Linda Runbeck

State Representative Linda Runbeck has experienced the burdens of Minnesota’s law from a candidate’s perspective. She served in the state legislature for a dozen years before spending a decade outside of the legislature, helping run think tanks and performing other jobs. Spending time away from public office taught her more about issues her community faced, convincing her the time was right to come back to Minnesota’s Capitol. As a result, in 2010, she ran for State House, and won. Since then, Rep. Runbeck has been reelected, and ran again in 2014.

Each time Rep. Runbeck runs she is faced with the same fundraising problems created by the special sources limit, which prevent her from accepting contributions from her constituents who gave money too late in the process. The limits make running for office so confusing that when she re-encountered them in 2010, she spent hours trying to decipher exactly how and when she would hit the limit, and to whom she needed to return checks because of it.