Paul Thissen
Encyclopedia
Paul Thissen is a Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 politician and a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives
Minnesota House of Representatives
The Minnesota House of Representatives is the lower house in the Minnesota State Legislature. There are 134 members elected to two-year terms, twice the number of members in the Minnesota Senate. Each senate district is divided in half and given the suffix A or B...

 from District 63A, which includes south Minneapolis and Richfield
Richfield, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 34,439 people, 15,073 households, and 8,727 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,993.9 people per square mile . There were 15,357 housing units at an average density of 2,226.9 per square mile...

 in Hennepin County
Hennepin County, Minnesota
Hennepin County is a county located in the U.S. state of Minnesota, named in honor of the 17th-century explorer Father Louis Hennepin. As of 2010 the population was 1,152,425. Its county seat is Minneapolis. It is by far the most populous county in Minnesota; more than one in five Minnesotans live...

, which is in the Twin Cities
Twin cities
Twin cities are a special case of two cities or urban centres which are founded in close geographic proximity and then grow into each other over time...

 metropolitan area. He is the current Minnesota House Minority Leader
Minnesota House Minority Leader
This is a list of Minority Leaders of the Minnesota House of Representatives. The current minority leader is Rep. Paul Thissen...

. He was first elected in 2002, and has been re-elected every two years since then. From 2007 to 2010, he chaired the House Health and Human Services Committee.

In November, 2008, Thissen launched an exploratory campaign for the 2010 Minnesota gubernatorial race
Governor of Minnesota
The Governor of Minnesota is the chief executive of the U.S. state of Minnesota, leading the state's executive branch. Forty different people have been governors of the state, though historically there were also three governors of Minnesota Territory. Alexander Ramsey, the first territorial...

. On July 24, 2009, he officially announced his candidacy, noting that he would focus on the issues of health care, renewable energy and education. He subsequently withdrew from the governor's race at the April 2010 State DFL Convention after the 5th round ballot demonstrated a two-person race between House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher
Margaret Anderson Kelliher
Margaret Anderson Kelliher is a Minnesota politician and a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. A Democrat, she represented District 60A, which includes portions of the city of Minneapolis in Hennepin County, located in the Twin Cities metropolitan area...

 and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

On November 4, 2010, the House DFL Caucus announced that it had elected Thissen to serve as Minority Leader in the upcoming legislative session.

Family, education and professional career

Thissen was born in Bloomington, Minnesota
Bloomington, Minnesota
Bloomington is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota in Hennepin County. Located on the north bank of the Minnesota River above its confluence with the Mississippi River, Bloomington lies at the heart of the southern...

. His parents, Frank and Barb Thissen, were both lifelong educators. Frank, who grew up on a farm in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota
Blooming Prairie, Minnesota
Blooming Prairie is a city in Dodge and Steele counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The population was 1,996 at the 2010 census. Most of the city lies in Steele County; only a small part of the city extends into Dodge County.-History:...

 that the family still owns, worked for the St. Paul School District
Saint Paul Public Schools
Saint Paul Public Schools is a school district that covers all of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota.Saint Paul supports a robust network of publicly-funded primary and secondary schools....

 as a teacher, counselor and administrator. Barb worked for many years as a special education teacher for the Richfield, Minnesota schools.

After graduating from the Academy of Holy Angels
Academy of Holy Angels
The Academy of Holy Angels is a Catholic, coeducational high school located in Richfield, Minnesota. Located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Holy Angels educates more than 820 students each year in grades nine through twelve from around the Twin Cities...

 in Richfield, Thissen attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and graduated with high honors in 1989. He earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...

 in 1992.

Thissen clerked for the Honorable James B. Loken
James B. Loken
James B. Loken is a federal appeals court judge who has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit since 1990.-Education and legal training:...

 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and then went to work at the Minneapolis law firm of Briggs & Morgan. He specialized in general litigation and appellate work. He also worked for the Minnesota State Public Defenders Office. He served as Chair of the firm's Pro Bono Committee. During his tenure, the firm more than doubled the hours of free legal services it provided to low-income individuals and non-profits. He also founded "Access for Persons with Disabilities," a group of lawyers dedicated to providing legal services to persons with disabilities.

In 2006, Thissen was named one of "Forty Under 40" top business professionals in the Twin Cities by the Twin Cities Business Journal. In 2008, Thissen was named one of Minnesota's 100 Influential Health Care leaders and one of the Twin Cities "Best Brains"

Thissen is married to Karen Wilson, with whom he has three children. He continues to work at Briggs & Morgan when the legislature is not in session.

Public service and legislative record

Thissen was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2002, which was his first run for public office. He has been re-elected every two years since then.

During his first two terms, Thissen served as a member of the minority party. Nonetheless, he developed a reputation as someone who could work across party lines. He was a key player in passing significant legislation including major changes to Minnesota's eminent domain laws to protect the rights of individual property owners, the merger of the insolvent Minneapolis Teachers Retirement Fund into the statewide teachers pension fund, a nation-leading law to curb abusive tax-preparer practices and an overhaul of state campaign law.

During the 2006 election, Thissen served as Finance Co-Chair of the House DFL Caucus and succeeded raising more dollars than the Republican opposition. The DFL picked up nineteen seats and a strong new majority. Politics in Minnesota named Thissen was named one of the big "winners" of the 2006 election in its November 9, 2006 edition.

In 2007, Thissen was appointed Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. He also sits on the Health Finance Committee, the Biosciences Committee, the Telecommunications Division, the Finance Committee, the Rules Committee and the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement. He also served as Speaker pro tempore of the Minnesota House.

Thissen was Chief Author of HF 1, the Children's Health Security Act. The proposal, which would provide health coverage to all Minnesota children in families who make under $60,000, passed off the floor of the Minnesota House.

Thissen served on the Health Care Access Commission and also served on Governor Tim Pawlenty
Tim Pawlenty
Timothy James "Tim" Pawlenty , also known affectionately among supporters as T-Paw, is an American politician who served as the 39th Governor of Minnesota . He was a Republican candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election from May to August 2011...

's Health Transformation Taskforce. In 2008, he was instrumental in passing health reform legislation that the Minneapolis Star Tribune named the prize of the 2008 session.

See also

  • Paul Thissen, Minnesota gubernatorial election, 2010.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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