Leading Off • MN-Gov: On Monday, Democratic Rep. Tim Walz announced that he would enter the race to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton in 2018. Walz has represented southern Minnesota's 1st District since ousting a GOP incumbent in the 2006 wave, and he leaves behind a House seat that lurched so hard to the right in 2016 that Walz nearly lost to a challenger who was on no one's radar.