Incoming Minnesota Senate DFL majority names new secretary of the Senate

After 25 years working in the back of the Minnesota Senate as a researcher and counsel, Tom Bottern is stepping to the front next month as the new secretary of the Senate.

Bottern will be right below Senate President Bobby Joe Champion during floor sessions in a role he describes as running the Senate infrastructure.

"Members get elected to make policy," he said. "Members didn't get elected to come to St. Paul and run the administration of the Senate."

He spoke in an interview last week after the new Senate DFL leaders announced he would replace Republican Cal Ludeman as secretary. Ludeman is a former politician and gubernatorial candidate. Bottern stays out of politics, not even putting candidate signs in his St. Paul yard.

Bottern's position is the chief operating officer of the Senate, who serves as parliamentarian, oversees Senate operations and prepares bills. The secretary is chosen by the majority party and elected by the Senate at the beginning of each two-year legislative cycle. The secretary oversees some 200 employees.

Bottern said he hopes to do his job in such an evenhanded fashion that if and when the majority party changes, they won't want to replace him. "It's a worthwhile challenge," he said.

Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, said with Bottern, "the Senate will exhibit only the highest levels of professionalism and operate with dignity."

He cites as a career highlight the trust he's built with both the DFL and GOP. "I take a lot of pride in that, and it's taken years to do that," Bottern said.

Born in Denmark, the 55-year-old lived with his family in Uganda and Kenya as a child before settling in Shorewood, Wis.

He and his wife, Cathy Paper, met at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. After he finished law school at the University of Wisconsin, the family settled in her native St. Paul, where they raised three children whom he calls "fifth-generation St. Paulites." Paper's the founder of consulting firm RockPaperStar.

Early in his career, Bottern clerked for state Supreme Court Justice M. Jeanne Coyne and worked at the Minneapolis-based law firm then known as Faegre & Benson.

But he felt the pull of public service. "I find the work just intellectually really interesting," Bottern said. "It affects a lot of lives, very directly applied."

"One of the things that I enjoyed right away, when legislation is developed, there are many many hands that touch that legislation," Bottern said. "It's one of the most collaborative environments you can imagine."

Now Bottern will take all that he has learned to the Senate dais.