There is a week left in the filing period for candidates to run in the special election to replace the Rep. Jim Hagedorn. So far, the list of candidates is leaning far to the right.

Four Republicans have filed to run to fill out the rest of Hagedorn’s term. The one DFLer is Richard W. Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who converted to the Democratic Party a few years ago after serving as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the Bush Administration from 2005 to 2007. He unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Tina Smith in the 2018 DFL U.S. Senate primary.

We suppose it is natural that DFLers would be reluctant to file for this special election for a term that will end in January. This is a heavily conservative district, and the Republican nominee will be a favorite. A DFLer would have only a short time to mount what would need to be a major campaign to make headway.

Whoever wins the special election will have to run again in November to keep the seat in the newly-drawn 1st District. If someone had been planning on running as a DFLer in November, it’s a logical strategy to save their energy and resources for the race for the two-year term.

The one DFLer we would have expected to see, Dan Feehan, who ran very close races two times against Hagedorn, has decided he is sitting this election out.

Looking at the list of candidates, we see a very capable candidate, former Minnesota state representative Brad Finstad of the New Ulm area. He served three terms representing this area in the Minnesota House, where his major accomplishment may have been taking the lead on the legislation that finally got approval for a new ballpark for the Minnesota Twins. Since then he has held leadership positions in several farming organizations, and was the State Director for USDA Rural Development in Minnesota, appointed by President Donald Trump.

Another candidate hopeful is State Rep. Jeremy Munson, a Republican from Lake Crystal.

The other two candidates are Ken Navitsky of Rochester, a former MSU Mankato place kicker who works as a Monster Truck Rally emcee, making his first run for partisan office, and Bob Carney, a frequent candidate for many political offices, who filed under the name Bob “Again” Carney.

It will be interesting to see how the field shapes up by next Tuesday.