Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, both of whom have political roots in Minnesota, have been dispatched by the Obama campaign to oversee the final electoral drive in Florida. Chris Cillizza interprets this move as a sign that the Democrat views the state as potentially providing a “critical symbolic victory” even if he doesn’t necessarily need it to reach 270 electoral votes.

Tewes (pictured) cut his political teeth running the (disastrous) 1997 St. Paul mayoral campaign of Sandy Pappas. She lost by 18 points to incumbent Norm Coleman. Despite that inauspicious start, a decade later he was widely credited with orchestrating Obama’s upset caucus victory in Iowa. More recently he’s been running the Democratic National Committee.

Hildebrand’s DFL days go back even further. He worked on Skip Humphrey’s unsuccessful 1988 U.S. Senate bid and served as the finance director for Jim Scheibel during his 1989 St. Paul mayoral campaign. In 1995 he also had a brief stint as the Democratic party’s executive director.

I wrote in more detail about their Minnesota days here.