Only one other Minnesota contest makes the list of competitive House races. Freshman Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen’s seat is categorized as “likely Republican.” The assessments are unchanged from Cook’s prior analysis.

Both incumbents face a pair of Democratic challengers. Maureen Reed and Tarryl Clark are taking on Bachmann, while Paulsen faces opposition from Jim Meffert and Maureen Hackett.

“Honestly there is a job that needs to be done that’s not getting done now,” Powers tells the Minnesota Independent. “I’m in a position where construction is pretty slow, I like politics and I honestly think I can get the job done.”

The Democrat believes that Kline has not served the residents of his suburban district well by unrealistically insisting that the country’s beleaguered health-care system be rebuilt from scratch. “You have to work with what you have,” he says. “I think that’s what most people are frustrated about.”

Powers also cites energy costs — and the need for more renewable sources of energy — as a primary issue motivating him to run. “It’s actually a national security issue,” he says. “We have to solve our energy problem.”

Few political observers expect Kline to be in much danger of losing re-election. Neither the Cook Political Report nor the Rothenberg Political Report include the second district race on their lists of competitive House races. In each of the last three election cycles, Kline has defeated his opponents by at least 14 percentage points. Last year he knocked of DFL challenger Steve Sarvi by a 57-43 percent margin.

But Powers argues that Kline is more politically vulnerable than at any other time since first being elected in 2002. He notes that a majority of the state legislative seats in the district are now controlled by Democrats.

Powers flirted with a run against Kline in 2008. But he dropped out of the contest early on after realizing that he wouldn’t be able to raise enough money to be competitive. This election cycle he hopes to prove himself a credible challenger by building up a significant campaign war chest in the coming months.

“The most important thing is just flat out raising the money,” he says. “Nobody’s going to take me seriously, or any other candidate seriously, if you can’t put some solid numbers behind the campaign.”

The freshman Republican legislator won the open Third Congressional District seat by a surprisingly comfortable margin last year in one of the most closely watched contests in the country. Paulsen garnered 48 percent of the vote, while Democratic challenger Ashwin Madia drew support from 41 percent of voters. Independence Party candidate David Dillon was also a factor in the race with 11 percent of the vote.

The Cook Partisan Voting Index currently gives neither party an advantage in the district, where Republicans historically had an edge. Democrats have made serious inroads in state legislature contests, picking up 10 House seats during the last three election cycles. Most recently state Reps. Jerry Newton and Paul Rosenthal took over seats that had been help by the GOP. And President Obama won the suburban district by a 52-46 percent margin last year.

But his coattails proved non-existent. In addition to Paulsen’s comfortable victory, Norm Coleman outpolled Al Franken there by a 47-39 spread in the U.S. Senate contest.

The Third Congressional District is one of just two 2010 House races political analysts view as competitive in the state. The other is the Sixth Congressional District, where Rep. Michele Bachmann’s high-voltage rhetoric makes her an irresistible (if elusive) target for Democrats. She’s already attracted two DFL challengers in Elwyn Tinklenberg and Maureen Reed.

David Wasserman, House Editor for the Cook Political Report, figures Bachmann is slightly more vulnerable than Paulsen. But he believes Paulsen is among the top ten GOP House incumbents nationwide that Democrats could target in 2010. “That’s not to say he’s extremely vulnerable,” Wasserman notes. “It’s just that Democrats don’t have many options.”

Indeed, widespread gains for Democrats in the last two elections mean that the party will be playing defense in a lot of GOP-friendly districts. In addition, the party that controls both the White House and Congress has historically fared poorly in the first mid-term elections. Those factors likely mean that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national groups will choose their takeover targets prudently. Whether the Third District attracts significant attention — and money — will probably hinge on how strong a challenger emerges.

So far the race hasn’t drawn any takers. Madia says he doesn’t expect to make another run for the seat. “I felt like I had a good crack at in 2008 and I came up short,” he says. “We should give somebody else a chance.”

The name most often mentioned as a possible contender is state Sen. Terri Bonoff. She was widely viewed as the favorite to earn the DFL endorsement in 2008, but was thwarted by Madia’s upstart candidacy. At present, Bonoff’s not entering the fray.

“I’m not considering it at this time,” she says. “You can only take each day as it comes.”

Other names in the ether: state Rep. Steve Simon and former Edina mayor Jim Hovland. Neither returned a call seeking comment.

Wasserman doesn’t deem the vacant DFL field this early in the election cycle to be a liability necessarily.

“I think most of the candidates who got a very early start in the 2008 cycle fizzled out,” he says. “It’s often the late-breaking candidates who received the necessary buzz.”

Whoever ultimately emerges to challenge Paulsen will undoubtedly face an uphill battle. Bonoff argues that the DFL missed a prime opportunity in 2008.

“The Third District was ripe to elect a Democrat,” she says.

Madia doesn’t disagree. He believes that Paulsen won in part because the Republican did a better job of keeping a fine-tuned message.

“I think that they were very disciplined about their message, which was just taxes, frankly,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.”

Democrats in the district insist that they can still win the seat. Marge Hoffa, chair of the Third District DFL, argues that Paulsen is much more socially conservative than his GOP predecessor in the post.

“He’s no Jim Ramstad,” she says. “He’s just not. He’s much more conservative.”

But she acknowledges that the odds of taking over the seat will decrease with each election cycle.

“If we come up with somebody that’s really an outstanding candidate the money will pour in,” she says, “because this is our shot to take Paulsen out.”

The Cook Political Report has changed its assessment of the contest from “lean Republican” to a toss up. CQ Politics has also shifted its ranking of the race, from “Republican favored” to the less rosy “leans Republican.”

“If Rep. Michele Bachmann limps to the finish line on Election Day — either ahead or behind — it is because she shot herself in the foot,” writes CQ’s Jonathan Allen in laying out the rationale for the change.