Star Tribune - 'Young Gun' Torrey Westrom Hopes to Stir Up 7th District Race
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By Abby Simmons
In the late summer of 1987, a teenage Torrey Westrom was still expecting the lights to go back on.
Weeks earlier, the future congressional candidate rolled the family pickup on a country road. He avoided significant brain damage, but the accident destroyed Westrom's optic nerve, leaving the 14-year-old permanently blind.
But it was baling season, and the family was a man short on the farm.
"I remember my dad needing somebody to either drive the baler tractor or work the hay rack, and it wasn't going to work for me to drive," Westrom said. That would be the first of many summers Westrom would spend sightlessly throwing bales of hay.
Said Westrom: "When others have an expectation of you, you can have it of yourself a lot easier. You're willing to find a way to make it happen or get it done."
Now the Republican state senator and married father of three from Elbow Lake has taken on another challenge -- attempting to unseat veteran Rep. Collin Peterson in the Seventh Congressional District, which spans a large swath of western Minnesota from the Canadian border nearly to Iowa.
Peterson is among the most formidable of the state's congressional delegation. For a dozen terms he has won handily in an otherwise Republican-leaning district. He is a Democrat who occasionally votes with the other side, particularly on fiscal issues. He is a zealous advocate for rural issues and the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, giving his sparsely populated district an outsized influence in an organization that runs on seniority. In 2012, Peterson won with more than 60 percent of the vote.
Westrom, who has served 18 years in the Legislature, said of Peterson, "I am David, he's Goliath, we all know that. But I always like the outcome of that story."
Westrom is the first known blind member of the Minnesota Legislature and the first blind speaker pro tem in the nation. He jumped from the House to Senate in 2013 and hadn't completed his first term when he announced he would take on Peterson. He's received solid backing from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), who promoted him and Eighth District challenger Stewart Mills to the top of its Young Guns program -- an indication that they are expected to pose a significant threat to incumbents.
Westrom raised $466,538 through the end of July, while the NRCC has reserved more than $2.8 million in television advertising in the Seventh District, with the first ad expected to debut this week. It's a big investment in a race against an incumbent who hasn't faced a significant challenge in nearly two decades.
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