Pam Costain, the director of training for Wellstone Action, has seen more than 9,000 political activists prepare themselves for the rigors of political campaigning since 2003. Now she’s diving in herself.

Costain will run for a seat on the School Board in 2006 and is preparing for the job by getting out to the local schools. She said she’s visited 17 so far and is committed to touring them all before the November election. Her impressions so far have only strengthened her resolve to bring change to the School Board. She said she’s been hearing much frustration about class sizes and concerns about the overall chaos in the system. Morale at the district level is “not terrific,” she added. People are “stressed beyond belief.”

A parent-activist, Costain has joined the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee and wants to use her campaign to spark discussions of board accountability, academic achievement for all students, and classroom stability.

She is the first declared candidate in what promises to be a crowded field that will likely include Jill Davis and Polly Townsend-Harris of the group Parents for Education Northeast, as well as Kenwood parent Tom Madden. Four seats are up for grabs on the seven-member board: chair Joe Erickson, Judy Farmer, Colleen Moriarty, and Audrey Johnson. Johnson has already said she is not running for re-election, and we’re told Erickson and Moriarty may also step down after their term expires in 2006.

In light of conflicting reports about state Senator Linda Higgins’s political plans, we contacted the North Minneapolis senator to get an update on her rumored run against Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Stenglein. Higgins told us she’s “still thinking about it” and has not filed the papers required to set up a political committee. She would face a DFL endorsement battle against former state Rep. Greg Gray, who has declared his candidacy against Stenglein.

Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Mike Cavlan has scheduled a “major health care address” for this evening at 7:30 at the Black Dog Coffee Café in Lowertown, St. Paul. Cavlan favors hospitals run by health professionals, phasing out for-profit corporate medicine, establishing a single-payer universal health care system, and improving the pay and work environment of health professionals.

We ran into secretary of state candidate Mark Ritchie this morning in the studios of Air America Minnesota. Ritchie is preparing to travel this weekend to Hong Kong for the WTO Ministerial, where he’ll be monitoring the proceedings in his role of Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy executive director. Ritchie told us that the crowds up in northern Minnesota have been very encouraging for him—and for gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch, who he said has been particularly energetic on the stump up there.