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DULUTH - For DFLers in the 17 northeastern and north-central counties that make up the 8th Congressional District in Minnesota, the campaign and election season is afoot - already.

The first contested Democratic-Farmer-Labor party endorsement since 2012 for the seat held by Rep. Rick Nolan will be decided at a Duluth convention hall in mid-April. The buildup to that event has found three-time incumbent Nolan, DFL-Crosby, and challenger Leah Phifer busy jockeying for influence. The campaigns report to be rounding up volunteers and hurriedly attempting to load them with winning delegate strategies.

Phifer, raised in Two Harbors, Minn., and now of Isanti, Minn., told Forum News Service her campaign leaders were training potential delegates in all corners of the 8th Congressional District in advance of the Feb. 6 precinct caucuses.

Caucuses help define party platforms through the adoption of resolutions, and also feature elections for delegates to represent larger groups of people as the endorsement process moves forward.

"Caucuses can be messy, crazy, loud and wonderful at the same time," Phifer said. "It's real democracy in action. But if you've never been, you can get lost in the shuffle."

So far, the Nolan and Phifer camps haven't settled on meeting in a live debate. But both agree they will respect the April 15 delegate voting process for the 8th District DFL endorsement - meaning each (for now, at least) is foregoing their right to trigger a primary election in August.

Nolan has historically agreed to the endorsement process, his camp said. Unchallenged for the DFL endorsement in 2014 and 2016, Nolan last faced a convention endorsement field in 2012, by Jeff Anderson and Tarryl Clark. Nolan won over the vast majority of delegates that year on his way to the endorsement, but was still pulled into a primary which he also won.

"The biggest opposition for all DFL candidates is our congressional Republican challenger," said Annie Harala, Nolan's Duluth-based campaign manager, referencing Republican candidate Pete Stauber. "That's the biggest thing, and heading into it Rick is our strongest candidate by far. The fact that we have a challenger gives us the opportunity to hone our message quicker and get more people turning out."

Stauber, of Hermantown, has already earned the enthusiastic support of the state GOP in advance of the Republican party's 8th District convention June 1-2 at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.

Meanwhile, Phifer said she doesn't want to further divide the district's DFL party by taking it through a primary.

"My goal is to unite the party," Phifer said.

There is a widening gulf within the district's DFL party between environmentalists and supporters of mining expansion. Nolan has aligned his policymaking with the miners and companies on the Iron Range, while Phifer has told Forum Communications previously that the singular focus on mining takes away from a broader economic discussion and leaves other parts of the district feeling ignored and left out of the issues.

Ultimately, the 8th District DFL endorsee will advance to face Stauber and independent candidate Ray "Skip" Sandman, of Duluth, in the November midterm election.

The midterm is being heralded as a doozy. It also features two senatorial elections for Minnesota voters to hash through and a governorship up for grabs.

Such a full ballot complicates things for both Nolan and Phifer. It means not all party delegates that emerge along the way will consider the 8th District race the more vital of the high-profile races, sources explained. For some delegates it could be a relative afterthought, for others a truly big deal. For the Nolan-Phifer camps, it puts a premium on every volunteer who can fight through the process to reach the district convention with their delegacy and surrogacy for their candidate intact. The precinct caucuses are followed by county conventions and finally the district event.

Eighth District DFL chair Justin Perpich said 60 percent approval is required from however many rounds it takes of delegate voting for the endorsed candidate to emerge at the district convention. The 8th Congressional District DFL convention is April 14 at the Holiday Inn in downtown Duluth.

Phifer said her camp is pulling in an array of supporters - from new progressives hatched during the ongoing swell of resistance politics to people "active in the DFL party for many, many years."

"We have a blend of volunteers, including some who've been attending 40-50 years and college students who've never gone to caucus before," Phifer said. "We're making sure to blend both sides - to equip the two groups together."

Harala noted an uptick in interest too. She said the Nolan campaign is recruiting volunteers from phone banks in almost every county in the district, including locations in Duluth and Grand Rapids.

"What we're seeing is that people are wanting to get more educated," she said. As a result, Harala added, "There are a lot of people coming into the fold and that's exciting."

When asked to explain the candidates' aversion to a primary, Perpich said nobody wants to use their banked fundraising money on an additional election if they don't have to.

"This is going to be an expensive general election," Perpich said, recalling the tens of millions of dollars spent on recent high-profile 8th District clashes dating back to 2010. "So any money would be wasted during a DFL primary and would force the winning candidate to work that much harder to make up that money for the general."

Regarding a debate in advance of the caucus, Phifer said, "We would love it, yes."

"We share a lot of the same values and our differences are more nuanced," Phifer said of she and Nolan. "There are things you can't iron out in a policy paper or a tweet. We have to get the two candidates together and talk about the issues to get people to see the difference before the caucus Feb. 6."

Harala was less committal, praising Nolan's ongoing work in Washington, D.C., and describing it as his current focus.

"He does a really great job with regard to issues in our district," Harala said of Nolan. "I feel he would stand strong in any debate."

Phifer swept up in cyber attack

Since using an exploratory motorcycle tour of the 8th District last year to launch herself into a full-fledged campaign, Leah Phifer has been on the move.

As such, her story of coming to politics from working for the federal government in counter-terrorism and national security has been well-disseminated.

More recently, Phifer's background intersected with her campaign in another way. She learned late last year that her private information had been compromised as part of a Department of Homeland Security database hack.

In a Dec. 28 letter, Homeland Security informed Phifer that her personal information on file with the department had been affirmed to be part of a data breach. People employed by DHS in 2014 had the potential to be impacted, said the letter - part of which Phifer shared with the News Tribune.

"It's scary how much information the hackers may have gotten," Phifer said, describing personal identification numbers and other things she had on file with DHS. "I don't want to issue any assumptions, but if it was another state actor we should be very concerned they have the information of people who held secret or top-secret security clearance."

Phifer is using the incident to illustrate one of her most ardent policy positions. Even before she got the letter, Phifer believed the United States needed to do a better job protecting its place in cyberspace.

Multiple online sources report that the federal government endures thousands of cyber attacks every day.

In a column she wrote outlining her national security position, Phifer said the U.S. possesses a "blind spot" when it comes to cyber attacks - one which is "manifested in our slow response to the rise of cyber-terrorism."

"As our lives and our democracy grow increasingly automated," she wrote, "devious nation states and lone actors will ramp up their attempts to exploit these areas."

In her column, Phifer calls on veteran policy leaders to listen to a new generation of front-line wisdom. She wants the U.S. to shut down government-use backdoors in its own encrypted applications, cautioning that such backdoors invite hackers. She adds that the federal government ought to raise its pay scale for cyber scientists and experts to make it "on par with their private sector counterparts."

"We have this idea that our national security organizations are well-suited and guarded against those sorts of intrusions," Phifer told the News Tribune. "(But) we as a public need to start waking up to the fact we're not equipped to deal with a breach like what happened to me."