Ten elections. Seven opponents defeated (three of them twice). Zero losses.

Rep. John Dorn is officially done running for office after 20 years representing Mankato in the state House.

“My goodness, how did that happen?” Dorn wonders. “I don’t know if anybody ever represented Mankato for 20 years.”

The answer, according to a Minnesota Legislative Reference Library listing, is no — not in the House. The late Sen. Val Imm has the ultimate record, representing Mankato in the Senate for 33 years. But no one has come close to two decades in the House, where elections come every two years.

Dorn announced in late May he was retiring from the Legislature at the end of his current term. The close of the filing period last week — with Dorn’s name absent from the list of candidates — made it official.

“I wanted to leave while I was still able to run out every ground ball, give 100 percent,” he said.

Dorn leaves with his undefeated streak, with the Mankato record for service in the House and with his irrepressible sense of humor all intact.

Amusing and unassuming

The retired Mankato East High School English teacher had a habit, when approached by reporters, of saying something outrageous and then imploring them to forget they’d heard it.

For illustrative purposes only, imagine a couple of years back when the House was locked up by contentious debates over a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and legislation to use state dollars to build pro sports stadiums. Dorn might have come up to a reporter saying he was putting the finishing touches on a bill to solve both problems, a bill involving a gay marriage center inside the new ballpark with the proceeds of the marriage licenses financing the stadium.

“Don’t write that down!” he might have yelled afterward.

Dorn could get away with some occasional jokes because when the issues were being decided, he didn’t mess around, say people who worked with him both inside and outside the Legislature. His specialty was probably K-12 education, but he was involved in committees dealing with higher education and chaired the House Health and Human Services Committee when it passed a massive welfare reform bill.

“When it came to education, there was probably no legislator who understood it better than John Dorn,” said Mankato Area Public Schools Supt. Ed Waltman.

State Education Commissioner Alice Seagren, a former Republican lawmaker who was on the House Education Committee with Dorn, described him as a guy “who always asked very thoughtful questions.”

A Democrat, he was also good at working with the varied personalities and philosophies of other lawmakers, said Seagren, who thought maybe his experience teaching English to eighth-graders might have been good practice.