ST PETER — Two years after state Rep. Terry Morrow was one of the top targets for defeat by conservatives, the St. Peter Democrat is headed for an automatic re-election after his Republican opponent withdrew from the race.

Nikolas Boyce, R-rural New Ulm, filed to run against the three-term incumbent on Tuesday, the last day legislative candidates could get on the ballot for the Nov. 6 election. On Thursday, Boyce reconsidered his decision — beating the 5 p.m. deadline for candidates to take their name off the ballot.

“I’ve withdrawn my candidacy for state representative mainly for personal reasons,” said Boyce, who graduated from Bethany Lutheran College this spring with a degree in business administration. “I just wish the other local Republican candidates the best in their races.”

Boyce declined to provide more detail about his change of heart. But he said he knew of no other Republicans who were interested in challenging Morrow and doesn’t believe his decision to file kept other potential GOP candidates from jumping into the race.

Boyce’s decision means voters in Morrow’s district — District 19A — will have no Republican alternative in either the House race or the state Senate race. Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, is without opposition in Senate District 19. District 19A is made up of all of Nicollet County, including North Mankato and St. Peter, plus Kasota, Lime Township, parts of Kasota and Mankato townships, and — for the first time — several thousand voters in the northern and western sides of Mankato.

Republicans in the other half of Sheran’s district — House District 19B, which includes the bulk of Mankato plus Eagle Lake, Skyline and most of Mankato Township — still have the opportunity to vote for one GOP legislative candidate. Three-term incumbent Rep. Kathy Brynaert, DFL-Mankato, is being challenged in District 19B by Thad Shunkwiler, R-Mankato.

Don Ostrom, who retired from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2004 after more than three decades of teaching political science, said it’s likely this is the first time in Minnesota history that conservatives haven’t offered a candidate for state House in the district that includes Nicollet County.

“I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” said Ostrom, a Democrat who represented Nicollet County in the House for three terms two decades ago.

The area was strongly Republican for most of the state’s history but has been a battleground in recent decades, flipping back and forth between Republican and Democratic representation — often one of the last races in the area to be decided. Morrow, however, has won more comfortable victories — winning by 5 percentage points in his initial run in 2006, 27 points in 2008 and 10 points last time.

“I kid Terry that he’s just changed the culture of the district,” Ostrom said. “We don’t wait up until the last precinct is reported to find out the results.”

Morrow’s strength might have been best demonstrated in 2010 — a year when Republicans dominated legislative and congressional elections and when the Republican Party and the Freedom Club political action committee targeted him for defeat.

Financed largely by wealthy Twin Cities business owners, the Freedom Club supports conservative candidates and runs attack ads against Democrats. The PAC spent more against Morrow than any other member of the House, most of it for an animated television ad that ran repeatedly on KEYC-TV showing Morrow, wearing an admiral’s hat, sailing on a yacht as average Minnesotans in a lifeboat sank in stormy seas.

The $37,000 spent by the Freedom Club PAC against Morrow was $2,000 more than his entire campaign budget and was on top of the $22,000 spent by Rebecca Peichel, his Republican opponent. Morrow still won 55 percent to 45 percent.

Having taken their best shot at Morrow and failed, it would have been a challenge for Republicans to persuade a top-notch candidate that he was beatable this year, Ostrom said.

“They spent all that money and it was a Republican year throughout the state and yet Terry still won about 55-45, so that makes it even more difficult to recruit a good candidate to run against him,” Ostrom said.

Going directly from an election where Republicans put a bull’s-eye on his back to one where he’s unopposed, Morrow said it’s a strange enough contrast that he was initially certain a mistake had been made when Boyce’s name dropped off the list of candidates.

While his colleagues were jokingly expressing their jealousy Thursday, Morrow pledged to campaign as hard as ever.

“I owe it to the democratic process to still be out there, still take questions, still show up at the candidate forums, because I think folks deserve nothing less,” he said.

But after the TV ads and mailings of 2010, he said it’s gratifying to know he and his family won’t be facing a repeat of the negative onslaught.

“The first (emotion) is really relief,” he said. “But it’s the relief that the types of things that were said and sent last time are very, very unlikely to happen.”