"I grew up in 64B, just down the street from Widmers," Ludden said in an interview today. He also went to St. Thomas and got a degree in photography and American studies from the U of M.
He'a an Army vet. He joined the Reserves in the spring of 2001, and stayed in the reserves for almost 10 years, including two stints in Iraq, in 2003-2004 and again as a squad leader in 2009-2010.
After college, he joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and worked as a veterans service representative, processing claims by vets for the agency. He worked out at Fort Snelling, where U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar had her office, and eventually joined her staff as an outreach director with a focus on veterans and public safety.
He did a brief stint after that as the executive director of the Disabled American Veterans Foundation, and then joined Comcast, where he's a government affairs manager focusing on their Internet Essentials program.
"It's getting low income families hooked up to the internet with a very low price product," he says. "It's helping kind of bridge the digital divide, which I would argue is a significant part of the achievement gap. Or can be."
(Vice president for Ludden's Comcast division, for those of you keeping track at home, is Emmett Coleman, brother of St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman.)
Ludden says he moved back into the district in 2010 and thinks he's be a good fit representing the area at the Capitol.
"I think I've got kind of a unique skill set," Ludden says. "I have cross-sector experience, public, private, military, non-profit, and that comes with having to work with people of a pretty broad background in order to get stuff done. And I think that's a skill set that would translate pretty well to the Capitol."
Ludden says he plans to seek the DFL endorsement.
UPDATE: He says he hopes to make a decision in the next week or so.
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