Colleen Landkamer of Mankato, a veteran Blue Earth County Commissioner, has been nominated by the Obama administration to be the Agriculture Department's state director of rural development, says the Mankato Free Press.

Still to come: approval by the Senate Agriculture Committee, and then a vote by the full Senate.

She was the first woman to sit on the county board when she was first elected in 1988. A special election is expected to fill out her current term, which ends in 2011.

Landkamer, 59, has long been active in rural development. She pioneered the rural caucus at the National Association of Counties about 15 years ago and was the organization’s president in 2006. She’s also served on the boards of the Rural Policy Center, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund and the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota.