Senator Rest first won election to the Minnesota Legislature in 1984.  She served for 16 years in the House of Representatives and was elected to the Senate in 2000.  She won re-election in 2002 and served as the Senate Assistant Majority Leader.  In 2010 she was elected to a fourth Senate term.

Rest currently serves on the Commerce, Taxes and Transportation Committees. From 2007 through 2010 she chaired the State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee.  When she was in the House, she chaired the House Taxes Committee for four years.  She has served on the Legislative Audit Commission for many years and has been its chair.  She serves on the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board and is passionate about preserving and restoring the State Capitol.  She is a member of the State Capitol Preservation Commission. She is the Democratic lead for the Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee and the Rules Committee's Subcommittee on Redistricting. 

Senator Rest successfully authored ratification of the Great Lakes Compact in 2007; Minnesota became the first of the Great Lakes states to pass the legislation.  She belongs to the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.  She has served on committees for the National Conference of State Legislatures. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Midwest Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments and serves on the Midwest-Canada Relations Committee.  She is the Chair of the Great Lakes Legislative Caucus and is a former member of the Great Lakes Commission.

Senator Rest's legislative policy interests are broad and include tax policy, preserving and restoring the Great Lakes, economic development, consumer protection policy,  adoption policy, streamlining state government, state and local government relations, transit and transportation policy and election law reform.

Senator Rest holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with departmental honors in Latin and Greek from Northwestern University where she was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.  She earned graduate degrees in classical languages and literatures, business taxation,  the teaching of English, and public administration respectively from the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  She was named a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow in 1991 for study at the Kennedy School. She is a former Latin teacher and tutor.  She also taught high school English, Humanities and Creative Writing.  She is a retired Certified Public Accountant.

Senator Rest served on the board and executive committee for the Bob Allison Ataxia Research Center (University of Minnesota Medical Foundation). Senator Rest is the lay leader of Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church, and a member of the League of Women Voters, Rotary Club, and the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce.

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Senator Rest has lived in Crystal and New Hope since 1970.  Her daughter Susan and son-in-law Jim live in Woodbury, Minnesota with their two sons, Jakob and Jonas.