Requiem for a Special Session: Why It Never Had a Chance to Succeed and the Next One will probably Fail too

Why did the Minnesota Legislative Special session fail to produce police reform, a bonding bill,

a Covid-19 bill, and more? That is the wrong question to ask.  Instead of the surprise of why it was a failed session one should ask was there any chance it would succeed?  The answer is no, and the reasons it failed will be the same for a future Special Session later this year if called.
The first reason for failure was that the regular session set the grounds for the failure of the special session.  Consider where the Minnesota politics was when the regular legislative session ended in May.  Politically the legislature and the governor were divided.  With the only state in the country with partisan control of the legislature split, Democrats and Republicans were fissured here along lines that mirrored national divisions.  There was a clear divide geographically in the state between urban, suburban, and rural that reinforced the partisan-ideological differences. 
In Minnesota, the Republican Senate and DFL House were divided over the governor’s use of peacetime emergency powers to close part of the economy.  This division spilled into other issues, such as over the amount of the bonding bill and whether Republicans would provide the critical votes for it.   Some of these disagreements were substantive policy differences, some tactical, some part of the way the 2020 elections were an overlay or backdrop to the session.  Better, according to some, not to negotiate and pass legislation and instead use the issues to run on this November than reach a boring compromise.  This is where the legislative session ended on May 18.  The politics of the regular session simply carried over into the special session.
Initially there were two major reasons why the governor wanted or had to call a special session.  One was to get the bonding bill passed to help stimulate the economy.  Two, Governor Walz had to convene a special session no later than June 12, according to state law, if he planned to extend his peacetime emergency orders another 30 days.  He had to do that to give the Legislature a chance to override his orders.
Two, between then and June 10, when the governor called the special session, or June 12, when it started, nothing and everything changed.  Nothing changed in that neither the governor nor the legislative leadership of both parties did much to change the incentive structures or politics of the regular session from impacting the special session.  Between May 18, and June 10, it does not appear that there were any negotiations among the leadership to reach compromises or deals.  That needed to occur.
Going back at two generations to when Rudy Perpich was governor there was a basic political rule that one does not call a special session until all the details for it are worked out. Only governor’s can call special sessions but once the legislature is back,  legislators decide what will be discussed and when to adjourn.  To address the specter of aimless, unproductive special sessions the rule was negotiate in advance, get agreement on major issues and targets if not even the actual legislation before calling starting a special session.  This did not happen here.
There was no agreement on the scope or dollar amount of the bonding bill.  There was partisan disagreement over the governor’s authority to respond to the pandemic.  None of this had been resolved.  Lacking negotiations and agreement going into the special session why anyone would have thought it would have produced a different result that the regular session is naive.
But everything did change since the end of the regular session–George Floyd’s death, the demonstrations, the destruction, and the demand for police reform. When the governor on June 10, called for a special session he sent confusing messages.  It was now about police reform.  Yet police reform as a salient political issue decreases in importance in Minnesota the farther one gets away from Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  For Twin Cities legislators and their constituents it is a major issue, not so much for those at the four corners of the state and in greater Minnesota.  However unjust and wrong the killing of George Floyd was and however racist policing may or may not be, protests and anger in Minneapolis and Saint Paul were not going to change much the political calculus on police reform outside of those two cities.  Not understanding this was another reason why the special session was destined to fail.
But the special session failed also because of confusion over its purpose.  It was now about police reform but also about the bonding bill, other unfinished business, and to extend his peacetime emergency orders.  There was too much to do, with too little focus and preparation for all of this in a promptly called special session when little had been done to prepare for it.  This confusion and lack of preparation are other reasons why the special session failed.
Finally, the special session was almost a month later than the end of the regular session.  It was one month closer to the November elections; one month closer to being firmly captured by politics of 2020 where it made perverse sense to grandstand, not reach agreement, and then run on these issues in the campaigns.
Given the above there was no chance for a successful special session.
Going forward there are rumors of another special session.  The governor probably wants to extend his peacetime emergency orders, necessitating such a session.  Unless he and the legislative leadership prepare for the special session it will again fail.  The bonding bill, police reform, Covid-19 relief, and the peacetime emergency orders are entangled together and it will take a larger compromise across all of them to get anything done.  Whether the incentives to compromise will have changed or hardened is yet to be seen.

George Floyd and the Final Fracturing of the Democratic Party, Labor, and Civil Rights Coalition

            George Floyd being killed by a police officer in Minneapolis is not simply about the death of one Black man. His death also killed  an historic but uneasy alliance among the Democratic Party, labor unions, and the civil rights movement.  The reaction to his death is ending the last vestiges of the historic New Deal coalition that defined progressive politics in American for at least 50 years, ushering in an era where it now appears that the Democratic Party and the civil rights community are at odds with labor and unions.

            Historically, the New Deal coalition from the 1930s that defined the Democratic Party was composed of labor unions, farmers, working class, and increasing people of color.  It was a coalitional party weaving together a variety of interests, primarily focused on economic and class issues. From the 1930s to 1960s it fought mostly for minimum wages, workplace safety, and collective bargaining issues.  The coalition produced significant gains improving the economic lot of its members and Americans in general, helping shrink, as Thomas Piketty noted, the rich-poor gap in America.  This was the Old Left–class and economic focused.

            Yet a valid criticism of this progressivism was the blind eye it cast on race.  Many New Deal programs such as minimum wage laws excluded southern Black sharecroppers, or unions were criticized for excluding Blacks.  The Democratic Party in the South, which dominated that region from the Civil War to the 1960s, was notorious for the White Primary Supreme Court cases where the former fought hard to exclude Blacks.

            Yet many labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, and A. Philip Randolph, who led an AFL-CIO member union, were there in 1963 with Martin Luther King, Jr at the historic march on Washington, D.C.  With labor’s support, the civil rights movement produced the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and other major legislation.

            But this embracing of civil rights also fragmented the Democratic Party and progressive politics.  Democrats, as President Johnson foretold when signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would lose the South and they did.  First Barry Goldwater,  then George Wallace, and finally Richard Nixon exploited white racial anxieties regarding the civil rights movement the summer 1967 riots.  Nixon profited from this backlash, producing what the Edsalls called a chain reaction that led to the exit of white working-class America out of the Democratic Party.  Ronald Reagan continued to exploit the race card, and the adoption of civil rights, or identity politics to its critics, by the Democratic Party at the exclusion of class further contributed to the split among the Democratic Party, labor, and the civil rights community.  The emergence of the New Left in the 1960s—focused on racial, gender, and LGBTQ  issues—is often seen as a critical facture point.

            Progressive Democratic Party politics succeeded when it held together labor unions and civil rights.  In Minnesota, the birth of the modern Democratic Party came in 1944 when Hubert Humphrey among others brought the Democratic ad Farmer-Labor parties together.  Together the DFL advanced, especially in Minneapolis, a progressive economic agenda but it did  not put as much emphasis on race, not surprising for a state and city overwhelmingly White until recently.  The DFL often gave lip service to civil rights issues, but Minnesota is a state  with among the worst racial disparities in the nation for education, economics, and criminal justice.  But with a rapidly diversifying population and a growing Black population,  Minnesota but especially Minneapolis was changing.

           Minneapolis became the picture of contemporary Democratic Party politics today.  It is socially liberal, headed by a Millennial Democratic mayor and a 12-person city council, 11 of whom are Democrats one a Green.  But the DFL of Minneapolis and Minnesota is not the party it was.  Farmers have left for the Republican Party, and even before Floyd’s death  in many parts of the state labor too has left.  For those who are white, well-educated, and at least middle class, it is a wonderful place to live.  But despite the progressive rhetoric,  Minneapolis was a tale of two cities, with the one for the poor and people of color not so wonderful.

Floyd’s alleged murder by a white Minneapolis police officer turned the city into the center of the “defund the police,” with nine of its councilmembers supporting this proposal.  Floyd’s death is about the hypocrisy on race in America, even with Democrats. But equally fascinating is how a Democratic Party city is going after the police union whom it blames for a history of officer shootings and use of excessive force against African-Americans.  Minneapolis’ police chief announced he would no longer negotiate with the union.  Minnesota’s Democratic Governor also locates much of the blame with the union.  Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybek sees the union as an obstacle to reform, and even other labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO are calling for the current head of the police union to resign.   In Minneapolis and across the country police unions are seen by members of the civil rights community as hostile to civil rights reform.

               George Floyd’s death is perhaps the final fracturing of the Democratic Party,  labor, and the civil rights supporters.    Maybe this split needed to happen.  But as it does it bodes a dramatic turn in  party politics that complicates the electoral map for Democrats and progressive politics going forward.  Smart politicians such as Donald Trump see this opportunity and will surely exploit it in the 2020 election.