The Politics of the 2024 Minnesota Legislative Session

            The DFL party in Minnesota has a trifecta. In 2023, they used that political Trifecta to go big

before they went home. With a $17 billion plus surplus, they had the money to enact and support all types of pet projects that they've been wanting to push for years. Such projects blew through the surplus and committed the state to structural increases in spending for years to come. Additionally, they used their Trifecta to push social legislation, including for abortion and other matters that were of interest to their constituents, especially the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

            But the politics and the constraints of the 2024 session are different.

The most recent fiscal forecast indicates while there is a surplus this biennium there'll be structural deficits in the future.  While that should be a note of caution for the Democrats, not to go on a spending spree. There are also many who view perhaps 2024 as a last opportunity.

While the Minnesota Senate is not up for reelection, the House is and there is a possibility that it  could fall to Republican control.  If it were to do so, the Democrats would lose their Trifecta and their ability to be able to do what they want in terms of fiscal spending or articulating their policy agenda.

For some then this means go big and go home again. Use the 2024 session as perhaps the last hurrah to enact future spending programs that will further the Democratic agenda and commit the State to specific programs.

On the other hand, assuming the Democrats hold control of the House, they will again have the trifecta in 2025, facing that structural deficit that they were warned about.  The dilemma—spend  or save now with the implications for how it plays out  waiting until 2025.

In 2024 the Trifecta was also the product of the political interest and alignment of the Governor, Senate, and House.  That same alignment does not exist this year. When looking at the interests of the House, the Senate and the governor, we get very different perspectives on what they would like to do.

Governor Waltz has indicated his support for a whole host of things including an abortion amendment. He said he supports legalizing sports gambling and supports perhaps other programs.

His interest is defined in part by the fact that he is going into the second year of his second term.  Unless he plans on running for a third term and wins after this term, he goes into lame duck status. In many ways for Waltz, this may be his last term to define his legacy, especially at a time when he fancies himself perhaps a future presidential candidate.

In the House Speaker Hortman’s  interests and her instincts are to make this a quick legislative session. Do perhaps the bonding bill and clean up some of the legislation from last time. But don't commit to new spending. Don't commit to any social legislation.

But she faces pressures from her Progressive Caucus to do both. And if she's able to impose fiscal restraint upon the Democrats, that will make it even harder for her to impose restraint upon the pushing of social programs. A tradeoff is certain to be made there.

In the Senate Kari Dziedzic was  skilled in the 2023 session in holding the Democrats together with the 34-33 majority.  She is no longer the Majority Leader, replaced by Erin Murphy, whose instincts take her further to the left, as opposed to restraining the impulses of the left wing of the party. Several years ago, she ran for governor as the progressive candidate, only to lose to Waltz in the primary.

The Senate is not up for election.  It faces different political pressures compared to the House in that it may not fear voter retribution. Murphy still would like to be governor and views this position as Majority Leader as perhaps as a springboard for that ambition. She faces the likely opposition from Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. Both would be vying for support, trying to define themselves as the left candidates.  Were Murphy to caution fiscal restraint and restraint on pushing social issues in the Senate, she might cede the left to Peggy Flanagan, making it more difficult for her perhaps to be nominated in 2024 if she were to run for governor.  Pressures from her progressive wing and her natural instincts drive Murphy  to perhaps outflanking Peggy Flanagan on the left may make it difficult for her to be able to resist the push among some to move the Democratic Party further to the left.

In  2024 there is a different set of politics, with different personal ambitions among the governor, the Speaker of the House, and the Majority Leader in the Senate.  Even though in theory, there is still a trifecta, the interests of these three persons and the two different chambers offer a very different political dynamic than there was last year.

Why Tim Pawlenty and the DFL Endorsement Process Lost (and other political musings)

To the victor may belong the spoils, but it is from losers we often learn.  While the August 14, Minnesota primary yielded winners, much of the story is about those who lost, why, and what it means for state politics.  And perhaps the biggest theme from the primary is a literary allusion, taken from either Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again or Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah; Minnesota politics has changed and the way it was once done is not the way that will succeed now or in the near future.

Tim Pawlenty
It was always Pawlenty’s election to lose according to conventional wisdom and the establishment politicos.  And he did.  But there was always myth around Pawlenty that so many in the establishment bought into that they forgot that he never was really a good candidate during his career, simply lucky.

Remember the two times Pawlenty won the governorship he failed to receive more than 50% of the vote.  The first time he won he profited from misfortune.  Right before Paul Wellstone’s plane crashed back in 2002 he was locked in a tight three-way race with Roger Moe and Tim Penny.  Moe, the DFL establishment candidate, ran a horrible campaign. But when the plane crashed it realigned and polarized state politics, damaging Tim Penny  and helping Pawlenty win with 44% of the vote.  In 2006 with just days before the election Mike Hatch had a lead, but he melted down and Pawlenty won a close one-point victory over the former with only 46.7% of the vote.  Then of course Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential campaign fizzled before it even started.

But despite all this Pawlenty and the establishment Republican Party–and by that the big money, especially from Wall Street when he worked for the last few years, and for those out of state–thought he could return to the state and win again.  Yet you can’t go home again.  Pawlenty came back to a state Republican Party that was no longer his–it was the party of Donald Trump.  It was a state where he had not won state-wide office in 12 years and where many no longer knew who Pawlenty was, or where his name was associated with the state’s $6 billion deficit he left.

State Republicans resented the idea that Pawlenty could simply waltz back into Minnesota with his big money backers, snub the party convention and nomination, and buy the primary.  Pawlenty and fellow travelers, such as Brian McClung, bought into the myth and thought  old name recognition and an astroturf money and media-driven campaign would be enough to elect him.  But  without a serious ground game and a state infrastructure, he lost to Jeff Johnson who had all this.  Pawlenty and his supporters remind one of Frank Skeffington, the losing mayoral character in Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah.  Skeffington had won many elections and ran again for mayor, deploying the same old strategy he successfully used in the past. What he failed to realize is that times had changed and others had moved on while he had not.  This was Pawlenty.

While I had thought that Pawlenty would win this nomination, repeatedly I argued that the longshot bet of this primary would be a Johnson win, for essentially the reasons stated here.  Moreover, Pawlenty in 2018 reminded me of Walter Mondale in 2002.  When Wellstone died there were a host of good replacements for him such a Judy Dutcher and Alan Page.  But within minutes of the plane crash the Washington establishment thought of Walter Mondale.  He was a former senator, attorney general, vice-president, and presidential candidate, they all knew him in Washington and therefore he would surely win.  He too lost as a Skeffington candidate.

The DFL Endorsement Process
The DFL endorsement process for governor has been dead for nearly a half-century except the party has not figured it out yet.  The last time a DFL convention-endorsed candidate won the general election for governor when there was an open seat was 1970 with Wendell Anderson.  Yet again, the primary served as a check on flaws in the convention-process.

In general the DFL endorsement process took a major hit on August 14.  Yes Tina Smith and  Amy Klobuchar did win, but they were overwhelming favorites facing weak opposition.  But Erin Murphy and Matt Pelikan lost big.  With 32% of the vote, Murphy lost 2-1 as the endorsed candidate.  With not even 11%, Pelikan lost 9-1 (68% and 89% of the voters for the respective candidates voted for their opponents).   For both this might have been the worst drubbing ever for DFL-endorsed candidates, a major repudiation of the convention process.  For those who said one has to support DFL-endorsed candidates because they are endorsed, one needs to think again.  Loyalty and fidelity to the process are not enough, winability and actually being good candidates are important.
For both candidates, put on trial was a theory that one could win a state-wide part endorsement process merely with a Twin Cities or metro vote.  Maybe some day the demographics will produce that result, but that day has not arrived.  To win in Minnesota one still has to win statewide, not simply in the urban core.  Murphy and Pelikan supporters, and perhaps many at the DFL convention, live in a bubble and fail to realize that it is different outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  One cannot win outside of the cities with a strategy and campaign based on winning in the cites.  For Murphy, it was over as soon as she picked Erin Maye Quade as her running mate.  If voters judge you by the first decision you make–your selection as a running mate–Quade (an inexperienced metro candidate   from a district Democrats will probably lose)  was a disaster.  It sent a signal to greater Minnesota they did not matter.

Look at the numbers.  Murphy needed to win big in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties to have a chance winning statewide.  She only wins Ramsey with 42% of the vote and she lost Hennepin County.  She barely won the Fourth and Fifth Congressional Districts (Minneapolis and St. Paul Metro area), losing all the others, often with barely getting much more than 20% of the vote. She won only two counties out of 87 in Minnesota.  If one pours more deeply into the numbers, most of her support, and what little Pelikan received, came from  mostly inside Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Yet again, as Minneapolis and St. Paul goes, so does not go the rest of the state.  For te DFL to win statewide, one needs a strategy that is not urban centric.

Mike Hatch
The third big loser is Mike Hatch.  He did win as attorney general twice, but has lost as a gubernatorial candidate now three times.  In this election his candidates, Lori Swanson for governor and  Deb Hilstrom for attorney general, lost big.  Hatch’s time, like Pawlenty’s has passed.  This primary might have been a final rejection of his faction or hold on the DFL.

Ken Martin and the DFL Establishment
On the one hand we should feel sorry for Ken Martin.  It was not his fault the convention endorsed Murphy and Pelikan.  I doubt these were the candidates he would have thought as strongest or wanted to run a state-wide campaign..  Yet Martin’s track record as chair is mixed, depending on  your perspective.  In 2012  the party did well in taking back control of the legislature and in 2014 all the state-wide offices were won.    Yet the DFL lost the legislature two years and the party establishment backed Clinton in 2016, only to see her lose to Sanders and almost to Trump.   The prospects for winning back the Minnesota House and Senate are bleak, and it is possible that the DFL might lose at least one if not two US House seats.  Moreover, Omar’s victory over Kelliher is yet another sign that the old DFL guard’s grip on the party is weakening.  How much one can hold Martin personally responsible is a  matter for debate, but one can argue that if winning is the only things that matters (to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, the DFL Party has not delivered as well as it could .  In my election law seminar I asked the question "Who is the party?"  Is it the party chair, the candidates, caucus attendees, or  the voters?  Depending on the answer you provide you get different answers regarding who is repsonsible or given the credit for successes and failures.

There is a significant generational shift going on nationally and in Minnesota politics.  Both the GOP and DFL  are facing significant existential threats over the next decade as the old guard exit and a new generation arises.   One cannot live in the past, do what may have worked in the past,  or what works in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and expect it to work in the future or in the rest of the state.  One can’t go home again, and this primary was already past the last hurrah for a strategy and thinking that has passed.

The DFL Gamble: Competing Gubernatorial Campaign Strategies

Should the DFL run to the left and mobilize young and urban voters mostly in the Twin Cities Metro
area to win the governorship, or go with a moderate candidate with a regionally balanced ticket in hope of capturing traditional Metro voters as well as picking up support in greater Minnesota, such as the Iron Range?  This appears to be the strategy dividing the leading contenders for the DFL gubernatorial nomination going into the August 14, primary  and beyond into the general election.
There will be an August 14, DFL gubernatorial primary featuring St. Paul Representative Erin Murphy and her lieutenant-governor Erin Maye Quade, an Apple Valley Representative, versus First Congressional District Tim Walz from Winona, and his running mate,  Peggy Flanagan, state representative, from Plymouth.  The two campaigns, while offering nuanced and sometimes real differences on public policy, offer more profound contrasts in terms of campaign strategies and how to respond to changing Minnesota politics in the age of Donald Trump.
There are at least three factors critically defining contemporary Minnesota politics.  The first is that the state has shifted from being a solidly DFL one to that which mirrors the partisan divide found nationally and in many other states. Divided government, shifting of partisan control of the legislature, and geographic sorting and split party control all are traits in Minnesota politics now.  One can also point to a narrowing of partisan identification where as of 2016 the DFL only enjoyed a 37%-35% advantage over the Republicans, down from more than ten points a generation ago.
A second fact is that in 2016 Donald Trump came within 45,000 votes of defeating Hillary Clinton in Minnesota. The question is whether his election was a fluke–sexism toward Clinton, her campaign strategy, or something unique about Donald Trump–or whether the election was a continuation of a trend line of a state tending Republican.  Consider in 2008, of the 87 counties in Minnesota, Obama won 42 of them.  In 2012 Obama won 28, and in 2016 Clinton only won nine counties, including Hennepin, Ramsey, St. Louis, and Olmsted.  Republicans had gained 33 counties over two elections.  In comparison, in the 2014 gubernatorial election, the Democrat Mark Dayton won 34 counties.  In Minnesota, as nationally, Democrats appear to be the party or urban areas and are losing rurally.
From 2008 through the 2012 and then into the 2016 presidential elections, the actual number of votes and the percentage of votes received by the Democratic presidential candidate in Minnesota declined.  In 2008 Barack  Obama received 1,573,454 votes compared to John McCain’s 1,275,409–a difference of 298,045.  In 2012 the gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney narrowed to 225,942.  Then in 2016 it was 44,765 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – a steady narrowing of the gap between the Democratic and Republican candidate.  But this narrowing of the gap was not necessarily a sign of Democratic voters switching to vote for Trump, it was DFLers staying home.  From 2008 to 2016 the actual number of votes being cast for the Democratic presidential candidate dropped by 205,638, while the number of Republican voters increased by 47,542.  Conceivably part of this shift was a result of changing voter preferences, and given that CNN exit polls suggested a tightening in the percentage of Minnesota voters who consider themselves Democrats versus Republicans.  Yet when looking at voter turnout in 2016 compared to 2012, it was up in many Republican while down in Democratic areas such as Hennepin County.
A third fact is that there is overall a generational and demographic shift occurring in Minnesota politics, with for the Democrats the base of their party turning increasingly to Millennial liberal voters who reside in the Twin Cities urban core.   Once part of the DFL coalition, the Iron Range increasingly is more mercurial, perhaps less reliable to vote Democrat than in the past.
Given the above, the question is how should the DFL respond? Early on post-2017 the received wisdom was that DFL needed to run a more moderate candidate who could connect with  rural Minnesota while at the same time still mobilize Metro voters.  After all, this is what Mark Dayton successfully did, as well as Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.  The assumption here is that  a Democrat cannot win statewide office simply on the basis of the Metro vote–it also needed to build greater Minnesota coalitions.  Enter Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan.  Walz was seen as a centrist DFLer who successfully won in a swing congressional district as being a person who could win enough rural votes–maybe even pick up some of the Trump supporters–and win the governor’s race.  He along with Peggy Flanagan, a Native-American and a liberal state representative from a swing suburb who was supposed to appeal to the metro Millennials liberals, was seen as the ideal ticket.  It featured traditional regional or geographic balance, a moderate-liberal balance, and perhaps  a stance on issues, such as guns, that would be electable.  Early on, de facto the DFL leaders seemed to agree and the Walz-Flanagan soared in terms of fund raising and early caucus support.
But along the way several things happened.  The Me-too movement and Al Franken’s resignation as well as high profile sexual harassment allegations involving Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and members of the Minnesota Legislature  have activated a record number of women to run for office, portending a female  surge in 2018.   Then there were the Parkland school shootings, potentially radicalizing Millennials and Gen Z into political activism and making gun control a defining issue of orthodoxy for a new  political cohort along with Single Payer (health insurance).  Given these events, and the large population base in the Twin Cities, could someone run for governor by moving to the left, mostly foregoing rural votes, and instead make them up by heavily  mobilizing women and young voters in urban areas, especially in the Metro area?  This is the strategy  it appears in the DFL nominating Erin Murphy for governor and her picking Erin Maye Quade as her lieutenant governor.
Walz-Flanagan versus Murphy Maye Quade offer voters a contrast on policy ideas, but they also offer DFL primary and general election voters a contrast in campaign strategies.  The two offer differing views on how to respond to the changing political landscape of the state and what is  the appropriate strategy for Minnesota in the age of Donald Trump.  This is the DFL gamble, and  selecting the wrong one will have significant implications for both the party and the state.