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.