Progressive petri dish: Minnesota GOP hits reset after recent shellacking
Barnini Chakraborty
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The Washington Examiner went to Minnesota following news that the state’s Democrats, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, had fast-tracked one of the most liberal agendas in state history. What we found was a struggling Republican Party, angry small-business owners, and a complete stonewall from Democrats. In this series, the Washington Examiner takes a look at broken promises lawmakers made, how Republicans are trying to control the carnage, and the unintended consequences of some of the bills passed, including one that could wipe out small-business owners.
MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota Republicans are ready for a reset after their bruising legislative session made national headlines but know that the road they have ahead may be anything but smooth.
GOP lawmakers had to sit back and watch their Democratic counterparts take victory laps this year after passing the most liberal agenda in state history. They’ve also had to see narratives their political rivals spread that they do not care about women, minorities, or education. Added to the pile-on are a number of unforced errors and scandals that have plagued the party and left it nearly bankrupt, with the latest Federal Election Commission filing showing it had only $53.81 in the bank.
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“Republicans just aren’t calling the shots,” Scott Cottington, a GOP consultant based in Minnesota, told the Washington Examiner. “The party’s so tainted now.”
Tasked with turning the political and financial tide is Minnesota GOP Chairman David Hann, a soft-spoken 71-year-old Vietnam veteran who was the former minority leader in the state Senate. He is acutely aware of the challenges that face him and doesn’t sugarcoat the situation.
“What we had in place when I came here was virtually nothing,” he told the Washington Examiner from GOP headquarters in Edina, Minnesota. “We had to start from the beginning, put together staff, raise money, and we were not very well prepared for a statewide election in 2022.”
Minnesota just went through a midterm wave in which voters rejected Republican candidates. The state’s Democrats, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, currently control four of the state’s eight U.S. House seats, both of its U.S. Senate seats, both chambers of the state legislature, and all other statewide offices, including the governor’s mansion.
“I would argue that we probably shot ourselves in the foot with half of those races,” Hann said. “We should have been in a majority in at least one of the houses except for our own ineptitude as a party, and it’s on us. I believe we just did not have the resources to counter some of the bad messaging that the Democrats put out.”
After a staff exodus, the party currently has four full-time employees working out of a small suite, sandwiched between doctor’s offices, investment groups, and a computer repair shop. Hanging on a whiteboard inside is a countdown to the Minnesota State Fair.
When Hann was tapped to lead the state GOP in 2021, it was arguably in shambles.
Its previous chairwoman, Jennifer Carnahan, was forced out after controversies over her alleged personal and professional conduct came to light, including ties to Anton Lazzaro, a GOP donor who was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
Carnahan sued the state party, claiming comments about her tarnished her reputation and made it impossible to find work. The party countersued, and both sides aired much of their dirty laundry in public, including claims Carnahan fostered a toxic, retaliatory work environment, mismanaged finances, and repeatedly failed to address sexual harassment allegations that had been brought to her attention.
Carnahan, the wife of the late U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN), who died in 2022 from kidney cancer, claimed she did nothing wrong, but by the end of the drawn-out saga, it seemed the damage to the party had been done.
GOP activist Sheri Auclair told the Minneapolis Star Tribune at the time that the party had lost its identity.
“Right now there is no [Minnesota Republican Party] brand,” she said. “Right now the state party is in ruins.”
Hann was appointed to complete Carnahan’s term, a position he had run for and lost to her in 2017. He won a second, two-year term in December.
In his role, his most herculean task is to secure money from a well of donors that had all but dried up so the party can put up a fight in 2024 to win back the House.
“Our whole enterprise is not as robust financially as it needs to be, and so part of my work has been to build a stronger, more sustainable support for our donor base so we do not have to go into an election year with no money and no staff or no infrastructure on hand,” he said, adding that success will hinge on a select few races and how well the GOP can turn independent voters.
While the state has always tinted blue — former President Barack Obama won it twice, Hillary Clinton won it in 2016, and President Joe Biden won it in 2020, and it was the only one of the 50 states to vote for Walter Mondale over President Ronald Reagan in 1984 — it has become more competitive in recent years. Former President Donald Trump made significant gains in the state’s more conservative and rural areas, but the political landscape changed, creating conditions for a liberal takeover this year.
Less than a year ago, the DFL’s six-vote House majority would not have been enough to make significant changes to state policies on issues such as abortion because the majority depended on four votes from rural areas that were socially conservative. In November, three of the four representatives lost their races, but the DFL gained ground in the suburbs of St. Paul and Minneapolis, allowing the party not only to flip the state Senate but also win a 70-64 majority in the House made up of lawmakers that enthusiastically embraced a very liberal agenda that Hann said looked a lot like socialism.
Emboldened by their wins, Democratic lawmakers pushed through a highly liberal agenda that included the most sweeping pro-labor legislation in state history. It also passed laws codifying abortion rights and expanding access, greenlighting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, legalizing marijuana, imposing background checks on private gun transfers, initiating a red-flag warning system that allows authorities to ask the courts temporarily to take guns away from people who they believe are an imminent threat, restoring voting rights to former felons, raising taxes on small businesses and forcing them to pay for family and medical leave, preventing employers from holding anti-union meetings, requiring utilities to go carbon-free by 2040, making school breakfasts and lunches free (regardless of income) for all students from K-12, creating a refuge program for transgender people denied care in other states, and a host of other left-leaning legislation.
Nearly every item on the DFL agenda as well as on the Minnesota AFL-CIO agenda passed, prompting Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D-MN) to claim, “Whoa, holy buckets!” at the end of the legislative session and state AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham to declare lawmakers passed “the most pro-worker policy agendas Minnesotans have seen in more than a generation.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) threw a bill-signing party, complete with the marching band from the University of Minnesota.
What helped push such liberal policies through was a historic $17.5 billion budget surplus lawmakers inherited and then quickly spent with the acute knowledge that having near-perfect conditions to enact such radical changes may not come again for quite some time.
What Republicans are banking on is that the DFL will not be able to sustain its wins going forward and will have to answer to the public for their votes on legislation that was rushed through, not what their constituents had wanted, and legislation that will likely have unintended consequences such as the toll the family and medical leave bill will have on small businesses or the impact that women from other states coming to Minnesota for abortions will have on residents in the state not being able to schedule services for themselves.
Even if Republicans manage to secure the House next year, it doesn’t mean legislation passed this year will get reversed or even tweaked. Democrats will still control the Senate, with their elections not coming until 2026, and Walz will likely use his veto power to shoot down any meaningful Republican-led bills that make it to his desk.
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Despite this, Hann remains optimistic that a win would be the first step toward becoming a more balanced state.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the DFL, including directly to leadership, but did not hear back.
Catch part three of the Washington Examiner’s Minnesota series tomorrow in which we take a look at the unintended consequences of the abortion bill passed this session.