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Minnesota House Republicans Try To Run Roughshod Over the Opening of State Legislative Business. [1]

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Date: 2025-01-14

The official opening of the Minnesota State Legislature was to have happened today (Tuesday, January14) at Noon. The doors opened to both chambers at the prescribed time and...well...it did not go entirely smoothly.

Flash back to the results of the November 24 elections, which left a 67-67 tie in the House. The Senate, which was not on the ballot, remained at a 34-33 DFL (Democratic) advantage.

The leaders of both House parties managed to cobble together a power-sharing agreement, with a joint-speakership and shared committee chairs. Hopes were raised that this would get them through the session, where the next two-year budget would be crafted, with the state showing signs of potential fiscal difficulties ahead.

And then it began to unravel.

A suburban St Paul district (HD 40B) saw the first challenge. Turns out the winning DFL candidate was not a resident of the district, which is required by state law. A trial saw his candidacy invalidated and he “resigned”, leaving an open seat. Which meant the chamber now was 67R — 66D. Governor Walz promptly called for a special election on January 28.

The other wrinkle appeared in the southwest suburbs (HD 54A) where the winning DFL candidate, incumbent Brad Tabke , had preliminary results showing a 14 vote win. But wait — turns out that twenty (20) absentee votes had been thrown away by the clerk of the City of Shakopee. Yes, tossed in the trash. Before they were counted. A lengthy series of court hearings tried to straighten the mess out. They even managed to bring in twelve of the twenty voters to verify under oath who they had voted for. The district court judge ruled just this morning that the outcome would not have been altered by the missing ballot and declared Rep Tabke the winner of the contest.

While all this was going on, House Republican leadership said, hey remember that agreement we agreed to? Yeah...not gonna happen. Oh and no matter what the court says, we won’t seat Rep Tabke because we think there were shenanigans afoot. (For the record, each chamber has the final say on who can be seated.)

House Dems were, of course incensed, and said, you know what...we are just not going to show up then and deny you a quorum. Unless of course you honor your agreement. To try and circumvent any possible issues, the House Dems met Sunday afternoon and were sworn in by a retired state district court judge.

All of this brings is to today.

By statute the Secretary of State, in this case, Steve Simon (D) is the presiding officer for the opening of the House session to bring it to order, swear in members, and elect leadership. Prior to today though, Sec. Simon stated that if the Democratic members don’t show up, 67 votes does not constitute a quorum for carrying out official business. House Rs vehemently disagreed.

Sec Simon gaveled in the session, and after a few perfunctory items were taken care of, stated for the record that no quorum was present and thus the session was not official. With a bang of the gavel, he sat down.

Then it got weird — as if it was not already?

House Republicans essentially took over the chamber. They swore themselves in and elected their party leader as Speaker. All while Sec Simon, who had ruled the session was over, sat and watched. And the whole while, the House Dems were absent.

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In the meantime, the Senate conducted its business. This despite the recent and unfortunate death of a DFL member, which left the chamber tied 33-33. A temporary power sharing agreement had been reached to get the chamber through the time until the January 28 special election to fill that dark blue seat.

Yes I’ve glossed over a few items because this diary got longer than I wanted. Hopefully you get the idea as this is definitely a developing story.

Feel free to add your observations in the comments.

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Editorial comment — Through all of this Gov Walz has been strangely silent. I suppose there is little he can do to force the legislature to get it together. Still though, it looks bad...at least to me.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/14/2296972/-Minnesota-House-Republicans-Try-To-Run-Roughshod-Over-the-Opening-of-State-Legislative-Business?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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