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And The Saga of Disruption At The Minnesota Legislature Continues [1]

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Date: 2025-01-29

The tumult and discord in the Minnesota legislature continues, with several new developments having taken place in the two weeks since this diary tried to help you, dear reader, make sense of it all. A big part of this story involves two cases that were fast tracked by the State Supreme Court due to their time-sensitive nature.

The first dealt with a special election that Gov Walz had called for an open seat in the St Paul suburbs. This was the one where the winning candidate was ruled ineligible due to not having maintained residency in the district. Gov Walz called a special election for January 28--to coincide with another special election that will be referenced in a bit--that was challenged by the state’s Republican Party (and had not been decided at press time of my previous diary).

Not so fast there Governor, said the State Supremes. You did not have the authority to make that call and yeah, even though candidates had been vetted and absentee ballots sent out and were already being returned….no can do folks.

On a media appearance the evening the decision was made, Gov. Walz indicated that the earliest a new election could be scheduled would be March 5, nearly two months after the start of the session. This decision also left the chamber with a 67-66 R majority.

Through it all, House Dems has been boycotting, denying the Republicans a quorum. Not according to those darn Rs though. They went ahead and ignored Secretary of State Steve Simon, who had ruled that a quorum was not present and the House could not stand in session, and just went ahead — filing bills, holding committee hearings, and doing general legislative stuff.

Sec. Simon said, yeah, you cannot due that. And in the other State Supreme Court decision, the justices said, “Sec. Simon is correct, no quorum”.

This action essentially invalidated all the previous actions that the Rs had engaged in up to that point.

So now what?

The standoff continues in the House as the two sides have not been able to come to an agreement about power sharing, and the Republicans are still stating they will not seat a Dem legislator whose re-election was marred by the case of the missing twenty ballots.

All this time on the other side of the building, the State Senate had been chugging along. Due to the unfortunate death of a member before the session began, the chamber was tied 33-33. Party leaders there were able to come up with a power sharing agreement that would be in place until a special election, held yesterday (Tuesday, January 28) would return the chamber to a 34-33 DFL control as the district is a heavily Dem seat in Minneapolis.

But before the election could be held, Senate Republicans tried a power play. They moved to expel a DFL senator who had been under a legal cloud going back to last spring.

Senator Nicole Mitchell had been arrested and charged with felony burglary when she was caught breaking into her stepmother’s house in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota to retrieve her father’s ashes and other items. Despite calls for her resignation, which came from many sides including Gov Walz, Sen Mitchell stayed and took part in some, but not all, legislative affairs. Her trial, which was supposed to take place shortly after the start of the year, was delayed by a local judge until after the session ends. The move to have Mitchell expelled failed on a procedural vote.

The special election for the senate seat resulted in voters overwhelmingly choosing Doron Clark to take the seat.

Once again, I’ll stop here as this has gotten long and hopefully it will make sense to readers.

Any of my fellow Minnesotans are welcome to add their thoughts in the comments.

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