ALBERTVILLE, Minn. (AP) - David FitzSimmons knew when he joined a very small group of legislative Republicans who voted for legal gay marriage in Minnesota that he might face political fallout on his conservative home turf. And he did.
FitzSimmons, a first-term House member whose district includes parts of Wright and Sherburne counties, finds himself facing a fellow Republican for the party’s endorsement at a Saturday district convention. His opponent, Eric Lucero, is blasting FitzSimmons as untrustworthy for breaking from the party’s traditional stand on the definition of marriage.
“I made a decision and I stand by it,” FitzSimmons said during an interview at a coffee shop in Albertville, the exurban town bisected by Interstate 94 that he calls home. “If the cost of that is not being in the Legislature, then I will live with that cost.”
Six months after gay marriage became legal in Minnesota, and nine months after lawmakers voted to make it so, the political repercussions of the vote reverberate. Despite recent court rulings friendly to gay marriage in several moderate and even conservative states, opponents in Minnesota seek to punish some lawmakers they see as betraying their party or their constituents.
“Voters had every reason to trust David FitzSimmons when he gave his word,” Lucero wrote on his campaign website. “David FitzSimmons later broke his word by voting to redefine marriage in Minnesota.”
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A Minneapolis man recovering in a hospital after a fire in his rental home wept as he recounted how the blaze claimed the lives of five of his seven children.
Troy Lewis, 60, said from his hospital bed that the deepest pain came from having to make a decision no parent should have to make: choosing which children to save.
“I wanted to get all of my babies,” Lewis sobbed on Saturday. “All of my babies. I wanted all my babies,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Minneapolis Fire Department said Sunday it was still investigating the cause of Friday’s blaze. Five children aged 8 years to 19 months were killed. The two others who survived remained in critical condition Sunday, said Christine Hill, a spokeswoman for the Hennepin County Medical Center.
Lewis jumped from a second-story window after the fire broke out Friday morning. He injured his spine, but he ran back inside to save his screaming children.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Get ready for another round of snow, Minnesota.
A storm blowing into the state Sunday evening was expected to dump as much as 8 inches of snow in some areas, which could make for a messy commute Monday morning.
Eastern Minnesota will likely see the heaviest snow, with 6 to 8 inches by Monday in the Lake Superior area and 3 to 5 inches elsewhere in the region, said Tony Zaleski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Between 2 and 4 inches of snow was expected in the northwest part of the state by Monday afternoon.
Most of the snowfall was expected to taper off by late in the afternoon.
Overnight temperatures were expected to range from the single digits below zero in northwest Minnesota to the mid-teens across the central part of the state, Zaleski said.
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LAKE DELTON, Wis. (AP) - A Minnesota man suspected of abducting his 2-year-old son has been arrested in Wisconsin. The boy wasn’t hurt.
The Wisconsin State Patrol says the man’s vehicle was spotted traveling westbound near Lake Delton on Sunday about 2 p.m. A trooper pulled him over and arrested him without incident.
Minnesota authorities say the 33-year-old man broke into a St. Louis Park house through the back door Sunday about 1 a.m. He allegedly assaulted the boy’s mother and fled with the child, and authorities believed he was heading for New York or Florida.
He was arrested in Lake Delton, which is about 220 miles southeast of St. Louis Park.
The state patrol says the child was safe and napping in the back seat. Authorities made arrangements to reunite him with his mother.
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