OPINION:
President Trump, doing what God created him to do, has dominated the news cycle for the past three months, so one can be forgiven for not following what has been happening in Minnesota.
There, in the wake of an election and the resignation of a Democrat (because he didn’t live in his district), the Republicans held a 67-66 advantage in the House of Representatives, pending a special election in March.
Unfortunately, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that 68 members are needed for a quorum. So, naturally, the Democrats simply decided not to appear. As a result, Minnesota has been without one of its legislative bodies for the past three weeks. It doesn’t seem like anyone in the state missed it.
Late last week, however, the Democrats finally conceded to reality and agreed to a power-sharing agreement with the newly ascendant Republicans.
The deal is pretty straightforward. For the next two years, a Republican will be speaker of the House in Minnesota. The last time there was a tie in Minnesota, way back in 1979, the power-sharing agreement included pages of limitations on the speaker’s power. There are virtually none of those restrictions in this deal.
There will be a Republican majority for at least five weeks. If the special election at the end of March results in a 67-67 tie (as expected), the committees will be split evenly by party and be led by co-chairs. This arrangement gives the Republicans a fighting chance to affect the budget trajectory and other negotiations.
Not coincidentally, the power-sharing arrangement creates a Republican-controlled committee on oversight. You might remember that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s struggles with fraud received national attention during his late, unlamented vice presidential bid. This new committee allows everyone to hold Mr. Walz and his team accountable for whatever fraud there may have been.
It may be instructive to compare this arrangement to the situation in 1979. Then, the power-sharing agreement dramatically weakened the Republican speaker and left the Democrats in control of the important committees: rules, appropriations and taxes. The Democrats, in effect, controlled the agenda.
By any measurement, the agreement arrived at last week was better for the Republicans than that created in 1979. That makes sense when you consider the context. In 1979, the Republican Party in Minnesota was beginning to fade. It had carried the state in three of the previous seven presidential elections before 1979. Starting in 1980, however, the Republicans lost the state in 12 consecutive presidential elections. In 2016 and 2024, Mr. Trump made a game of it, losing the state by about 43,000 and 130,000 votes, respectively, in those elections.
From statehood until the early 1970s, statewide offices and the state Legislature were held by Republicans or the Minnesota equivalent. From the early 1970s until about 10 years ago, Democrats pretty much ruled the state Legislature. Over the past 10 years, though, Republicans have controlled the state Senate and Minnesota House of Representatives about as often as the Democrats.
The national context has also changed. In 1979, the Republican Party was still bleeding from Watergate and President Nixon’s resignation. Today, it is ascendant nationally, in large measure because it is winning the registration battle in places such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and North Carolina and because it has become competitive in statewide elections in places such as Virginia and Minnesota. Nationally, Republicans have opened up modest leads in partisan identification and party approval.
The Minnesota Democrats’ impulsive response — to run and hide when faced with unwelcome results — is understandable, as is their eventual willingness to make an equitable deal with the newly empowered Republicans. They can read survey results and registration data as well as the next person.
Expect more such adjustments in the purple states as the national vibe swings toward the Republicans and the Democrats are compelled to adjust accordingly.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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