No exciting dominoes for Minnesota DFL as Walz says goodbye to VP dream and trifecta

The 2024 election in Minnesota will be remembered for results that were expected by some but didn’t happen and something unexpected by most that did.

Gov. Tim Walz won’t become vice president.

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won’t become governor.

Senate President Bobby Joe Champion won’t become lieutenant governor.

But the state House of Representatives could end up in a 67-67 tie, based on unofficial results and barring any flips from expected recounts.

So much for predictions.

Walz was something of a surprise pick to be Kamala Harris’ running mate, but emerged not only because he fit the demographic — Midwestern, male, governor with hoped-for appeal to Midwestern male voters — but also because he campaigned via cable news and social media.

He now returns to St. Paul to fill out the final two years of his second term and to decide whether to seek a third. Arguing over state budgets with a strong possibility that the DFL governing trifecta has ended might not be as stimulating as nonstop campaigning in hot spots like Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Appleton, Wisconsin.

Because Walz is not moving on up, neither will his lieutenant governor. Flanagan was poised to be the state’s first female governor and the first female Native American to govern any state. That won’t happen, at least not yet.

And north Minneapolis and downtown Sen. Bobby Joe Champion will remain in the Senate where, as the constitutional head of that body, he would have automatically replaced Flanagan as lieutenant governor. At least it will no longer set up the war game scenarios of when he resigns his Senate seat so as to limit the political impact of a 33-33 tie until a replacement could be elected.

And then there’s that whole thing about a tied House, a result unknown since the 1978 election. DFLers knew fairly early in the evening that they would hold the state Senate when it was clear that Ann Johnson Stewart would replace fellow DFLer Kelly Morrison as the senator from the west metro’s 45th District.

Related: 2024 Election results: Minnesota Legislative Races to Watch

But agonizingly slow results from Anoka County meant the House races the DFL would eventually lose were decided early while the seats they needed to retain were decided late. Ultimately, the DFL lost three seats it now holds — two seats left open when DFL members decided not to run again and a third in the back and forth District 18A in and around St. Peter.

They even saw results that were purported to be final in the St. Cloud-based District 14B and the Shakopee-based 54A — results that had incumbents Dan Wolgamott and Brad Tabke losing — switch back to the DFL after additional ballots were submitted into the count in the case of Wolgamott or completely recounted in the case of Tabke.

Between the two — with just 28 votes to spare for Wolgamott and 13 for Tabke — the DFL held onto a tie. Recounts must happen in both, as both are within the statutory one-half of 1% margin, but the DFL leadership is confident those results will hold. They usually do, based on some recent history.

Still, the response from caucus leaders reflected the political difference between catching up and being caught. Republicans were elated to have gained at least a tie, a result that ends the DFL trifecta after two years. DFLers were less so, needing now to plan for a power-sharing arrangement that will see committee power and staffing numbers split down the middle.

All this comes after the DFL and its affiliates outspent the GOP at least four to one. The DFL had enough money to play in districts that it probably had no chance of winning — and didn’t. The DFL lost all seven of the GOP-held seats it had targeted for pickups while also failing to defend the three seats the GOP flipped.

Related: Campaign spending not even close between DFL, GOP in race to control Minnesota House

Republicans likely benefited from the top of the ticket more than DFLers did. Back in June, political consultant and strategist Todd Rapp said Donald Trump didn’t have to win Minnesota to help the GOP legislative candidates, he just had to get close. At the time, the likely Democratic nominee was President Joe Biden but the math was the same.

If Trump was within 3 percentage points or less of Biden, districts thought out-of-reach for the GOP would come into play, Rapp said then. If Biden ran ahead by somewhere in the 5-7 percentage-point range, those races would likely be safe for the DFL. To illustrate, Trump lost the state by just 1.5 points in 2016, and the House GOP won a 20-seat majority. In 2020, Trump trailed Biden by 7.1 points, and the House was controlled by the DFL by six seats.

The final results Tuesday show Trump within 4.3 percentage points of Harris — halfway between Rapp’s range with a tie the result. 

All this despite the fact that the DFL had a potent ground game with more money and more people than the GOP. The Trump campaign and state Republicans didn’t appear to have much in the field at all but still did well enough, barely enough, to disrupt the trifecta.

Related: These 16 Races to Watch could determine Minnesota House control

When he introduced her at a get-out-the-vote rally in St. Paul last Thursday, state DFL Chair Ken Martin dubbed U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar as the “speaker maker.” Three previous times when Klobuchar led the DFL ticket, the DFL regained majority control and made three people House speaker — Margaret Anderson Kelliher in 2006, Paul Thissen in 2012 and Melissa Hortman in 2018. 

Some might make the case that her record is intact if Hortman is sharing power with Republican Lisa Demuth, the current House minority leader, whether either holds the official title or not. 

So now what? During an MPR News interview Wednesday, Hortman said she has a proven record of being able to work with the GOP, pointing to the shared power between 2019 and 2023 when the Senate was in GOP control. And she said she had a respectful relationship with Demuth.

But that relationship was damaged by the end of the 2024 session when Hortman and Senate DFL leaders powered through a massive omnibus bill in the closing hours. While Hortman blamed GOP filibusters that were preventing action on a dozen or more bills, the final hours and minutes were so far out of the ordinary that Republicans felt the rules — both written and unwritten — were shredded.

Related: Legislature adjourns with mega-omnibus, loud finger-pointing as DFL leaders shut down GOP delays to meet deadline

“This is a perfect opportunity to work with our Democrat colleagues and bring civility back where there has been a lack of that as we have seen,” Demuth said Wednesday afternoon during a brief press conference. She said no talks have been held about what power sharing will look like.

Hortman called the 2024 election a GOP wave election, but one that continued the trend of Democrats doing well in urban and suburban areas and Republicans doing well in exurban and rural areas.

Despite the way the 2024 session ended, she said she and Demuth remain in good standing with each other.

“What makes it work is if people respect each other and people keep their word,” Hortman said. “We’d prefer to have the majority and I think the Republicans would prefer to have the majority. But it is a golden opportunity to show people we can get along.”

Once recounts are completed — and likely well before — Hortman and Demuth will sit down and negotiate an agreement. While it could include letting the secretary of state preside throughout the session, not just the first day as is required, it likely won’t. Some sort of shared leadership is a more likely result, with either co-chairs of all committees or a division of committees with DFL chairing some and the GOP chairing others.

The 2025 session is a budget session, and lawmakers will get the first official glimpse of how much revenue is available in early December. Indications from recent tax collections, however, suggest no large surpluses but no deficits either.

And because the DFL holds the Senate and Walz is back full time, there is no opportunity for repeal or significant adjustment of the DFL 2023 agenda. There are opportunities, however, for the House GOP to leverage the need for their votes to win some concessions.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Hortman said Wednesday the divided government might make it easier to pass a capital construction budget and bond sale, something that eluded the Legislature last session as it requires 60% approval.

Correction: The district map in this article has been changed to fix erroneously labeled legislative districts. 21A and 61A were labeled as split districts and are now appropriately labeled as GOP-leaning and DFL-leaning, respectively.

Editor’s note: Peter Callaghan wrote this story for MinnPost.com. Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. 

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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