Ideas for orchestrating progress with a tie in the Minnesota House could come from other states

As hard as it was to accomplish — described by DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman as flipping a quarter and having it land on its edge — managing the 67-67 tie in the Minnesota House of Representatives promises to be harder still.

Backroom negotiations between Hortman and GOP Leader Lisa Demuth have begun. They will have to agree on a structure as well as the details of how power will be shared when the session convenes Jan. 14, knowing that for anything to pass, it needs bipartisan support.

Some decisions have been made that appear to signal a co-leadership model. On Monday, the House announced that leaders had agreed to the list of committees and that each would be managed by a DFL and GOP co-chair. And while no announcement has been made on the top of the organizational chart, Hortman of Brooklyn Park and Demuth of Cold Spring were described as “the respective caucus speaker-designates.”

There are some legal opinions, never tested in state courts, that argue having two speakers or co-speakers would not be permitted by the state constitution. However, the state constitution only mentions “presiding officer,” not “speaker,” and states that the House and Senate “shall elect its presiding officer and other officers as may be provided by law.”

Even the process that requires the Secretary of State to convene the House at noon on the first day and preside until the election of officers is completed is in state law, not the constitution. It could be changed by changing the law (so long as the Senate and governor agree to help) or simply by adopting new House rules. Whether the state Supreme Court would intervene if anyone challenged how the House organized itself raises its own constitutional issue of separation of powers.  

The last tie in the Minnesota House came after the 1978 election. Some think that should be the starting point for an agreement, but Hortman has called the political makeup of the state and that Legislature — which was predominantly white men — “archaic” and wants to look elsewhere for ideas.

“It seems it’s not a fit for modern times,” Hortman said the day after the election, adding that other states have used models that she termed “more practical.”

Demuth said her caucus had already been contemplating a tie after entering a tight House campaign where only a dozen races were truly competitive. Of the 1979 power-sharing agreement, Demuth said: “That was in the late ‘70s, and there’s a lot that has changed in our world. But everything is on the table.”

Demuth and Hortman both spoke about their personal relationship, asserting that it was positive. But both acknowledged the strain placed on it by the chaotic way the 2024 session ended, with DFL majorities putting dozens of unpassed and unrelated bills into a single omnibus and passing it as midnight struck.

“That does not have to be the way that things go forward,” Demuth said, “and that’s going to take collaboration and coordination on both sides.”

While it has been 45 years since Minnesota had a tied House, it has more recent experience with divided government. Hortman, for example, cites her work with then-Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, in crafting a bipartisan budget in 2019.

So what are the other models? While rare, ties have occurred in other states more recently and there are a handful of examples of how to manage them, according to research done by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“All of the states are different and there is not one copy/paste across the board,” said Mari Henderson, a senior policy specialist with the Denver-based organization’s Center for Legislative Strengthening, whose duties include analyzing legislative rules and procedures. Usually, a chamber’s rules are there “to make sure the majority gets its way but the minority gets its say,” she said.

“Obviously, that doesn’t necessarily apply to tied chambers because there is not a majority,” Henderson said. “But even in a time that feels hyperpartisan, state legislatures are great examples of bipartisan efforts. I would double down on communication and cooperation being a key part of maintaining not just a tied chamber but any chamber and maintaining the institution of legislatures.”

The three most common methods to organize the House, if tied, are:

• The “Co” Agreement has been used in Washington state, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Oregon. By agreement, every officer and committee chair is coequal and carries titles prefaced by co. Usually, those two people alternate with the gavel, knowing that any action and any ruling would require a negotiated solution lest they, too, end in a tie vote. Sometimes, it was every other day, but other methods saw gavels exchanged every other month or two months.
• The Divided Power Contract describes the type of compact used in Minnesota in 1979 as well as in Arizona, Connecticut, North Dakota, Oregon and Virginia. It could involve one party getting the speakership with the other party winning the chairs of powerful committees such as Rules, Ways and Means and Taxes. In the upcoming session, capital investment could have outsized importance because a bonding bill failed this year. But it always needs bipartisan support in order to authorize borrowing money via bond sales.
• The Negotiated Resignation has been used just twice, in the Florida Senate in 1992 and the Maine Senate in 2000. The Florida Constitution required a singular presiding officer, which was thought to preclude co-presidents of the Senate. So a Republican was elected president while at the same time signing an unconditional and irrevocable resignation, effective 11 months later. With a Democrat elected as president pro tem, that person automatically took power for the second year. Because Minnesota drafts a two-year budget in the first year and often meets for fewer days in the second year, this division of time wouldn’t create a division of power.

“How have workings of the deadlocked chambers fared?” asked the NCSL research paper. “Better than expected” is a frequent response when legislators and staff reflect on the situation.

“Cooperation rather than confrontation seems to be key to the success of shared power in a chamber, as well as good will and the personalities of the players,” the authors concluded. “They promote respect for the legislative institution and for each other’s positions. However, no matter how smooth the process seemed to go, most legislators experienced with chamber deadlock don’t recommend that other legislatures try it.”

Rep. Frank Chopp, a Democrat from Seattle, is the longest-serving House speaker in Washington state history. But his first time at the speaker’s rostrum in Olympia was with the title “co-speaker” in 1999, alternating every other day with Republican Rep. Clyde Ballard of East Wenatchee. The same results occurred after the 2000 election as well.

How the House ended up tied that first year made a difference in the attitude of the two parties, Chopp said. It was the difference between catching up and being caught.

“House Democrats picked up eight seats and surprised everybody,” he said. “We were so excited about having a seat at the table that it really influenced our whole attitude. The Republicans, on the other hand, were so taken aback that we had picked up so many seats that their approach was different.”

Chopp said that as much as both sides spoke of working together, “you can’t expect either side to approve things they don’t like, in terms of what bills go to the floor, how much time we spend on certain issues. We passed some laws but they were all bipartisan by nature.”

Democrats controlled the Senate, and Gary Locke was the Democratic governor. That set the scene for the end of the session in which two House Republican members voted for a Democratic budget that contained initial funding for the federal-state children’s health initiative.

But Chopp said he suspects that polarization in politics is now such that it is less likely an elected Republican or Democrat would cross the aisle to break a tie. Other than that budget, both parties had veto power over the other’s legislation.

His advice to Minnesota?

“Pay close attention to your members,” he said. “It’s always good policy to keep in contact with members and work together as a unit, whether you’re in a majority or a tie.”

The Center for Legislative Strengthening provided its own list of advice, based on conversations with legislators who have served in tied chambers:

• View the situation as a challenge, not a dilemma. Have the attitude that you are going to make it a success.
• Use organizations such as NCSL to find out what other states have faced deadlock and what they’ve done. Then open up lines of communications with those states. If possible, get a mentor in one of them — someone willing to help you through the details.
• Begin negotiating as soon as possible. The negotiations will take time because this is a very stressful and often traumatic period. Have more than one person from each caucus on the negotiation team; this helps generate broader support for the final agreement. Negotiate carefully over the makeup of your committees because they play a very important role in the legislative process.
• Put people who aren’t intensely partisan or ideological in leadership positions. Cooperation and productivity are more important than who gets the credit for each individual issue.
• Establish and maintain good communication; it is the key to avoiding problems.
• Don’t forget a mechanism or an “escape valve” to keep the process moving ahead. You might need it in case important or critical legislation gets bogged down.
• Let the public know what’s happening.

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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