‘Blue Dog’ DFL senators say Minnesota Legislature needs more wag, less bark

Within hours of the final unofficial 2024 election results being known, one Minnesota state senator read the handwriting on the wall and posted it on social media.

“Now that the voters have spoken, it is clear to me that Northern Minnesotans want representatives who focus on delivering for our communities and stay out of the nonsense that that distract far too many politicians from real bread-and-butter issues that matter in people’s lives,” tweeted Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown.

The previous day, both House seats in Hauschild’s 3rd District had gone to the GOP. One of those, District 3B, had been expected to return to the DFL after it was lost in 2022 by just 33 votes. That victory helped Republicans hold a tie in the state House and ended the DFL trifecta that had produced a sweeping, heavily progressive list of legislative accomplishments. Hauschild – and all other DFL senators — had voted for that agenda.

Now, those same senators are less than two years from their own reelections, and many from outside the core of the DFL’s Twin Cities base are wondering how this year’s results will impact the next election.

“Each of the 67 senators, I hope, are asking ‘what did the voters tell us in November?’ ” said Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato. Frentz, one of the assistant leaders of the majority DFL caucus, said he thinks his constituents want the session to address cost-of-living issues and pass what he termed a “responsible budget.”

That would likely require cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, a goal of the newly formed Blue Dog Coalition. The eight Senate members are DFLers from Twin Cities suburbs and regional population centers near Mankato, Moorhead, Duluth and St. Cloud.

“We seek to bridge divides and bring bipartisan solutions that serve all Minnesotans, regardless of political affiliation,” the group’s mission statement says.

Four of the eight Blue Dog members were among the five senators credited with securing the DFL majority in the 2022 election. All won in districts that were considered battlegrounds: one DFL district that had been trending toward the GOP (Robert Kupec of Moorhead), one in a district formed at redistricting as a combination of GOP and DFL areas (Judy Seeberger of Afton), one to replace a longtime DFL senator who had become an independent (Hauschild of Hermantown), and one who retained a seat that had been held by a Republican just two years previously (Aric Putnam of St. Cloud). 

The only so-called DFL majority maker from 2022 not in the Blue Dog Caucus is Sen. Heather Gustafson of Vadnais Heights, who defeated a Republican incumbent and built her own reputation as a moderate in her first two years.

The other Blue Dog members are Frentz, Matt Klein of Mendota Heights, Ann Rest of New Hope and John Hoffman of Champlin.

These are hardly backbenchers in the Senate. Frentz is also the chair of the Energy, Utilities and Environment Committee; Klein is chair of the Commerce Committee; Putnam is chair of the Agriculture Committee; Hoffman is chair of the Human Services Committee; and Rest is chair of the Taxes Committee.

Rest said she operates under the strategy of, “if you’re not going to have a Republican (sponsor) on your bill, you should leave a blank in hopes that you will get some who support your bill.” 

Before the 2024 session devolved into the chaos of the final night with only DFLers voting for the 1,400-page omnibus bill put together in Rest’s committee, the Senate had passed its version of a taxes bill with 16 GOP votes.

Klein was a leader in a last-minute, bipartisan agreement on a sports betting bill that ultimately did not reach a floor vote before the session adjourned. Ironically, the partisan rancor of the final weekend made it harder for a bipartisan agreement to get attention.

The 2024 election results highlighted potential vulnerabilities for some Blue Dog members. Both House seats in Hauschild’s and Seeberger’s districts flipped to the GOP, while the DFL held on to Putnam’s 14th District by just 191 votes. Kupec, Frentz, and Hoffman represent Senate districts that are evenly divided between strong DFL and GOP constituencies.

Both Klein and Rest represent safe DFL districts, with each carrying both House seats by significant margins last month.

Is there an emerging split in the Minnesota Senate majority? During the 2023 session, then-Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic held her one-vote majority together to match the work of the larger, more progressive House DFL. The sweeping agenda included new gun safety laws, a state-run paid family leave insurance program, an expansive child tax credit for low- and moderate-income families, as well as recreational marijuana, higher taxes on wealthy individuals, and a modest tax rebate program.

At each stage where it appeared the DFL Senate would not go along, it did. But in several key instances, it did so after legislation was amended to keep moderate members in the yes column. At the end of that session, Hauschild touted his work thwarting some fees on outdoor recreation. Kupec had concerns with a new delivery fee to raise money for transportation projects, which was narrowed in scope. Seeberger pushed for modest changes to gun legislation that became law.

Still, the sweeping agenda – termed transformational by DFLers and bonkers by Republicans – defines the current state DFL, especially after it became a centerpiece of Gov. Tim Walz’s vice presidential campaign.

Frentz doubts that any Senate DFL members regret those votes but that all benefited from the conversations among Democrats and the ideas put forward by moderates. He expects that to continue and pushed back on the criticism that the caucus was formed out of fear of defeat in 2026. He notes the history of a president’s party doing poorly in the first midterm election after his election.

“I’m optimistic that Democrats are going to take the lessons of the election, take what we have heard from the people of Minnesota and expand the DFL majority – not just in the suburbs but across the state,” he said. 

Rest said the focus of the next session will be on a budget deal with bipartisan support that can pass a tied House and win GOP votes in the Senate.

“That involves making some compromises on budget issues without having to walk away from the good things we did the past two years that we in the Democratic caucus feel improved the lives of Minnesotans,” Rest said. She cited the child tax credit, public safety funding, paid leave and universal school meals.

The Blue Dog Coalition will only formalize the more moderate positions taken by the individual members.

These types of caucuses are distinct from the four partisan caucuses around which the House and Senate are organized: the House Republican Caucus, the House DFL Caucus, the Senate Republican Caucus and the Senate DFL Caucus. They are more aptly considered member organizations that coalesce around common interests, such as the POCI Caucus (People of Color and Indigenous), the Queer Legislators Caucus, and a bipartisan version of the Blue Dogs called the Purple Caucus.

The proliferation of special caucuses in St. Paul is not nearly as widespread as in the U.S. Congress, where hundreds of member organizations exist — from the Bipartisan Candy Caucus to the House Recreational Vehicle Caucus. One of those is the original Blue Dog Caucus that was formed in 1995 by conservative Democrats who felt the party had moved too far to the left and was excluding their perspectives. The name has several origin stories. One version is that a member remarked that they were being left out in the cold or choked by more liberal members, and, in both cases, a dog in those circumstances might turn blue.

Most common is that the offices of Louisiana Democrats, where early organizing meetings were held, often had paintings by the Cajun artist George Rodrigue on the wall. A frequent subject of his art is the Blue Dog, which was based on a Cajun legend.

It may also have been a play on the term “Yellow Dog Democrats,” used to describe Southern Democrats who would sooner vote for a yellow dog than a Republican. Most of those Democrats are now Republicans. Over time, the congressional caucus evolved from representing conservative Democrats to including those who were liberal on social issues but conservative on economic and budget issues – populists who represented swing districts in suburban and rural America. The most prominent Minnesota member was Collin Peterson, who represented the northwest corner of the state starting in 1991 before losing in 2020.

The membership of the U.S. House Blue Dogs peaked in 2006 at 56 members. Its most recent iteration has just 11.

Frentz said the new caucus members in St. Paul have districts with different demographics than urban DFL districts and are more evenly divided by party. He said his district has 2,000 family farms as well as suburbs, large parts of the city of Mankato and a major state university with 15,000 students.

“I work for everyone in the district whether they voted for me or not,” he said. “I think the people want us to work together more than we have.”

But if the Blue Dogs came bearing an olive branch, it was not immediately received by Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, was quick to bring up the 2023 session with the extensive list of new legislation and the 2024 session that ended with the hastily assembled omnibus bill passed in the closing hours. He also noted the Senate DFL’s refusal to remove Sen. Nicole Mitchell, like all DFLers, the potential crucial vote in a 34-33 Senate, despite being charged with felony burglary.

“They all put their party’s activist base before Minnesotans in the last session,” Johnson said in a press statement. “This is the kind of political stunt voters will see right through.”

And Jake Coleman, senior adviser to the Minnesota chapter of the conservative-libertarian Americans for Prosperity called the formation of the Blue Dog coalition “a cynical move to appear more moderate after watching the Democrats in the House lose their majority.

“They’re welcome to clean up all the extreme, progressive policies they passed last year, but it doesn’t mean we won’t come for their seats in 2026,” Coleman said. “Faking courage in the face of a fear isn’t the same as taking a principled stance. They had no interest in bipartisanship while they were destroying our budget surplus and raising taxes.”

Said Rest: “There are some public statements being made that are very different from the private ones we are hearing from across the aisle. I think the Republican caucus will appreciate any and all opportunities to work with us. They can say whatever they want as long as they’re willing to work with me.”

---

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.

MinnPost is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization whose mission is to provide high-quality journalism for people who care about Minnesota.