ST. PAUL — The absence of House Democrats was the elephant in the Capitol on the opening day of Minnesota’s legislative session Tuesday, Jan. 14.
As the House floor called the roll, the silence was loud as each Democrat’s name rang out unanswered.
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After roll call, Secretary of State Steve Simon declared there was no quorum in the House without Democrats and only 67 members present, adjourning the House. As Simon stepped off the House floor around 12:20 p.m., Republicans voted to overturn his adjournment and elected Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, as speaker of the House.
House Republicans also elected Rep. Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, as majority leader, and introduced a resolution to create a fraud committee within the House for the remainder of the floor’s session on Tuesday before gaveling out around 1:20 p.m.
“It’s up to the Democrats whether they want to show up for work and do the work of the people of Minnesota, or whether they want to continue with the sham idea that the secretary of state gets to decide for the legislative branch issues about the legislative branch’s organization,” Niska said following the floor session.
The legality of Republicans proceeding with the session was not immediately clear. Republicans argued that Simon does not have the authority to oversee the House, referencing the Minnesota Constitution. Democrats declared Tuesday’s actions by Republicans a “sham,” saying Simon should oversee the House and determine whether there is a quorum, referencing Minnesota statute.
“Republicans did not have a quorum,” House Leader Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference called by Democrats at the Scott County Government Center. “The secretary of state has the authority to call the House to order. They completely ignored that and engaged in a sham, proceeding unlike anything we could have imagined or have ever seen before.”
If Demuth’s election as speaker is legitimate, she would be the first woman of color elected as speaker of the House in Minnesota.
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Months of fruitless negotiation
Two months of negotiations between House Democrats and Republicans culminated Tuesday afternoon. After the November election delivered a tied House, a special election and multiple lawsuits, Minnesota’s representatives failed to get on the same page by the session’s start at noon.
Republicans initially left the negotiation table in late December after the court ruled to unseat former Rep.-elect Curtis Johnson in a residency dispute, arguing the vacant seat and one-vote majority gave them the right to operate as the majority of the House.
Democratic representatives and Simon said 68 members are needed to conduct House business.
After a judge ruled in favor of DFL Rep. Brad Tabke early Tuesday morning in a case involving 20 missing ballots in Shakopee, Republicans spoke out, saying they were still considering unseating him.
Shortly after, Hortman released a statement indicating Democrats would not show up to convene the House because Republicans refused to rule out unseating Tabke.
“Given Republican statements this morning indicating their intent to ignore the election results and the court’s decision, Democrats have no other recourse to protect the will of the voters than to deny quorum until the special election in 40B has concluded and that new member is sworn in,” Hortman said. “Democrats are united in our will to fight Republican efforts to kick Representative Brad Tabke out of the Minnesota House. We cannot allow Republicans to engage in this unprecedented abuse of power and will use every tool at our disposal to block it.”
After the floor session on Tuesday, Demuth said her negotiations with Hortman, which went until midnight Monday and continued Tuesday morning, remained “unreasonable” to her caucus.
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She said a power-sharing agreement was not necessary because the House was not tied with Republicans holding a temporary, one-vote majority after a court ruled to unseat former DFL Rep.-elect Curtis Johnson, of Roseville.
“If we do return to a tie after the voters in the Roseville seat choose to send their choice back to the House of Representatives, whoever that might be, then we can re-engage in tied conversations or potential pieces of power-sharing, but to make that assumption today, that we should be in a full power-sharing and not recognizing the basic math and the reality of 67 and 66, that is just untenable,” Demuth said.
Hortman said Tuesday afternoon that Democrats did not propose a power-sharing agreement for the weeks in which Republicans will hold a one-seat majority.
“We acknowledge that there is an imbalance right now and that they have an edge — they just don’t have enough human beings to convene the House or to pass a bill,” Hortman said at Tuesday’s press conference. “What we want to do is be set up to solve problems together when we get back to the tie, and we want the Republicans to acknowledge that it takes 68 votes to do anything in the Minnesota House of Representatives.”
She said another part of the power-sharing agreement from this morning was that if Democrats do not win the special election seat on Jan. 28 for 40B in Roseville, they would respect the transition to a full Republican majority in the House.
Johnson won 65% of the vote in November, so Democrats expect the House to return to a tie.
“Today, we saw a really astonishing attempt to grab power in the Minnesota House. The House GOP took their oath of office, and then they promptly turned around and violated it,” said Rep. Jamie Long, DFL-Minneapolis.
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Hortman said her caucus will not return until Jan. 28, the day of a special election for Johnson’s seat in Roseville. She said her caucus will file multiple complaints to the Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday following the actions of Republicans on the House floor.
Senate convenes
Meanwhile in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans gaveled in without incident on Tuesday. The Senate passed their power-sharing agreement, allowing each caucus of the Senate to elect a co-presiding officer and have equal control of committees until the Jan. 28 special election that was triggered by the death of Sen. Kari Dziedzic, DFL-Minneapolis.
The Senate spent time during their floor session honoring the life of Dziedzic and electing Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, and Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, as temporary co-presidents of the Senate.
“What a great day today on the Senate floor,” said Leader Sen. Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks. “It was really a day where we could get together, honor Sen. Dziedzic. … We’re doing the power-sharing, and you see quite a contrast between what’s happening here and what’s happening over the House.”
Johnson said he hopes the House can reach an agreement soon and that he believes Dziedzic’s death impacted how Senate negotiations for a power-sharing agreement played out.
“I think we have to let the dust settle there in the House, and then also get into our flow here at the Senate, as we’re working under this unprecedented agreement,” he said. “So, we’ll see how that develops going forward. I know there’s a lot of controversy and issues that are going on there, but we'll figure out what that flow looks like once it gets settled.”
The Trust Project
