So, last week was a big week. A good one, by Minnesota Republican standards. For the DFL, less so.

Both chambers of of the Minnesota legislature flipped to “tied” last week – one by via human tragedy, and one by hubris and stupidity.

Let’s talk stupidity and hubris first.

The House

As we noted last week, the election in House District 40B got thrown out by a Ramco Judge – DFLer Julian Castro – because the DFL winner, Curtis Johnson, hadn’t lived in the district the required six months.

Naturally, it took his GOP opponent and his supporters to dig up the information that went to trial – God knows the media isn’t going to do it. But the locals did prevail. Johnson is out.

Which, including the still-disputed 54A race, leaves the GOP one vote ahead as the session looms. Which means a GOP speaker of the House – a much better speedbump on DFL control than the “shared power” arrangement people were talking about last week.

Or it will, if the DFL can’t figure out a way to juke the rules in their favor. Which is exactly what they’re going to try to do.

On Friday, Johnson A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

On Friday, Johnson announced he was opening the way to a special election to fill the 40B seat by “resigning“:

A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz, Curtis Johnson said he has “made the difficult decision not to accept my seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives and to resign from the Office of State Representative effective immediately and irrevocably.”

Which is great – except the couldn’t resign. He was never in the office – it’s still Becker-Finn’s seat, and Johnson’s election was voided by the court.

Pretty Vacant

And the word “vacancy” has a statutory definition:

Which didn’t stop Governor Walz from declaring a special election on January 24.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but Johnson’s not the incumbent – Becker-Finn is.

So trying to jam down a special election is against the law:

But there is no vacancy, so (as I, and I suspect Mr. Hansen, and presumptive-Speaker Demuth) see it), the governor doesn’t get to call the special election until 22 days after Johnson isn’t sworn in, on January 14, the first day of session.

So with the House tied at 67-67 after the election, and the 54A seat in Shakopee still in court, this gives the GOP a 67-66 lead in the House, and the potential of picking up the 54A (and refusing to seat Brad Tabke until the issue is resolved in court).

I say it’s time for some intransigence.

Let’s talk about the Senate later today. 

SCENE:   Former Governor Mark DAYTON’s house, on Lake Minnetonka [1].  

He’s sitting in his bathrobe and slippers by a roaring fire, reading the Strib. His wife , Ana ORKE-DAYTON, enters the room.

ORKE-DAYTON:  I’m taking a stack of credit cards and taking the Porsche to the Galleria.

DAYTON:   Mpfmbfh. 

ORKE-DAYTON leaves, as DAYTON’s eye alights on a news item:

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, has missed votes in Congress and has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,” her son told The Dallas Morning News. Granger, 81, last cast a vote on the morning of July 24…The congresswoman now resides in a Fort Worth senior living facility called Tradition Senior Living. There are two locations on the same property, but Brandon Granger confirmed it is not the memory care facility, as some media outlets have reported. Granger said his mother is staying in the independent living facility to be around other seniors.

DAYTON: (Thinking to self) Huh. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on pretending to be in office?

And SCENE

[1] I have no idea where he lives. It’s gotta be Minnetonka, right?

You’re Tim Walz.

You just called half of your state “Nazis” and “Fascists”. 

How do you try to make up for that?

The same way you always did:

The same way he’s done everything; an endless ooze of food selfies, social media strawmen and intellectual Cream of Wheat.

So, here’s a picture of Governor Walz with Lt. Governor Flanagan, taken back during the “trifecta”.

She was inescapable. She was in every photo with Walz. Her name may have been more prominent on their campaign signs.

The media actively dolled her up:

The camera and their photo selection didn’t do half bad by her.

At times it seemed as if the local media were just as much her PR firm as Walz’s. 

And now – this:

And this:

That – combined with the Rochelle Olson/Ryan Faircloth piece we talked about earlier – makes it look like Walz is trying to distance himself from Flanagan.

Why?

Because polling isn’t showing “DSA whackjobbery” is doing well?

Or because they’re both going to be running for Governor?

Tim Walz is back

And he’s pissed. 

It seems a bit of a squabble has broken out between his camp and Lt Governor Flanagan‘s:

Walz was asked in a recent interview if there was tension when he returned given Flanagan would have succeeded him as governor if the Harris ticket had won.

“No,” Walz responded. “There would be time to figure out all that afterwards. I was solely focused on making sure the state of Minnesota was going, we were getting things done. The lieutenant governor was here doing the work that she needed to do, reaching out to community.”

Others who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Walz team was not pleased at steps Flanagan had taken to assume the governorship, conferring with potential key hires and preparing for a possible run herself in 2026. “If the people of Minnesota want me to continue to serve, I am absolutely open to that,” Flanagan said at the State Fair in August.

The Walz camp was especially irked because Flanagan had tapped Walz’s gubernatorial campaign fund without authorization for some work, multiple sources said.

Walz is claiming to know nothing, NOTHing, about the matter. But I’m not the only one thinking something’s amiss:

Steven Schier, Carleton College political science professor emeritus, said it’s not uncommon in Minnesota for the governor and lieutenant governor to maintain a distance from each other. “What is notable are the timing of this and the apparent reasons for it,” Schier said. “Peggy Flanagan and Walz were joined at the hip for six years and now they seem separated by their individual ambitions.”

Joined at the hip is an understatement. I rarely recall seeing Lieutenant Governors consistently appearing with the Governor before Walz. One rarely saw Tina Smith or Mae Schunk or Joan Growe outside the odd campaign event or the State of the State.

But Flanagan was in every photo this past six years.  They had hundreds of shots of the two of them cavorting about the Fair, her feeding him corn dogs and playing fetch with him.  Her name was arguably more prominent than his on their campaign signs:

And the optics – literally – are absolutely strange on this.

More later today. 

Governor Klink – who two years before had arrogated emergency powers that Francisco Franco would have envied, who sicced the Attorney General on anyone who defied him – as the trifecta started marauding: “You got political capital, you gotta use it”.

Two years later and facing two years of tie votes in the House: “I hear NOTH-ing! I see NOTH-ing”:

But wait – it gets worse.  

You may think this is just a matter of the Governor and his media noise machine working to transfer the DFL’s little massive fraud problem to the House, abetted by the DFL’s noise machine and the subservient media. 

And you’d be partly right. 

But it’s worse than that:

That’s right – the governor who arroraged to himself the power to cancel Thanksgiving, to pack nursing homes with sick people, and to sort Minnesotans into “essential” and “nonessential”, apparently gave away the power to actually control his own executive branch. 

Looking to get someone to explain this madness on the show after Christmas. 

Governor Klink is doing the rounds of the Twin Cities media, saying he’s not going to rule out further runs for national office.

Of course, to a leftist, “conversation” means “Monologue” – which is what Walz is used to here in Minnesota, with his constant stream of selfies and Twitter proclamations and straw men.

His foray into national politics was his first attempt at a “conversation”.

It didn’t go well.  See also his debate with JD Vance. 

But hope springs eternal that we can have an actual conversation with Walz and the entire DFL over his and their dubious record in office – especially given the news of yet another corruption scandal (more next week).

Speaking of “conversations”:

Hey – one person’s “rumors about dogs and cats” is another person’s “neighborliness”.

The big that confuses me so much about this story – the DFL jamming down a $10K appropriation to help one of their colleagues settle an issue with her “day job” outside politics – isn’t that the DFL is basically pickpocketing taxpayers to help one of their own with a private matter. (Emphasis added):

This all started when Rep. Bianca Virnig of Eagan was elected to the House as a Democrat in a special election and sworn in last January serving a district in the Eagan-Mendota Heights area. Her new position as a state lawmaker created a conflict with her employer, Brightworks, a non-profit established by the Minnesota Legislature in 1976 to provide services to public schools and school districts, according to its website.

“When she returned to her employment her employer dramatically cut back her hours and her pay based on her new job she held as a part-time state legislator,” Rep. Jamie Long, DFL Majority Leader, said at a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday. “Since this was related to her work as a Minnesota representative we are proposing we pay for those legal costs.”

No, after years of DFL corruption eating up hundreds of millions of dollars, seeing something in five digits almost feels like watching “The Andy Griffith Show”.

The part that fairy astounds me is that, after getting elected to the legislature, either Rep. Virnig or “Brightworks” had a problem with the arrangement.

The DFL set up the non-profit/industrial complex specifically to serve as a farm team and lobbyist ranch for their regime.  A potential politician starts working with one of the state’s maze of public unions, pseudo-parties or poiltical/social non-profits, spends a few years making contacts and learning who buried the political bodies, and then run for office, already fully groomed as a DFL candidate – who goes on to do their mentor group’s bidding, and eventually to lobby for them and/or groups like them when and if they leave office

So the corruption doesn’t confuse me. The fact that either Virnig or Brightworks had a problem with each other does.

In 2022, I predicted $17.6B “surplus” would disappear under DFL rule.   

I’m not wrong on the inevitable end result. Just the timing:

Revenue dropping. Spending ballooning. And the productive class “going Galt” and moving to Texas, Florda or Tennessee.

Things didn’t get quite as bad quite as fast as I thought – but it’s really just teasing us.

PS: Whoah. I spoke too soon – but boy, was I correct:

So I’d figured $2-3 Billion. $5B plus?

Oh, the hits do not quit:

Great job, #MNDFL

The DFL, 20-odd months ago:

Unless they’re Hunter Biden (starting just before “The Big Guy” started getting his cut from Burisma, and ending midnight Sunday).

Or Nicole Mitchell.

Or Judd Hoff.

Or Julie Blaha.

Or a whole lot of “Feeding our Future”, Childcare or Medicare fraudsters. 

Other than them, nobody’s above the law.

And Keith Ellison.  And probably Ilhan Omar. 

OK.  Now nobody’s above the law. 

Oh, Hillary Clinton!

OK. Now nobody is…

Walz comes back to Minnesota, looking like…

…well, he looks and sounds like hell quite frankly. “

“Take time to heal?”

That’s what Minnesota’s going to do after eight years, if it has the sense not to elect someone worse.

It’s always the food photos with Governor Klink.

Only this time it’s not Pronto Pups:

Huh. For the past two years, we’ve been told Minnesota’s economy is boooooooming.

Now that a Republican is president-elect, the GOP will own Congress, and the DFL trifecta is dead…well, you see how this works.

So let’s translate this from MSM to English: “Governor who claimed MN economy was booming and promised to “reduce poverty 30%” by squandering a $19B surplus, now trying to get ahead of zooming poverty by spending >1% of what DFL constituents defrauded in “Feeding our Future”.

SCENE:  In a conference room at the headquarters of Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes, a blindingly Scandinavian-looking suite of offices in a pre-war building in Saint Paul.  On one wall, a window looks out on a stunning vista the Mississippi River.  Through the other, rows of cubicles staffed by interns making fund-raising calls, as a couple of college-age boys tear down Kamala Harris posters and throw them in the trash.

In the conference room are:

• Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, community engagement manager.  She’s wearing a blue bracelet.
• Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, head meme-buffer.  She sports a new, blue Celtic Thorn tattoo on her wrist.
• Gretel STROMBERG, executive director.  She also has a blue bracelet. 
• Ken MARTIN, Chair of the MN DFL
• Martina ROBBINS, Liaison director for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota.  She’s wearing blue bracelets on each wrist. 
• Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, Democrat National Committee field staffer based in Minneapolis, and current romantic partner of Gretel Stromberg.
• MyLissa SILBERMANN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, and no way no how an active participant in regional progressive politics.   Her hair is newly-died blue. 

All look visibly cried-out. 

STROMBERG:   OK.  So, that could have gone better.  But (she says, visibly trying to convince herself), it’s a new day.  Onward and upward.  What do we say?

EVERYONE (grumbling).  We’re not going back.

BIRKENSTOCK (slightly more chipper): Tuuuuurn the page!

(The exhortation is met with grumbles). 

STROMBERG:  OK.   We’re going to get on top of the new plan.  Inge?

CARROLL: Yes.  We’re going to get women to adopt the “Four Bs – it’s a South Korean trend where women swear off dating, sex, marriage and having kids with men”.

BIRKENSTOCK:   I already broke up with my boyfriend.  

STROMBERG:  I actually ditched my partner .

MANBUNFRONDSON:  You what?

STROMBERG: Oh, yeah.  I’m  not going back…

MANBUNFRONDSON:  But…but… (tearing up a bit) Not even if I wear the Schoolgirl outfit?

MARTIN:  (a little perplexed). Hang on, Gretel. Isn’t Chad always an ally?  I mean, he wears an unironic man-bun and ran White Dudes for Harris of Minnesota…

STROMBERG:  The cause is the cause. 

(The women all nod.  Martin looks around, fall silent. MANBUNFRONDSON leaves the room, in tears)

SILBERMANN:  So that means…

CARROLL:  No dating.  No sex.  No marriage.  And noooooo babies.  None.   Complete cut-off. 

STROMBERG:  Sounds like genius.

(Everyone applauds – even Martin, gingerly – except for ROBBINS)

ROBBINS:  Wait.  No sex?

CARROLL:  Yep.  Even for your husband. Sorry. 

ROBBINS:  Oh, that train left the station five years ago.  No, here’s the problem (pulls out iPad, shows it around the table):

ROBBINS: This ingenious plan of yours will leave us broke. Busted. Bupkes.

(Silence around the table, as the murmer of the fundraising and MANBUNFRONDSON’s sobbing filters through the glass wall)

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, the legislature will appropriate money to make up for it! 

CARROLL: Yeah!  We got the trifecta!  

STROMBERG:  ONE MINNESOTA!

MARTIN:  Uhhhh, kind of a good-news, bad-news situation, here…

SCENE pulls away to the middle of the fundraising floor, to the sound of the womens’ blood-curdling screams. 

And SCENE.

Governor Walz came back to Minnesota late last week. 

And at a rally – is that the right word? – in Eagan, he started the process of…

Speaking for myself?

Govenor, you called me and half this state “Nazis”. 

You will never be my “neighbor”.  There will be no forgiveness.

More generally?  Call me cynical, but no, he’s not extending an olve branch. He’s rebooting – from two years of absolute power (“When you have political capital, you use it!” was his line when the trifecta started its ravages) to trying to set the stage for having to convince Repblicans to work with him.

And, if I may be even more cynical, to set himself up as the plucky, peace-seeking victim when they shoot down his agenda in total.

And just to be clear – the MN GOP had better shoot down the Walz/DFL agenda like Capone’s guys bouncing the rubble of Bugsy Moran’s crew at the Valentine’s Day Massacre.  We’ve waited a long time to be shown an alternative.  It’s time. 

Here’s your state rep, Luke Frederick, comparing people of faith to slave holders for dissenting from the left on trans ideology:

Please shock the world on election day, and send this hamster back to whatever coffee shop he was working at before he latched onto the DFL gravy train.

Since we have an election coming up, let’s take a trip down memory lane.

Here’s Rep. Dave Pinto, progsplaining last session why DFL prosecutors won’t go after straw buyers – because the sentences are “too low”…

…before joining his entire caucus in voting down a bill that would have increased the sentence.

Pinto will get re-elected. He’s in a nauseatingly save DFL district.

But if you live somewhere in play?

Your mission is clear.

Since Tim “Mind Your Own Business” Walz and his phalanx of lies are on the ticket next week, let’s make sure people remember this:

They warned us that if we voted GOP, fascism would erupt. And they were right.

Remember 2020?

No. 

Never forget 2020.

The Cathedral of Saint Paul seats 3000 people.

Governor Klink arbitrarily limited to 10 people. No singing.

The 617 bar in White Bear Lake seats 37 people

Bars were limited to 50. No matter how many they started with.

This is governance by “the party of science“. Never forget.

(Via former representative Matt Dean.)

In a campaign full of cringe-y ads, this may be the dumbest:

Treating husbands as the enemy seems like a bit of a tactical error.

This was the DFL in 2023:

Just want to make sure people remember this for next Tuesday.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

We’re Number 1!

Viewed from the bottom up, that is.   Or you might say, “dead last.”  Potato, potahto.

It’s talking about fiscal policy and, well…

A newly released analysis of fiscal policy ranked all 50 states with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ state coming in first and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in last.

The libertarian Cato Institute released the report, which graded states by spending, revenue and taxes. The top ten states in the rankings starting at the top are Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Dakota, Montana, Hawaii, Georgia, Idaho, and Vermont…

In 2019, Walz’s budget would have added ‘$2 billion more in new spending and taxes would increase by $1.3 billion to pay for it, with the rest of the money coming from an existing surplus.’ But he compromised with the legislature, and the final tax increase was about $330 million annually. Walz also pushed for higher gas taxes and higher vehicle fees to raise about $1 billion annually for transportation, but those increases were rejected.

Walz pushed for more tax hikes in 2021. He proposed adding a new individual income tax rate of 10.85 percent above the current top rate of 9.85 percent, a surtax on capital gains and dividends, and a hike to the corporate tax rate from 9.8 percent to 11.25 percent. The proposals—which would have raised about $1.6 billion annually—were rejected by the legislature…

Walz hit the middle class with HF 2887, which raised taxes and fees on vehicles and transportation. The increases included indexing the gas tax for inflation, increasing vehicle registration taxes, raising fees on deliveries, and raising sales taxes in the Twin Cities area.

 

 

No choking in the finals in this contest…

SCENE: In a conference room at the MN DFL headquarters. Chair Ken Martin is sitting along one side of the table with Gretel STROMBERG and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, the executive director and chief social media meme-buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Conservative Causes”, the state’s primary non-profit political action committee that is no way, no how connected with the DFL, you racist pig. Across the table sits Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, upper midwest outreach director for the Harris/Walz campaign.

MANBUNFRONDSON: So here’s the new ad we’re thinking to get out the vote in Minnesota.

(Clicks remote.  Ad flickers onto the screen)

(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look at each other.  The silence is a little awkward).

MARTIN (finally):  It’s pure genius!

(CARROLL and STROMBERG applaud politely in the background)

MANBUNFRONDSON:  We just figured that after seeing her husband’s performance during Covid, where treating the state like a bunch of addled infants for 19 months got him re-elected, that we literally couldn’t go broke betting on the stupidity of MInnesotans.

STROMBERG and CARROLL (simultaneously):  You got that right.

MANBUNFRONDSON:  So, presuming the media vetted the Governor and his wife sufficiently…

(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look awkwardly at each other. before bursting out laughing.  MANBUNFRONSON, late to the joke, joins them). 

MANBUNFRONSON:  (Catching is breath) Yeah, I know.  No matter how often I come here, I still can’t get used to this place. 

MARTIN (Summoning a butler with a clap of his hands):  Let’s celebrate!

And SCENE

For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title.

Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership.

A friend of the blog emails:

It was a town hall meeting to talk about the mess that is the Hamline Midway Neighborhood. The question was what is the city doing with Snelling University. The corner is so trashy, there is litter everywhere. 

Our council member for the area, Mitra Jalali, proposes that the priority is trees and bicycle lanes.

She says it’s either that or a place for people to park their cars.

I mean, I suppose if we eventually get rid of all of the residents and businesses in the area, then no people will be there, thereby eliminating litter.

But, I have to believe, looking towards the thriving areas of St Louis Park’s West End or the shopping area in Eagan that Jalali is probably prioritizing the wrong thing.

All of Melo’s reporting of quotes on X from that meeting are pretty entertaining as the elected people try to dodge any responsibility for where we are today in St Paul. 

 

Thats right, Councilwoman Jalali – it’s the design of the streets.

I’m adding emphasis to this next bit:

Worth looking at- Sandy Pappas saying she actually rides Green Line (but was getting a ride home from husband after the meeting). Leigh Finke saying that millions of dollars were given to DNR for trees and “they spent it in outstate which didn’t need it” so this year, gave “even more money” to Met Council “who has to spend it in the metro area.” 

Yup, our problems are not enough trees …

 

 

 

 

Until the city gets serious about crime, drug-dealing, vagrancy and vandalism – all of which are epidemic at Snelling and University – the new trees would just serve as canvasas for taggers.

Sort of like that freaking Loon at the southwest corner of the intersection. 

More on that later this week

Remember Angie Craig?

Every two years she dusts off the ads with her four-wheeling around the back roads of her district, hanging out with the good ol’ boys in LeSeuer County, trying to appear “moderate”. 

Remember Yusuf Haji? 

Probably not.  He’s running for Dakota County Commission. 

Seems pretty innocent, right?

Turns out Haji’s got friends in low – and left-wing – places:

Turns out, not so much.

Haji is affiliated with “Our Revolution Twin Cities” – a group that wants to defund the police, among a dog’s breakfast of other bad ideas. Here’s an X thread with more on ORTC.

MInd you, this is in the same community that just had two cops and a firefighter killed by someone who would have been in jail but for the DFL’s other dilution of the criminal justice system.

Thing is, this area – the DakCo Commission, the various House districts (Gabriela Kroetsch is a strong GOP challenger in HD55A), and of course Angie Craig is vulnerable enough that this district is considered a plausibly contested race. 

So if you live in the south burbs, don’t be fooled.  Haji is a Moriarty – and Angie Craig is sucking up to the radical fringe that is no longer a fringe in this metro.

 I’ve been meaning to come back to this.   A Harris/Klink op brought it up with a high hanging curveball:

Being corralled into a staged propaganda exercise?

I’ve never been a big Tim Walz fan. Quite the opposite.

But is anyone else getting some…1930s vibes?

Or perhaps more appropriately to Walz’s time in Omahongkong:

I can’t be the only one that finds that photo a little #weird in and of itself, in addition to the historical allusions (especially when you add in Walz’s “One Minnesota” slogan), can I?