Legislative leaders puzzling out split House rules before likely recounts

Minnesota’s last legislative session ended in a partisan meltdown, with House members literally shouting at each other on the floor until the midnight deadline to pass bills. Come next year, the parties might have to play nice with each other if they want to get anything done at all.

And Minnesota is going into a budget year, without the record-breaking surplus the state had in 2023.

Control of the state House hinges on as many as two recounts. On Wednesday, DFL Reps. Brad Tabke of Shakopee and Dan Wolgamott held narrow leads over their Republican challengers, Aaron Paul and Sue Ek.

Tabke is ahead of Paul by a mere 13 ballots.

Late Thursday, Sherburne County election staff identified absentee ballots received by the U.S. Postal Service that weren’t included in the unofficial totals uploaded to the Minnesota Secretary of State website on election night, according to a statement issued Thursday night by Sherburne County Administrator Bruce Messelt, Wolgamott’s lead widened to 191 votes, outside the threshold for an automatic recount.

If the margin is 0.5 percentage points or smaller, candidates can request a taxpayer-funded recount. Reached Wednesday, Ek and Paul said they were both looking forward to the recounts, though recounts won’t begin until later this month.

“Over 9,000 voters voted for me,” Ek said. “It’s only fair to them that we are confirmed in the results.”

Wolgamott and Tabke both declared victory in emailed statements on Wednesday afternoon.

No matter who wins those two seats this month, Democrats will no longer enjoy full control in St. Paul.

Though DFLers still control the state Senate, and Gov. Tim Walz will return to Minnesota as governor, the party will have a serious check on its agenda in the House.

House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said her goal this election season was to end the DFL’s trifecta. A tied House accomplishes that goal, she said Wednesday afternoon during a news conference.

“We wanted a little bit more than that,” Demuth said. Neither she nor House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, expected recounts to change the even split.

“It looks like when we flipped that coin the quarter landed on its side,” Hortman said during a separate news conference Wednesday.

Hortman and Demuth said they believed both parties in the House could work together, and each said she has a good working relationship with the other.

“The question is, do all the members?” Hortman asked.

The leaders have yet to start hashing out the details of a power-sharing agreement. The House Democratic caucus is set to vote on its leadership Thursday afternoon, and Hortman said she will seek leadership again. The Republican caucus votes Friday morning. When the party leaders are in place, Demuth and Hortman said, power-sharing negotiations can start.

An evenly divided House is not unprecedented, Hortman said.

An even 67-67 split in the Legislature last happened in the 1979 session, which ended in its own kind of partisan meltdown.

In 1979, Republicans held the speakership, in exchange for giving Democrats leadership of the most powerful committees. But the session ended with a Republican member forced out for campaign law violations.

Hortman called the 1979 arrangement “archaic” and said she was researching more recent power-sharing models in other state legislatures.

After the way last session ended, which Hortman characterized as a three-week filibuster, she said she hoped shared power could lead to more getting done because it would not make any sense to bring a partisan bill to the floor knowing it could not pass.

More work should be done in committees, she said, to make bills acceptable to more representatives and head off the hours of filibuster-like debates seen in 2024.

“You wouldn’t have that kind of dynamic on the floor where one party lays down on the railroad tracks,” Hortman said. She said both parties might be interested in rule changes that would lead to fewer dead-end bills being introduced and representatives spending less time on drawn-out debates.

“There was quite a bit of loudness with bills that were being pushed through,” Demuth said. “That does not have to be the way.”

“We should be able to set a two-year bipartisan budget without any histrionics,” Hortman said.