Minnesota Democrats credit Roe, anxiety over democracy in taking control of state government

Heading into election night, Minnesota Democrats braced for a predicted "red wave" that would give Republicans control of the Legislature and perhaps deny Gov. Tim Walz a second term.

That wave never materialized.

Instead, Democrats say, new redistricting maps, anxiety over the future of democracy and voters fired up over the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade helped the party defy expectations and take complete control of state government for the first time since 2014. Though some close races had yet to be officially called, Republicans in the House and Senate on Wednesday conceded both chambers to Democrats.

"If you show up, you can flip a Senate in a midterm election. You never know what you can do," said Senate Minority Leader Melisa López Franzen, calling the DFL's one-vote victory in the chamber the "Minnesota Senate miracle."

Democrats, who maintained control of the House and governor's office, are headed to the Capitol in January with newfound power and a multibillion-dollar budget surplus on the bottom line to help them enact priorities most thought weren't possible before Tuesday night. DFL leaders on Wednesday previewed some of those priorities, from codifying abortion rights and paid parental leave to more funding for classrooms, health care and public safety.

"We are sitting on one of the largest surpluses per capita of any place in the country," Walz said. "That gives us an opportunity to do those things: Make communities safe, invest in people to make sure we reduce the pains of inflation, invest in education."

Walz said Minnesotans should expect progress, not gridlock, now that Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches.

The result defies recent precedent, which suggested major losses for Democrats after two years in which the party has controlled the White House and Congress. Democrats won the House in the 2006 and 2018 midterms during the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, while Republicans flipped it in 2010 and 2014 during Barack Obama's presidency.

In 2002, Republicans managed to maintain control of the Minnesota House under new redistricting maps in the middle of Bush's first term, buoyed by looming fears of recession and the impending Iraq War.

This year, Minnesota's court-drawn redistricting maps released in February gave Democrats an advantage. In the state Senate, 37 of the newly drawn districts out of 67 total favored Biden in the 2020 election. In the 134-seat House, 77 new districts favored Biden in 2020, five more than the old map.

"We had a fantastic map and the U.S. Supreme Court really declared war on personal liberty and personal freedoms with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe," said DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman. "Those circumstances are very similar to 2002, when the Republicans got a good map that year and the country was on a war footing."

This midterm, Senate Republicans had significantly more GOP incumbents running in battleground areas after six years in power. In the House, Republicans needed just four seats to win back control, and they saw a path through a combination of winning reddening rural districts and key suburban battlegrounds. Republicans also saw rising crime and inflation as top issues for voters, which they believed would give them an edge.

In a Tuesday interview before results came in, Republican House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt predicted state Democrats would have a "tough night."

"I think it's a rebuke of their inaction on a lot of issues and their failed policies on a lot of others," Daudt said.

In a statement conceding the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Jeremy Miller said his caucus will "continue to fight for keeping life affordable for working Minnesotans and seniors, safer communities and support for law enforcement, and more opportunities for students to be successful in the classroom and beyond."

Daudt and Miller declined interview requests Wednesday.

Republican candidates outperformed Trump's 2020 margin in many of the new districts, and they won five seats in northeastern Minnesota. But it wasn't enough to make up for Democrats' strong performance in suburban districts, as well as victories in places such as St. Cloud, Moorhead and Rochester.

Legislative Democrats outraised Republicans, according to the last round of campaign finance reports filed before the election. The DFL House and Senate caucuses each reported raising about $6 million, compared to closer to $2 million each for the two GOP caucuses.

Democrats also returned to knocking on doors this cycle, after stopping during the height of the pandemic. Hortman said her team reached 700,000 doors, while Senate Democrats say they knocked on more than a half-million doors. López Franzen said candidates heard from voters about abortion access and ending political gridlock.

Walz's victory set a new precedent for Democrats, who had never before won four consecutive terms in the governor's office.

He led in nearly every poll leading up to Election Day and vastly outmatched Republican Scott Jensen in campaign resources, but Democrats feared lower turnout in the metro and enthusiastic voters in conservative rural areas could put a Republican candidate over the top.

Jensen flipped a handful of rural counties that Walz won in 2018, but the governor made up for it by getting a higher percentage of the votes than he did four years ago in both Hennepin and Ramsey counties — the state's most populous — as well as suburban Washington and Dakota counties.

"The sense of hopefulness and optimism that I feel is not just from winning an election," Walz said. "It's a validation of how we won this election and the things we talked about ... rejecting a negative, divisive view of Minnesota and choosing that 'One Minnesota' is not a slogan. It's the true belief that we can work across differences."

Walz said Republicans' rhetoric on crime may not have resonated with voters, adding that they blamed Democrats while offering few solutions of their own.

"I want to just be very clear that crime and violent crime being up is unacceptable," he said. "But I think it was oversimplified and I think a lot of Minnesotans said, 'Pointing out that problem without offering a solution does us nothing.' "

Reflecting on the results early Wednesday, Jensen acknowledged there was no red wave, "it was a blue wave."

"We need to stop, we need to recalibrate, we need to ask ourselves, OK, what can we learn from this? What can we do better? How can we go forward?" he said.

Heading into election night, Minnesota had one of the nation's few divided legislatures. Along with Minnesota, Democrats won trifectas in Michigan, Maryland and Massachusetts. Results were still pending in other states.

López Franzen, who is leaving the Senate, noted the chamber will have to take a measured approach with only a one-seat majority. House Democrats held a narrow lead in the chamber, pending final results and recounts. DFL Sen. Erin Murphy, who helped lead the campaign to take back the chamber, said she wants the Senate to push an ambitious policy agenda even with the narrowest of margins.

"Rather than thinking about the ideological spectrum of center and left and right, we should be thinking about what we're doing to improve the lives of Minnesotans," Murphy said.

Senate DFLers said they plan to hold hearings on paid family leave, preventing price-gouging, marijuana legalization and other issues that weren't considered when Republicans were in control. Walz also supports legalizing marijuana.

"Especially on the cannabis legalization, adult use, that was simply the Senate stalling on that," Walz said. "I assume now that there may be more of a desire."