Readers Write: Minnesota Legislature, 2024 election results

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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The dust is settling on the aftermath of the 2024 elections.

The Minnesota House is likely winding up in a tie, 67-67. When that happened the last time in 1979, it was not a smooth time for state government and was very problematic.

Allow me to offer advice on how leaders might organize themselves. Having served in the state House for 16 years and now currently in the Senate for the past nine years, I have had a lot of time to watch the inside.

Complicating the even count in the House is that we are coming off a very contentious end to the last legislative session. Tempers flared, partisan cloture votes were taken, and both sides went home feeling that they were right, bearing bruises they did not expect.

We must all rise above the hurts of the past. Not easy. But we must live in the present and look to the future.

The House can show the way.

My suggestions:

This system will create a very strong reliance on committee work, which will make them very meaningful in the legislative process. If it can pass a committee, then it has a decent chance to pass the House floor. Those collaborative legislative outcomes may well be the final version that becomes law.

Minnesotans said that they wanted its elected officials to work together. Let us listen to them.

Sen. Jim Abeler, Anoka

The writer is a Republican state senator from District 35.

Democrats who want to attribute the result of the presidential election to racism and misogyny are doomed to repeat their loss. Populism is a worldwide movement with strong, diverse leadership. One only has to see its development in France and Germany, led by women, and to note its growth among the U.S. nonwhite population to recognize the mistake.

Populists view the Democratic Party with enormous distrust. They see an educated, elite group of policymakers, largely unaccountable to the rank-and-file voter. They see candidates who are not vetted by the voting public. How many people looked at the transition to the Kamala Harris candidacy and wondered who is calling the shots? There is no such ambiguity among Republicans.

But more important, they see a Democratic Party that demonizes them for prioritizing their own household economics over every other issue. A campaign against conservative social values, where everywhere you look you see racism and misogyny, does not resonate with populists. Populism scores because people fear someone is getting something more than they themselves are getting, whether it is tax breaks for the 1% or work permits for refugees. Put yourself in the place of a legal immigrant who has to wait for a work permit when someone claiming refugee status got one much sooner.

The common denominator is not xenophobia, or bigotry, or sexism. It is an overriding concern for your own house. Democrats would do well to lay aside the demonization and pay attention to how they can speak to that. They should be listening to advice from Democrats who have succeeded in tapping into populist issues. Probably Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the most recent examples.

It will be an uphill climb, mostly because much of what voters perceive is wrong with the party is true. They are imperious technocrats who want to dictate priorities and candidates, and do not listen. But as long as they continue to blame “deplorable” voters for their own losses, they will rack up more.

Regina Anctil, Minneapolis

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In response to the letters analyzing why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election (“Where the Democrats went wrong,” Readers Write, Nov. 8): Many complained about the Democrats’ messaging to voters in the 2024 election with concerns this will continue to cost them elections. I disagree.

I would remind everyone that the Democrats have held the White House for 12 of the past 16 years, winning three of the past five elections, including the previous one in 2020. Further, the Republican candidate lost in 2020, then won in 2024 against a different opponent. Democrats have won lots of recent campaigns. They won the Senate in 2022 and kept the margin small in the House. Democrats have won governors’ races including in red states like Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas.

The pattern is that the Democratic Party lost the presidential election only twice over the past 16 years. Those two losses were when they had a female candidate for president. Each time, which is atypical in American politics, the female presidential candidates clearly won their respective debates but still lost the election.

I don’t think this election loss was about poor messaging by the Democratic candidate or the party.

Jennifer Nash-Wright, Fifty Lakes, Minn.

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To the people who complained about the bombardment of election texts, voicemails, relentless television and radio ads, billboards, lawn signs, social media posts, etc. — quit whining. All these minor irritations are a very insignificant price to pay for the gift of our democratic, free elections.

Bruce Lemke, Orono

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Analysis of the recent election process yields one outstanding fact. The leadership of the Democratic National Committee is incompetent. It stubbornly insisted that a diminished President Joe Biden could defeat Donald Trump and, sadly, many other Democrats agreed with that assessment. Anybody who questioned the almighty authority of the DNC was ridiculed and shunned. (U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips deserves an apology.) Then the country had to witness the embarrassment of Biden’s performance on national TV before acknowledging his ineptness. There were many other Democratic candidates who could have defeated Trump, but the DNC interfered with the primary system and intimidated anybody who would have stepped up to run. The late entry of Harris was a desperate gamble with disappointing results. In my opinion, the DNC chair, Jaime Harrison, needs to resign and apologize for his incompetence, and he needs to take the rest of his team with him.

Robert Malecki, Brooklyn Park

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The implication of Friday’s large-font, boldfaced headline, “Peaceful transition pledged by Biden,” is troubling. Are we celebrating normality now? Please provide evidence that Biden had other intentions before featuring this sort of hyperbole ... if you actually have any.

Robert Hengelfelt, St. Paul

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I take exception to the headline “Peaceful transition pledged by Biden.” Accurate? Yes. But it’s scarcely newsworthy. Of course Biden will peacefully transfer power. When have Democrats failed to facilitate a peaceful transition? When Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, we Democrats did not rush into the street with guns or attack the Capitol. We didn’t spreads lies about the election being stolen. We respected the rule of law and the arcane features of our presidential electoral system. This is a lot more than you can say about what the other side did in 2020. So please stop drawing false equivalences. Harris graciously conceded. Biden will help smooth the transition. Let’s give credit where it is due, to them, and to all of us Democrats who are not foaming at the mouth and threatening people with lethal weapons.

Mary Yee, St. Paul