This Minnesota legislative session is poised to begin like 1971’s

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“Historically sour.” “Unprecedented.” That’s how this newspaper’s superb State Capitol reporters characterized last week’s stumbling run-up to the Minnesota Legislature’s 2025 session, which is due to commence Tuesday.

That’s an almost-apt description, I thought. A DFL boycott of the session’s start? The en masse no-show that House DFL leader Melissa Hortman threatened last week would indeed be a first for Minnesota, though the stunt has occurred often enough elsewhere to get its own tabulation page on Ballotpedia.

But refusal to seat an apparently elected legislator, as threatened by House GOP leader Lisa Demuth? I detected a faint historical rhyme there. It sent me back to January 1971 to recall and retell the strange ordeal of Duluth state Sen. Richard Palmer.

To be sure, Palmer’s circumstances 54 years ago don’t neatly match those this year of Shakopee DFL Rep. Brad Tabke, the fellow whom House Republicans say they might not allow to take office. Palmer, who caucused with the Conservatives after running as an independent, won his 1970 race by a clear margin of more than 3,300 votes, while Tabke’s lead is a scant 14 votes. Palmer’s race didn’t feature the disappearance of any ballots, whereas last year’s race in Scott County’s District 54A has been contested in court because 20 absentee ballots went uncounted and were presumably discarded.

But this much is parallel: Both Palmer and Tabke wound up on political hot seats when near-ties in their respective chambers positioned them to affect which party would be in charge.

And as Palmer’s case did in 1971, what happens to Tabke could test the legal limits and political consequences of a Minnesota legislative body’s ability to deny a seat to the holder of a valid election certificate.

Palmer’s troubles began with a lawsuit alleging unfair campaign practices. It seems his father, Duluth Budgeteer shopper-newspaper owner/publisher Herbert Palmer, was only too happy in August 1970 to publish accusations of special-interest dealing by Palmer’s opponent, incumbent Liberal Sen. Francis “Frenchy” LaBrosse. Frenchy sued, saying the charges were false, defamatory and a violation of state campaign law.

Further: Palmer told voters that he would caucus with whichever party held the Senate majority. As his bad luck would have it, the Senate wound up divided 33-33 plus Palmer, who then announced that he would made it 34-33 for the Conservatives. (Party designation would not begin at the Legislature until 1973.)

The courts punted LaBrosse’s campaign-practices lawsuit to the Senate. That gave Senate Liberals, led by the legendary Nicholas Coleman, the pretext they needed on Jan. 5, 1971, to refuse to administer the oath of office to Palmer and, when he apparently took the oath anyway, to refuse to allow him to vote on the appointment of the Senate’s top administrator.

If Palmer could not vote, could a 33-33 tie be broken? Yes, by the Senate’s presiding officer, claimed that officer — DFL Lt. Gov. and future Gov. Rudy Perpich, Coleman’s co-conspirator in this ploy.

Senate Conservatives howled that Perpich had exceeded his authority, both in attempting to deny Palmer the oath of office and in casting a tie-breaking vote. In a 6-1 decision on Jan. 13, 1971, the state Supreme Court agreed. A week of confusion and chaos was over. By mid-February, the campaign-practices charge against Palmer was settled with a published apology in the Budgeteer.

Minnesotans will do well if this year’s drama over House control concludes as quickly and quietly.

The 1971 legal case turned on the Senate role of the lieutenant governor — a role no longer assigned to that office after a 1972 constitutional change that may have been spurred by the events of January 1971. That’s a key point of difference with today’s House tussle. It’s a difference that might embolden Republicans to believe they are free to do to Tabke what Coleman and Perpich could not pull off with Palmer.

But what is legally permissible might still be inadvisable, for democracy’s sake. Democracy in these parts will suffer if the upshot of the Tabke case is that a close election, combined with a minor administrative error, is enough to justify vacating a seat and forcing a new election.

Likewise, a nasty precedent will be set if DFLers make good on their threat to boycott the session’s start because Republicans plan to seize their 67-66 advantage, temporary though it may be. Close elections and narrow legislative margins have become commonplace in Minnesota. They don’t excuse those elected from their duty to govern.

My history foray produced one more observation that I hope turns out to be “almost apt.” The Palmer episode generated so much partisan hostility that observers at the time expected little or nothing to come of the 1971 session. Then as now, the Legislature’s majorities were small, and good will at the Capitol was at a low ebb.

Yet the 1971 Legislature — after the longest special session in state history — produced the Minnesota Miracle, the state revenue-sharing scheme for schools and local governments that was among the Legislature’s finest 20th-century achievements.

The coda: Don’t judge a legislative session by its opening weeks.

Lori Sturdevant is a retired Star Tribune editorial writer and author. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.