GOP chairman David Hann: The DFL is taking the state in a hard-left, partisan direction

Apr. 18—ROCHESTER — Last week, the Rochester Post Bulletin published a Q&A with

DFL Party chairman Ken Martin.

The Republican Party of Minnesota took notice and asked for equal treatment. We agreed. Fair is fair.

It was an opportunity to hear from Minnesota GOP chairman David Hann about the session, the DFL's unified control of the legislative process, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its impact on the state's politics, and the prospect of former President Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination for president.

PB: We're more than halfway through the

legislative session,

and the DFL is pretty much getting their way in the legislative process. They've passed a clean energy standard that will make public utilities carbon-free by 2040, restored the vote to felons who are on parole and codified abortion rights. What's your take on it?

Hann: First of all, I think Democrats were very dishonest in their campaign last year, because in most of the races that were at least close, they campaigned on returning the $17 billion surplus. They campaigned on eliminating the Social Security tax. They talked about doing things to address the failing schools. And they are not doing any of those things.

I think the people who were looking for practical solutions are extremely disappointed in what the Democrats have done. They have driven a hard-left, very partisan position, appealing to the most extreme elements of their base. They have the power to do that.

And I think people are frustrated with the fact that the things that Democrats have campaigned on have been abandoned. There's no talk about any tax relief. They're talking about increasing taxes by spending all the surplus and then increasing taxes by billions more. And it's just remarkable that they would believe that this is something that would make sense for the people of Minnesota.

So is this going to be an issue that GOP candidates will be campaigning on in 2024?

Absolutely. I mean, my goodness, you've got a one-vote majority in the Senate that was won by a couple of hundred votes. You've got a four-vote majority in the House that also was won by a few hundred votes. These are not sweeping mandates for the kind of hard left turn that the Democrats have led the people of Minnesota. Minnesota is not a hard-left state.

They want practical solutions. They want tax relief, they want to see the surplus returned, they want to see the school system working. The school system is terrible. When I was elected to the Senate in 2003, the state budget for K-12 education was $8 billion. Now the education budget is probably over $20 million. In 2003, we talked about the achievement gap, the fact that minority students were not performing as well as white students. Democrats talked about, "Well, we've got to deal with the achievement gap." It's gotten worse. We have spent literally billions and billions of dollars in education, and it's gotten worse. Graduation rates have deteriorated. People are abandoning the public schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul for other options, charter schools and private schools. So it's just shameful what they're doing, because they're not solving the problem that most people expect.

Why hasn't the GOP been more successful in winning the governorship and other statewide races? Your party has gone 12 straight years without winning a statewide race. Why is that happening?

I think there's two major reasons. One is the distribution of population. Politically, we're a pretty evenly divided state. We have eight congressmen, four Democrats and four Republicans. So we're pretty evenly divided politically. But geographically, the distribution of voters is not uniform across the state. And so I think the challenge we have is having our statewide candidates campaign in the metro area and doing a better job with that.

The other thing that is somewhat related is the disproportionate amount of money that Democrats have raised. I don't know if you've looked at the DFL campaign finance report. It is remarkable. The DFL likes to think of itself as the party of the ordinary guy. The farmer, laborer are part of their logo. The farmers and laborers have abandoned the DFL Party.

A huge proportion of our funding comes from small donors. We probably raise more than a million dollars every year from small donors. Democrats raise about $10,000 from small donors. They don't even care. They raised about $10 million from about 20 different entities. Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, was the biggest. AFSCME, another public union, was the second largest donor. The public employment unions are big donors to the DFL Party. Then you've got five or six huge billionaires, such as Jay Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, and George Soros, who give to the DFL.

So the advantage they have in fundraising is real, but they need all that money to win. Even though they outspent us 10 to 1 last year, we had two of our statewide candidates come within 10,000 votes of winning. So you look at how much they have to spend just to barely win is remarkable. It speaks to the disingenuousness and message that it promotes: You can practically sell anything if you've got enough money, and they are proving that.

I wanted to ask you about the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election in which the liberal candidate won by a 10-point margin. Many are interpreting the outcome as another sign of how abortion rights are turning out to be a huge factor in favoring Democrats. Was the overturning of Roe v. Wade an electoral gift to Democrats?

It seems to be in the short term. They've taken advantage of this in Minnesota as an example by being very dishonest with people. The Democrats vastly outspent Republicans on abortion ads, and what was their message? Their message was that our governor candidate would ban abortion in Minnesota. Well, anybody who knows anything about the way the law works, that's not possible. In Minnesota, we had a Supreme Court decision back in the '90s that made access to an abortion a constitutional right. No governor can get elected and say, "Well we're going to ban abortion." That's not possible. Even the Legislature can't do that. In order to change the law in Minnesota would require a constitutional process and amendment. And Democrats know this. But they didn't tell anybody that they lied.

What Democrats are denying is that in the case of pregnancy, we're talking about a human being in the womb, a baby, a child, and it's a tough decision for many people. Republicans are not in favor of just banning abortions. But we do think it makes sense to have some kind of reasonable lawful structure that will be supported by the vast majority of people. And that's not what we have. Gov. Walz last year angrily denied that he supported late-term abortions. And he just signed into law the most extreme abortion bill in the world.

A betting person would put his money on Donald Trump winning the GOP presidential nomination. Do you welcome that prospect?

We're in the midst of the beginning of the presidential selection process. There are three on the Republican side who have announced their candidacies. They all deserve a fair hearing. And we have a process to do that. And until that happens, my position as the chairman of the state Republican Party is: I will support whatever candidate the Republican delegates endorse or nominate next year. And until that point, my job is to make sure that every candidate has a fair opportunity to make their case to Republican delegates in Minnesota.