Minnesota’s ‘historic’ session of progressive legislation could be NC’s story | Opinion
When I visited St. Paul, Minn., last week, I was physically in another state capital and politically in another world.
Minnesota is governed by a partisan trifecta. The Democratic Party – or the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party as it’s known there – controls the governorship as well as the state House and Senate. This year, that total control intersected with a record $17.5 billion budget surplus.
Equipped with votes and money, the Democrats went to town. Or, as their Republican opponents put it, they went “bonkers.”
Democrats checked off a long wish list of progressive priorities. The highlights of passed legislation include: protecting abortion rights, more funding for public schools, free meals for all students., a $1 billion housing bill to assist renters and first-time homebuyers, paid family leave, a new tax on multinational, corporations, a $2.6 billion infrastructure plan, tax rebate for middle and low-income Minnesotans, legalized marijuana, red flag and safe storage gun laws and a requirement that state utilities use only carbon-free sources to generate electricity by 2040.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said victories in the November elections let Democratic take full control of the legislature and show that progressive priorities can become law despite a rightward shift in other states
“If people have begun to lose faith in democracy, look to Minnesota, when we show up when we vote with our values, when we say that we are going to take care of each other, when everyone is in and no one is out. It matters. And these are the results that you can get,” she said.
What a contrast with the mood in Raleigh. where Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper tried unsuccessfully to prevent the override of his veto of a 12-week abortion ban that has bitterly split the state. This week, he declared that Republican legislation accelerating tax cuts and expanding vouchers for private schools has created a “state of emergency” for public education.
Republican legislative leaders, empowered by their veto-proof majorities, dismissed the governor’s alarm as “a stunt.”
In many ways, the political history and traditions of Minnesota are far removed from North Carolina, but in other ways the two are similar. Until Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2011, North Carolina prided itself as a forward-thinking leader of the New South.
Demographically, the two states have similar trends. In Minnesota, population and political power has accrued to the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. In North Carolina, population, wealth and influence are increasingly centered in the not-so-twin, but equally blue cities of Raleigh and Charlotte.
Though a political chasm now yawns between the two states, North Carolina Democrats should see cause for hope in what happened in Minnesota.
Before the political dam broke, Minnesota’s legislature had been mired in gridlock brought on by a divided government. Legislation was incremental. The progressive agenda was stymied. Then, thanks to close but crucial Democratic election victories and a state budget boosted by federal aid from a Democratic Congress, a renaissance arrived.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said of the change from Republican obstruction to Democratic execution: “You would come here and you’d have a list of things that were well thought out and would improve people’s lives, and [Republicans] would treat it like a wish list. ‘Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that cute.’ Those days are over. That wish list is a to-do list and we’re checking it off.”
Minnesota Democrats got what they wished for. Next they’ll get the credit or blame for how things work out. But at least and at last Democrats’ ideas about improving people’s lives will be fully tried.
It can happen in North Carolina, too, just as it did a few years ago in Virginia.
North Carolina is changing. Frustration with Republicans’ autocratic, intrusive and miserly legislation is growing. But getting North Carolina to Minnesota’s moment will take more than wishing. It will require getting all those who are dissatisfied, hurting and worried after 13 years of Republican control to get up and get out to vote
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
