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There’s something fishy going on in St. Paul
We are far enough away from St. Paul that we don’t feel inclined to comment often on the shenanigans that take place there. But the Walz administration has been playing fast and loose with the rules lately. This needs to stop.
DFL governor Tim Walz and his Secretary of State Steve Simon have flaunted the requisite openness and inclusiveness of the election process by ramming through two elections in order to try to keep the Republicans from gaining power in the Legislature. Control in each body is down to one vote in the Senate and tied in the House. But that looks to be changing rapidly.
For some perspective, prior to last year’s trifecta, any election bill brought forth had to have bipartisan support to pass. Elections were separated from the political rancor and both sides worked together to make changes. That is no longer the case. For that reason, and others, the faith in Minnesota’s election process has waned.
In the past week there have been two elected offices, one in the House and one in the Senate where Walz has overstepped. The House one involved a race for District 42B which includes the cities of Roseville and Shoreview where the DFL winner didn’t live in the district where he was running. This was brought to court and sure enough, the Republicans were right, he didn’t meet the residency requirements. Then things went sideways.
First, the incumbent, Jamie Becker-Finn decided not to run for re-election. She didn’t resign, she just didn’t run. Her term runs until she is replaced by the winning candidate. Except Walz conveniently ignored that fact.
Walz issued a writ of special election to fill a vacancy in House District 40B in Ramsey County following the resignation of Representative-elect Curtis Johnson. But Johnson was never sworn in. He was never a State Representative. No matter, Walz ignored the facts and for that matter, the law.
To make matters worse, Walz provided only four days (two business days) for candidates to file. He made the announcement late on Friday, Dec. 27 and filings closed Dec. 31. The election was set for Jan. 28 with a primary on Jan. 14. What else is on Jan. 14? The start of the Legislative session.
An even more atrocious timeline was put in place following the recent death of Sen. Kari Dziedzic. Here Walz barely gave 24 hours for people to file. He announced the filing on Dec. 30 with a deadline the next day, Dec. 31 at 5 p.m.
If you’re still following along, there is a third seat that may be back in play. Republicans filed a lawsuit in a state House race where the incumbent Democrat won by 14 votes, but investigators found that election workers destroyed 20 valid absentee ballots after failing to count them.
We need to have elections be non-partisan and for people to have faith in the process. Sadly, that has changed under the leadership of Tim Walz. And his recent actions have only made it worse.
Power does funny things to people and we certainly saw that when Walz was on the national stage. We’re not sure what happened to him but these latest moves are fraught with power and politics over people and procedure.
