In Minnesota, Case Study for Political Shake-Up
New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON
ST. PAUL — Somehow over the years it became embedded in the culture of the Minnesota Legislature that the party in control of the House of Representatives was entitled to the fourth- and fifth-floor offices across the street from the Capitol.
The minority party, on the other hand, was relegated to the second and third floors, which are pretty much identical, legislators say, but for the connotations of history.
Now the upstairs-downstairs shift is on. Democrats, having taken power, are even shopping for the best digs on the upper floors while the current occupants are still inside.
“It’s really a free-for-all,” said State Representative Nora Slawik, a Democrat from the Minneapolis suburbs.
Who ends up where is only the beginning of the tumult under the Capitol dome here as eager new faces and deeply practiced old ones contemplate what Minnesota voters said on Election Day. Money, policy and tactical choices are all in play: how best to spend a $2 billion surplus and address what both parties see as a mandate for improving public education, health care and transportation and for making taxes more fair.
Nationally, the Democrats picked up more than 350 seats in state legislatures in November, 25 of them in Minnesota, and gained control of 10 chambers, including the Minnesota House. Two other states shifted either to Republican control or to a tie. The cumulative impact, deeper and broader than any election’s since the Republican landslide of 1994, is still unfolding.
Minnesota’s capital is in many ways the perfect petri dish for testing what the nation’s new political landscape may produce. Once predictably Democratic in national politics, the anchor of Upper Midwest liberal populism from the 1920s through Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, Minnesota is now considered a battleground, with the Republicans scheduled to hold their national convention in 2008 in Minneapolis and St. Paul around that declaration.
(The rest is here.)
By KIRK JOHNSON
ST. PAUL — Somehow over the years it became embedded in the culture of the Minnesota Legislature that the party in control of the House of Representatives was entitled to the fourth- and fifth-floor offices across the street from the Capitol.
The minority party, on the other hand, was relegated to the second and third floors, which are pretty much identical, legislators say, but for the connotations of history.
Now the upstairs-downstairs shift is on. Democrats, having taken power, are even shopping for the best digs on the upper floors while the current occupants are still inside.
“It’s really a free-for-all,” said State Representative Nora Slawik, a Democrat from the Minneapolis suburbs.
Who ends up where is only the beginning of the tumult under the Capitol dome here as eager new faces and deeply practiced old ones contemplate what Minnesota voters said on Election Day. Money, policy and tactical choices are all in play: how best to spend a $2 billion surplus and address what both parties see as a mandate for improving public education, health care and transportation and for making taxes more fair.
Nationally, the Democrats picked up more than 350 seats in state legislatures in November, 25 of them in Minnesota, and gained control of 10 chambers, including the Minnesota House. Two other states shifted either to Republican control or to a tie. The cumulative impact, deeper and broader than any election’s since the Republican landslide of 1994, is still unfolding.
Minnesota’s capital is in many ways the perfect petri dish for testing what the nation’s new political landscape may produce. Once predictably Democratic in national politics, the anchor of Upper Midwest liberal populism from the 1920s through Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, Minnesota is now considered a battleground, with the Republicans scheduled to hold their national convention in 2008 in Minneapolis and St. Paul around that declaration.
(The rest is here.)
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