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Notes -
A quorum bust in a blue state. My oh my. Here in red Texas we just elected a house speaker with more democrat votes than republicans.
But I have to wonder- in practice, a 50%+1 majority usually means you need to work with the opposing party at least a little bit anyways. What do democrats think they’re avoiding?
Texas politics is insane. Dems have realized they can have a friendly speaker by getting a small number if republicans to defect.
It’s more like 40% than a small number.
Why did 40% defect?
Because the Texas GOP is one of the most far right state Republican parties and the defectors are mostly establishment types uncomfortable with the possibility of, say, re-criminalizing sodomy, invading Mexico, or holding a secession vote. The furthest right caucus which actually literally unironically wants to do those things has enough votes to accomplish at least some of their priorities when in a coalition and Dustin Burrows is, yes a squishy establishment type, but not really a centrist.
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There was an elaborate power-sharing agreement put in place after the election resulted in a tie, with leadership positions held jointly by members of both parties. These leadership positions are set at the beginning of the session and remain in place for the entire session. Importantly, these positions control the agenda of the house and its committees, so the power sharing agreement effectively ensured that neither party could push out the other's agenda. That tie was disrupted by the disqualification of a DFL member, giving the GOP a temporary majority until a special election is held. The GOP is trying to take advantage of that temporary majority to appoint its members to all the leadership positions before the special election (likely) restores the tie. The DFL tried to fast-track that special election, but the courts denied it. Now they are trying to stall until the election can be held and the tie restored so the power sharing agreement would also get restored.
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I expect the short-term is just that the DFL wanted to use the state (and its funds) for Trump Resistance, and expect that 'legitimizing' the state House will get in the way of that. There's a ticking time bomb here -- MN uses biannual budget bills, they start in the July of every odd-numbered year, they're usually /passed/ by mid-May, and in practice this means that the DFL have a lot of leverage near something they really want (with all the fulcrum connotations that proximity means).
That said, Minnesota's politics are unusually fucked. This is from 2022, but it gives you a better idea of exactly how polarized a lot of state is -- and if anything, understates it, since several of the 'closer' red counties are close because of the faults in a politician, rather than much love for blue tribe positions.
In practice, Walz is still governor and will be for years, but certain antics mean that Red politicians are going to play things a lot more aggressively themselves.
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That's the mysterious part of it to me - there is no long term win here. Are they going to stay away from the legislature for a whole year until they get a simple majority? I don't know if they have a long-term strategy.
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