Posted on 05/14/2003 11:06:04 AM PDT by Gideon7
ST. PAUL - Minnesota's Republicans have translated their sweeping wins in last year's election into swift victories in this year's legislative session.
A 24-hour waiting period on abortions was signed into law. Permits to carry handguns in public will soon be available to more people. And the Department of Children, Families and Learning is dismantling the Profile of Learning and building a set of academic standards from scratch.
All those issues had some DFL backing, but they've topped the Republican agenda for years. While support has grown incrementally since Republicans took control of the House in 1999, the stronger conservative leaning of the Legislature this year boosted them over the top.
"It'd be hard to classify it so far as anything less than a wildly successful session," said David Strom, legislative director for the conservative Taxpayers League of Minnesota. "On all the big issues that the conservatives ran on, the remarkable thing is how easily they've gone through. It certainly looks like a sea change has taken place in Minnesota politics."
Republican strategist Sarah Janecek said conservatives this session have logged the biggest slate of victories on policy issues in the history of the state.
Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said he's withholding final judgment on accomplishments until the budget's balanced.
But one thing, he said, is clear: The Tim Pawlenty administration has succeeded in controlling the agenda where the Jesse Ventura administration failed.
"I think the Republican Party has been very effective in marshalling its forces, focusing on its top priorities and holding together a durable coalition to support its primary objectives," Jacobs said. "There's a good chain of command and enough troops on the ground."
Republicans boast a 28-seat margin in the House and have narrowed the DFL's majority in the Senate to three seats. The changes in the Legislature's makeup are due in part to last year's once-per-decade exercise of redrawing district boundaries, which shifted more seats to growing Twin Cities suburbs.
Last week, Pawlenty stopped by a meeting of Republican legislators and urged them to hang tough against using state tax increases to erase a $4.23 billion budget deficit.
"We need to stand for what we believe in," he said. "Be strong. Keep the faith."
See also Whether fresh air or ill wind, change blows into Minnesota for a more slanted piece by the (Red) Star Tribune.
The MN Independent Republican (IR) party has finally got its organizational act together. The GOP parties that are in trouble (such as in IL and CA) can learn some tactics from these guys.
While it is enjoyable to see the utter despair from the left, Pawlenty, the Repub Governor who has sworn not to raise taxes and is proposing modest cuts has been blindsided by former moderate GOP governors, a Fed Reserve VP who's been pretty level, and a few others.
IOW, while we won the battle last year and now are winning on legislation, they need our support and votes.
For many years the Republican candidates' states were portrayed in BLUE and the Democrats' in RED. It fit the ideology well! Still does! You have to understand some Democrat consultant figured they were losing votes because of the visual connotation, and got their friends in the press to go along.
I, for one, REFUSE to refer to a state that votes conservative as a RED state!!
Bill to Cap Liability Heads for Pawlenty's Signature
A bill to limit potential liability in lawsuits seeking monetary damages, a longstanding high priority of the Minnesota business community, passed the House and the Senate on Tuesday en route to a receptive Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Under the bill, defendants can't be held fully responsible for an entire damage award unless determined to be more than 50 percent at fault. The current threshold is 15 percent.
This is huge. It nukes the whole trial-lawyer's scam of hitting the big-pockets defendants for when they are only 15% liable. The new level is 50%.
That's why the map during the night of Reagan's reelection looked like a swimming pool. It's also why all those maps that break down the states by counties show all the red for Bush.
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