Good morning, and happy Wednesday.
Two recounts will begin Monday in a pair of tight northeastern Minnesota House races. MPR's Brian Bakst reports Republican challengers lead DFL incumbents in both the House District 3A and District 3B elections, but the results are close enough that the trailing candidates qualified for publicly funded recounts. Those start Monday and are expected to conclude by Wednesday across five counties in northeastern Minnesota. Challenged ballots would be reviewed by the state canvassing board after that. Entering the recount, 23-term DFL Rep. Mary Murphy trails Republican Natalie Zeleznikar by 35 votes. And four-term Rep. Rob Ecklund is down 15 votes to his Republican challenger, Roger Skraba. Unless either result changes, the House DFL will have a 70-64 majority next session. There is the possibility of a discretionary recount in a state Senate contest that the DFL candidate won by a wider margin. Certified results give the Senate DFL a 34-33 seat majority.
Some budget items could get early attention from the Legislature in January. Lawmakers left billions of dollars unspent when they adjourned their last session in May without adopting a budget deal. DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman told Brian Tuesday that the money presents an opportunity to move quickly on priority items when lawmakers reconvene – both on the spending side and lining up Minnesota's tax code with federal law changes. "In the finance arena, a jolt in education, a jolt in public safety, doing tax conformity would make sense to expedite," Hortman said. "And then there are other pieces that are more substantial parts of the budget debate that will have to be in the mix with all sorts of other options that might offset them."
Gov. Tim Walz said Tuesday he wants to move forward on school funding during the upcoming legislative session,reports MPR's Elizabeth Shockman. "We would like to shift the idea - we talked about this in our Due North plan - but shift some of the school funding to make sure the state's able to pick some of that up and take it off the property tax burden to provide some security in that and then to be able to do some of the things we know the research is showing us - whether it be teachers of color, or whether it be some of the strategies around literacy to try and be as innovative as we possibly can," Walz said. Minnesota schools face a deficit due to required, but inadequately funded special education and English language instruction mandates from the federal government. Other priorities of Walz's Due North plan include COVID-19 recovery for students and support for the state's teacher workforce.
And this: "Are you and Scott Jensen friends?" one student wanted to know. "This is a good question," Walz said in reply to the question about former Republican gubernatorial candidate. "I think on behalf of our entire political system, we owe you an apology. Because it pains me that these have become so terrible, so nasty." In the end, the DFL governor said he was in fact friends with Jensen, and they worked together. "We've got to do better about saying, 'You know, I disagree,'" Walz said.
Walz said the Minnesota State Fair would become a key attraction for presidential candidates next year if Minnesota moves up on the presidential primary calendar. A committee of the Democratic National Committee is set to decide later this week whether another state should replace Iowa at the start of the primary and caucus schedule. Minnesota and Michigan are thought to be the top contenders to move earlier. Walz said he hopes state Republicans will see the opportunity and agree to go along with the scheduling change. "From an economic standpoint whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, to have the focus on Minnesota early in a presidential campaign is good for both parties," Walz said. "Because if you're the Republican you can highlight things that you don't think work in progressive policies and you'll have a national stage to do that." Walz and other DFL leaders sent a letter to the DNC this week saying they are willing to change state law to move the presidential primary, since their party will control the state government next year.
A week before state finance officials release the next budget forecast, one group is pressing DFL lawmakers to quickly pass a law change allowing budget forecasters to factor inflation into their analyses starting in February. Nan Madden, the Minnesota Budget Project's director, told reporters on Tuesday that "especially in a time of high inflation, the lack of that information is especially distorting." Minnesota used to include the projected impact of inflation on state spending in its forecasts but lawmakers roughly two decades ago opted to cut the figures from state forecasts. Madden said she was hopeful that with DFL control of both legislative chambers and the governor's office, the appeal for reinstituting the inflation estimate will have a good shot in 2023.
A guilty verdict in a key Jan. 6 case. Here's the New York Times story: Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, and one of his subordinates were convicted on Tuesday of seditious conspiracy as a jury found them guilty of seeking to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power through a plot that started after the 2020 election and culminated in the mob attack on the Capitol. But the jury in Federal District Court in Washington found three other defendants in the case not guilty of sedition and acquitted Mr. Rhodes of two separate conspiracy charges. The split verdicts, coming after three days of deliberations, were nonetheless a victory for the Justice Department and the first time in nearly 20 trials related to the Capitol attack that a jury decided that the violence that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, was the product of an organized conspiracy.
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