Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz unveils part of his budget focusing on education and child-focused spending, at Adams Spanish Immersion Elementary, January 17, 2023, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Minnesota is typically seen as a reliably blue state. Barack Obama won it twice, Hillary Clinton won it in 2016, and Joe Biden won it once more in 2020. Heck, Walter Mondale won it (his only state victory) in 1984; Democrats haven’t lost Minnesota in presidential races since McGovern. But some of those victories were rather close—particularly in 2016, when Clinton won by less than two points, and Donald Trump ran up gigantic margins in rural areas. And in the state legislature, Republicans have historically been competitive; even when Biden won in 2020, the GOP maintained control of the state Senate.
That changed in 2022, when the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) gained three Senate seats to win a one-seat majority. It also maintained its control of the state House, and the governor’s office when Tim Walz easily won re-election—giving the party its first trifecta since 2014.
The DFL promptly set to work, passing a sweeping set of reforms that puts deeper-blue states like California, Massachusetts, or New York to shame. It’s something of a return to the DFL’s Nordic-style roots.
Probably the most significant law passed during the session was a giant expansion of labor rights. As Max Nesterak explains at Minnesota Reformer, the measure mandates paid sick days for nearly...
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