On several important fronts, the political battles of the next few years will focus on the states rather than on Washington D.C. With a second Trump Administration coming on January 20, the agenda for the federal government is set. The states remain hotbeds of conflict.
John Hinderaker reports from not-as-blue-as-you-may-think Minnesota:
Minnesota is sometimes seen as a blue state, but in fact it is balanced on a knife’s edge, at least when it comes to legislative control. In nine days our 2025 legislative session will begin, amid scenes of turmoil. In the wake of the 2024 election, the Minnesota House was equally divided, 67-67, while since 2022 Democrats have controlled the Senate by a single vote, 34-33. But the battle for control of the state’s legislature is just heating up.
A Democratic House candidate, Curtis Johnson, cheated and got caught. He did not live in the district where he ran, in violation of state law. His Republican opponent filed an election contest, which was upheld by a judge who enjoined the DFL “winner” from taking a seat in the House. That means that when the House convenes, Republicans will have a 67-66 edge, which will allow them to elect the Speaker, Lisa Demuth, and take charge of the committees.
In the Senate, meanwhile, DFLer Nicole Mitchell goes on trial for first degree burglary next month. Assuming she is convicted of a felony–she was caught red-handed–she probably will have to resign, thus temporarily creating a 33-33 standoff in the Senate.
Quite a knife-edge tarantella, eh? But with Tim Walz in the governor’s mansion, your Curmudgeon’s money is on continued Democrat dominance. Remember: politicians seek power above all other things. And Republican politicians are quite as purchaseable as Democrats, if the right earmarks, subventions, and committee assignments are waved under their noses.
It’s in the state legislatures, especially the ones in coastal states, that the greater part of Leftist institutional corruption has occurred. Yet prominent news organs, including regional ones, tend to gloss over those developments. Ferdinand Lundberg explained it to us some time ago:
Public attention, indeed, usually centers on only a few lower legislatures — Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois — and the impression is thereby fostered in the unduly trusting that the ones they don’t hear about are on the level. But such an impression is false. The ones just mentioned come into more frequent view because their jurisdictions are extremely competitive and the pickings are richer. Fierce fights over the spoils generate telltale commotion. Most of the states are quieter under strict one-party quasi-Soviet Establishment dominance, with local newspapers cut in on the gravy. Public criticism and information are held to a minimum, grousers are thrown a bone, and not many in the local populace know or really care. Even so, scandalous goings-on explode into view from time to time in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and elsewhere — no state excepted. Any enterprising newspaper at any time could send an aggressive reporter into any one of them and come up with enough ordure to make the Founding Fathers collectively vomit up their very souls in their graves.
Sadly, the “aggressive reporter” of Lundberg’s memory is an endangered species, at least within the legacy media. “Citizen journalists” can seldom attain the degree of access required to report tellingly on state-level developments in time to give aggrieved citizens a chance to head them off. One might conclude that state legislators operate within a curtain of secrecy.
State legislatures and governors’ mansions have long been the grooming grounds for future holders of federal offices. That’s not as true as it once was. Still, given the degree of corruption and malfeasance rife in state legislatures, the opportunities there are considerable, especially for one of stout heart who’s willing to brave the opprobrium of the media. There’s no more reliable place to begin building a political career than a state assembly or senate.
Conservatives have focused too narrowly on federal politics to make proper use of state-level offices and local bastions of power. Leftists have not made that mistake, though their ambition is always to rise to federal power. Verbum sat sapienti.
