Michelle who? And why does this matter to Democrats? Get ready to read about some local/state political maneuvering in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
This story begins in January 2018, when the Democrat Al Franken resigned from the US Senate. I’m sure you remember that whole thing, so I won’t go into details. To fill the vacancy, the Governor of MN, Mark Dayton (who’s a good Democrat), appointed Tina Smith to be the new US Senator from Minnesota. Tina Smith resigned as Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota and took the US Senate seat. Before she was elected Lt. Gov., she had served as chief of staff for Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and she ran his unsuccessful campaign for Governor. Also, she was previously Vice President of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, so she’s a reliably liberal Democrat. MN is now represented in the US Senate by two women: Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
When Gov. Dayton appointed Smith to the US Senate seat, it created a vacancy in the Lt. Gov. position. The state constitution says that the President of the state senate becomes the new Lt. Gov. if there’s a vacancy in the office. And that would be Michelle Fischbach. She’s a conservative Republican.
Why would a Democratic Governor elevate a conservative Republican to Lieutenant Governor? Well, the MN state senate had 34 Republicans and 33 Democrats. Remove one Republican from the senate and it’s tied at 33-33.
Republicans condemned Dayton’s appointment of Smith as a blatantly political move. Which it was, of course. They said it was Totally Totally Unfair. Which it wasn’t. The rules are the rules. Fischbach argued for several months that she could serve as state senator from district 13 and that she could also be Lt. Gov. at the same time. Which is kind of crazy. There were lawsuits.
Now that the MN state legislature has adjourned for the 2018 session, Fischbach has decided she could resign from the state senate and take the oath of office for Lieutenant Governor.
And in November we’ll be voting for two US Senators, all of our MN state house representatives, a new Governor (Dayton is retiring), and various other offices. There aren’t any state senate elections, except for one. There will be a special election in Fischbach’s district 13. Let’s hope it’s a Democratic wave election.
One more thing. I don’t know if anyone remembers what happened 42 years ago in Minnesota in 1976. Walter Mondale was the US Senator from Minnesota. He got elected as Jimmy Carter’s Vice President and then he resigned from the Senate. The Governor of MN, Wendell Anderson, resigned as Governor. The Lieutenant Governor, Rudy Perpich, became Governor and he appointed Anderson as the new Senator. MN voters didn’t like this backroom deal and neither Anderson nor Perpich was reelected in the next election. Carter/Mondale lost, too.