While taxpayers continue to pick up the tab for last session's Senate pattycakes, now at $200,000, newly-anointed Minority Leader David Hann threatens to disengage his caucus in the near future in the Minnesota legislature.
Oh good.
The loyal insurance industry retainer's reluctance to work together with the new majority has attracted that sort of attention that might be even worse than ongoing news about the costly Koch-Brodkorb legislative romance.
The editors of the New Ulm Journal wrote today in Legislative forecast: Frosty season ahead:
We weren't expecting a "Hail-fellow-well-met," backslapping and handshaking kind of session Monday when Governor Mark Dayton and legislative caucus leaders met with the news media to talk about the upcoming session this year. But it looks like some Republicans are not going to be willing to play with the other kids when the session starts. The attitudes were somewhat frosty.
Sen. David Hann, the incoming Minority Leader in the Senate, had this to say about the possibility of collaboration in the upcoming session:
"The votes from our caucus are not needed by the majority to do anything they wish to do," said Hann, an Eden Prairie Republican, and a past and potential future candidate for governor. "The necessity to have Republican input on anything is not there."
This is certainly one possible strategy for Republicans in the upcoming session after losing the House and Senate to the Democrats in the last election. They could sit on their hands, let Democrats draw up the budget and set the state's policies for the next couple of years, then use that as campaign ammunition in the next election. . . .
Somehow, like attacks on Agenda 21 and Alida Messinger, we doubt sitting on their Hann--a presumptive gubernatorial candidate--is a particularly smart strategy for the Republican Party of Minnesota.
We just had a good snowstorm here, an objective reminder of what we can accomplish when we all work together. Get out and help shovel, and you might make more friends to vote for you in the 2014 election.
Meanwhile, it's a great idea to quit being coy about the Draft Hann "movement" for the 2014 gubernatorial campaign. Just file a committee and be transparent about it, or expect more headlines like this: "Draft David Hann for Governor" movement marred by conflict-of-interest controversy.
Image: David Hann playing pattycake with the insurance industry.
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