The announcement of Minnesota House Committees reveals that Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley, may actually find cause to kick Jean Wagenius, DFL-Minneapolis, around again. Both will serve on the 2017-2018 Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee together.
Not that he ever needed anything beyond his loathing of cities to flog that place-baiting blither against the long-serving lawmaker.
When the Republicans regained control of the Minnesota House in the 2014 elections, Speaker Kurt Daudt exiled state representative Jean Wagenius from the body's environmental committees.
A lawyer, master gardener, rural property owner in Douglas County and passionate environmentalist, Wagenius had chaired the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Finance committee in the 2013-2014 session, while also serving on the Environment and Natural Resources Policy committee and the Agriculture Policy Committee.
Even before the session began, Republicans started sniping at her appointment: an evil metro member in charge of ag finance, regardless of her knowledge or economic interest in rural Minnesota. We looked at the froth in Representative Rod Hamilton to defend rural Minnesota against his own worst fears and later in Open letter to Rod Hamilton: quit whining about Minneapolis & introduce some pro-rural bills.
When she was removed from the environmental committee--former minority leader Thissen wanted her on the committee as minority lead--the action seemed punitive to many observers.
Nonetheless, Republicans like Jeff Backer--now our state representative in Minnesota's lovely western boundary waters--choose to campaign against Wagenius. Quite astonishingly, he and his supporters continued to base his campaign rhetoric in 2016 against her, telling voters that she was responsible for the 2015 and 2016 buffer bills that she neither authored, co-authored, nor voted for.
We wrote about these fantasies in Backer backer blames Rep. Wagenius for buffer legislation she voted against 2 years running.
Apparently, the Speaker must have noticed that the beef was getting a bit off after two years, so Wagenius is back on the committee, although South St. Paul Democrat Rick Hansen remains as minority lead. Hansen, a former Minnesota Department of Ag employee with degrees in biology and soil science, inherited his family's Fillmore County farm, which makes him as evil a metro guy as they come.
Dan Fabian, R-Roseau is newly chairing the committee after Denny McNamara retired. If bluster and manure worked for Trump, surely the Roseau Republican's tendency to grow red in the face when angry will survive the new hi-def reality of committee hearings.
If nincompoopery for the sake of the agri-chemical industrial complex has a face, it won't be Fabian's but rather that of Jeff Backer. We're purchasing five months' worth of corn to pop as the Republican chucklehead starts the trolling with Wagenius back on the committee.
Photo: Jean Wagenius, evil metro phantom menace. And she's a girl.
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