State Representative Lisa Demuth made history two years ago by becoming the first person of color to lead a legislative caucus, and the first woman to lead the House Republicans.
Now, with her party coming out of the minority in the Minnesota House of Representatives for the first time in six years, the Cold Spring resident’s role will be even more elevated. She is on track to serve as Speaker of the House at the beginning of this session.
But DFL House leaders may still prevent Demuth from becoming speaker. The House needs a 68-member quorum to begin the session, and DFL House leaders are threatening to prevent this until after special election on January 28 that will likely result again in a split House.
Last November, voters delivered a tied House, with the number of Republicans and Democrats matching at 67-67 for the first time since 1978.
But things got complicated after Republicans successfully challenged the residency of Curtis Johnson, a Democrat who was elected to serve a district encompassing parts of Roseville and Shoreview. A judge in December ruled that Johnson didn’t meet the residency requirements of living in the district he was elected to serve. Johnson decided not to appeal the decision, and Governor Tim Walz scheduled a special election for January 28. As of Thursday afternoon, DFL candidate David Gottfried and Republican Paul Wikstrom are vying for the seat.
The Roseville district is heavily Democratic; Johnson beat Wikstom last November by more than 30 percentage points. If a Democrat wins the special election, the House will go back to a split partisan makeup. But Republicans will control the chamber by one seat on January 14, the day the session begins.
A split House would put Demuth and current House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat from Fridley who’s led her party’s caucus since 2017, in charge of leading the House together.
Before Johnson lost his court case, Demuth and Hortman agreed on an equal number of Republicans and Democrats in each committee, with co-chairs from both parties leading them. Should Democrats win the special election for the Roseville seat, this arrangement would likely come back into play.
Democrats are coming off a historic two years where they controlled all levels of state government and passed several new laws, including a state paid family leave program, free college tuition for students from low-income families, legal recreational marijuana and several others.
The Legislature will have to craft a new state budget this coming session, which must end by May 26. Minnesota faces a projected surplus of $616 million, followed by an estimated $5.1 billion deficit down the line.
Sahan Journal spoke with Demuth about her caucus’ priorities going into the session, and what to expect in the coming months. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the top priorities that you have in mind going into this coming session for you and the Republican caucus?
As we’ve started doing that work of building their priorities, we’re really basing that off of what we’ve heard from Minnesotans across the state, regardless of party.
Looking over the last two years, we had a budget surplus of $18 billion that was spent, and we had additional taxes and fees raised on every Minnesotan — an additional $10 billion. The top line is no new taxes, no tax increases. We can’t do that going forward anymore. Minnesota is not affordable for families, and we recognize that because of what we’ve heard across the state.
Second and very, very close to that, is the unending level of fraud that is seen within our state — the waste and fraudulent use of state taxpayer dollars that has gone unaccounted for. This has been over the last number of years, but we have almost $1 billion dollars in fraud, and the concerning thing is that those dollars are not making it to the people that need it the most.
What are some ideas you have to prevent fraud? A Senate Democrat wants to start a new government office to try to detect fraud. What are some of your ideas, or ideas from your caucus?
First, what I would say in response to that is I don’t think we need to grow government to reduce fraud. When you look back over the last six years under Governor [Tim] Walz, there’s been more than a dozen reports from the Office of Legislative Auditor (OLA), a non-partisan office, into the agencies that looked at where there’s known, proven fraud.
The OLA, as part of its reports, also gives suggestions and recommendations for how to stop fraud going forward. The first thing that we will do is ask every one of the commissioners where there’s been fraud in their agencies, based on the OLA report, “What are you doing to combat fraud? What are you doing to stop fraud?” We’re going to start there.
We’re not going to grow government as an initial response to the fraud, we’re going to stop it based on what we know at this point. The other thing is, over the last two years, the full one party, Democrat-controlled government put in an additional 6,000 new government employees. We don’t need to grow government when they’ve already added over 6,000 new positions within the government.
You mentioned no new taxes, but do you anticipate efforts to lower taxes? The 6,000 new employees — how many of those jobs are unfilled? Is there interest in cutting some of those jobs, or in cutting spending elsewhere?
We haven’t been able to get this from the governor or his administration, but we have heard that there are unfilled full-time equivalent employees for more than six months, and with the new 6,000, that maybe some of those aren’t filled. That will be part of a starting point to say, “Are these positions really needed?” And if not, that clearly is an area to cut.
The other thing that we want to do is we want to make sure that if people are working for the state of Minnesota, we need to know, are they working full time in their offices or are they working remotely? And then my question is, “Why would we be paying leases or owning buildings that are sitting completely empty?” We know it is already happening here on the Capitol grounds.
The Democrats over the last two years passed a bill to build a new state office building and renovate an existing building at the cost of $730 million. During this two-year or two-year-plus renovation, they’ve moved all of us over to an empty building right on the Capitol complex, the Centennial Office Building. That’s one way to do cost savings.
The other thing is, we will absolutely be looking at ways to keep our promise of completely ending the tax on Social Security. That was something that both Democrats and Republicans campaigned on in 2022, yet Democrats with full one-party control only delivered on a portion of that. We want to keep that promise and end that tax on Social Security.
Tell us about your plan to ask commissioners at state agencies about the number of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) employees there are in each agency.
That’s part of the increase in the full-time employees. We just want to know how many DEI employees are in every single one of the agencies, because if there’s a duplication of state employees, we want to make sure that we’re reducing that for the benefit of the taxpayers of Minnesota.
Do you have thoughts as to whether those kinds of jobs are necessary? Often, they’re the target of criticism from conservatives.
I can’t speak to whether it’s to do with criticism or not, but what I will say is we haven’t been able to get an accounting of how much property is owned by the state in the in the capital complex area, how much is leased, and at what point it is being used by full-time or part-time employees or not at all.
We also can’t get that accounting from the governor and his administration as far as the number of FTEs (full time employees) that are filled or unfilled. So when I look at just the potential duplication of efforts, a waste of money going into space, we don’t need all of that built into the budget and the pressure that’s put on Minnesota taxpayers.
I don’t think that diversity, equity and inclusion positions are elevated [in Republican priorities] in any way. I think that they are also part of all of the work that we’re doing as we look fully at what is being spent in the state of Minnesota and how we can find cost saving measures that will benefit Minnesota taxpayers.
You were the first Black Minnesotan to lead a legislative caucus. Now you’re going to be the first Black House speaker or co-speaker. How does your background play into your work as a legislator?
When I got into the Legislature, I ran because I wanted to support my community and represent them well. And then when I became leader of the caucus, I didn’t run to lead my caucus because of that.
Actually, I had never even thought of that part. And then as the press releases were going out, the press asked about it. You know, “Hey, you just made history. You’re the first female Republican leader in the Minnesota House, and you’re the first person of color or Black leader to lead the Caucus in the House. What do you think about that?”
I look back at the fact that I represent my community, and I work hard for my constituents, and I can serve my caucus in a leadership position, and so that is very much secondary to the why and the who I am. But if I’ve made history, great. Let’s not make it a thing where that’s such an anomaly anymore. Let’s make sure that everybody has an opportunity if they’re qualified to do the job right.
One of the things in this last election we saw locally and nationally, is more people of color in general are voting Republican. What do you think explains that?
People voted their conscience, and they voted for what would best represent them well. In this case, voters of Minnesota sent a tie to the House of Representatives.
They basically were saying one party Democrat control did not work for us, and we are headed to a deficit. The spending did not work. Only half of our kids across the state can read at grade level. We know that we have to be able to build across our state and have people succeed.
Voters of Minnesota said, “We need balance in the Legislature, and that’s what we want to send to St. Paul.”
I don’t know that people base their decisions on the background and diversity or lack thereof of candidates. I think they were just tired of what they saw over the last two years and needed a change.
By the same measure, Republicans in Minnesota didn’t do as well as Republicans in other states. Why do you think that is?
It’s interesting, because six of our Republican members outperformed [Vice President] Kamala Harris in their district. To the point that maybe we didn’t do as well, we held every Republican seat for the first time in 10 years. We also ended a full Democrat trifecta in the state of Minnesota.
Whether or not Republicans did as well as surrounding states, I can’t really speak to that. But we broke a trifecta. Minnesota voters spoke, and we heard them, and we’re happy to get to work over the next two years.
