Why Are Minnesota Democrats So Progressive?

[dflprincess]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/why-are-minnesota-democrats-so-progressive.html?mibextid=Zxz2cZ&fbclid=IwAR3FwKpXa7C40ZKMoNRhHWfxAkGI2X9395dVQHKJK45rX7YKSIxWmiEKa9Y

Last November, Democrats secured full control of Minnesota’s state government by the narrowest of margins. The party’s single-seat majority in the state senate hinged on a race that it won by 321 votes. Its majority in the state house, meanwhile, stood at only six.

Although Minnesota has long been a “blue” state, it has become more competitive in recent years as white non-college-educated voters throughout the Midwest drifted rightward. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the North Star State by less than two points.

Given these realities, one might have expected Minnesota governor Tim Walz to get only a small fraction of his agenda into law, much as Joe Biden’s sweeping American Jobs and Families Plans gave way to the more modest Inflation Reduction Act. After all, Minnesota Democrats owed their razor-thin majority in the state senate to lawmakers from historically Republican and rural parts of Minnesota.

As it happened, none of the party’s “majority makers” fancied themselves midwestern Manchins. To the contrary, they facilitated the most robustly progressive legislative session in their state’s modern history, a frenzy of reform so ambitious and comprehensive that it puts New York and California Democrats (and their large legislative majorities) to shame.

Much more at the link. (And I only bolded the one section because it amused me.)