Legislative committees throughout the Minnesota House of Representatives will be co-chaired by a Democrat and a Republican. This unique arrangement was jointly announced yesterday by the leaders of the GOP and DFL caucuses in the Minnesota House.
News of the committee structure plan was first reported by the House Public Information Services Office.
In the 2024 elections, Republicans gained three seats in the Minnesota House which resulted in a 67-67 split in the chamber. While two seats will go to a recount because of the close margin of victory, the recounts are not expected to change the 67-67 split.
Since the number of Democrats and Republicans in the House will likely be evenly divided, legislative leaders have been negotiating a power-sharing agreement that will determine how the chamber will operate when the 2025 legislative session begins.
Yesterday’s announcement regarding committee structure represented a major progression in those negotiations.
In the Minnesota House, legislation is debated and amended in various committees before being voted on by the full chamber. For example, bills related to tax law are handled in the Taxes Committee, and legislation regarding law enforcement is reviewed in the Public Safety Committee. As such, the structure of the committees, and who controls them, will have many wide-reaching ramifications for House business.
In addition to the co-chairmanship arrangement, yesterday’s announcement also noted that the House committees will be made up of an even number of Republicans and Democrats. This means any efforts to advance legislation out of committee will need some form of bipartisan support.
While legislators have yet to received their specific committee assignments, the weekly schedule which sets out when committee meetings occur will remain similar to last session’s.
Who will be the next Speaker of the House?
On Jan. 14, 2025, the new legislative session will begin. Among the first orders of business, members will have to elect a new Speaker of the House.
Currently, Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, and Rep. Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, are considered speaker-designates because they are the leaders of their respective caucuses and the House is evenly divided. However, the House can only have one speaker. Determining who will occupy the speaker’s chair will undoubtedly be among the most challenging parts of the ongoing power-sharing negotiation.
Hortman has been the leader of the DFL caucus since Nov. of 2016. At present, Hortman serves as Speaker of the House and has occupied that role since Jan. of 2019. She was first elected to the Minnesota House in 2004.
Demuth was first elected to the Minnesota House in 2018 and has served as the leader of the GOP caucus since Nov. of 2022.
The Minnesota House has only been evenly divided once before. In the 1978 elections, both the GOP and the DFL won 67 seats. In turn, the two parties came to a bizarre power-sharing agreement in which a Republican occupied the speaker’s chair, but the Democrats controlled the three most powerful committees.
That 1979 legislative session started smoothly, but eventually descended into chaos.
As such, the starkly different approach pursued by Hortman and Demuth appears to be a very pointed attempt to avoid the chaos that occurred in 1979.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
