Rule of law?

Gov. Walz was under the false impression that the rules don’t apply to him.

Gov. Tim Walz added drama to the already-chaotic start of the 2025 legislative session when he ignored state law and called for an election in District 40B — a seat that wasn’t open for an election. Fortunately, Walz’s writ of special election for Friday, Jan. 17, was struck down by the Minnesota Supreme Court. The blatant overstep might have gone unnoticed and unchallenged were it not for the combined efforts of the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA), the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC), and the Republican Party of Minnesota.

“[This] ruling reinforces that no politician is above the law — period,” UMLC senior trial counsel James Dickey said in a statement.

On election night, the DFL-endorsed candidate for District 40B, Curtis Johnson, beat his Republican opponent and seemingly won the seat for the Roseville-Shoreview area. But an election contest revealed that Johnson did not live within the boundaries of his district as required by state law, and the Ramsey County District Court declared him ineligible to hold the seat. Seeing the writing on the wall, Johnson did not appeal the district court’s decision and quickly announced that he was “resigning” from his seat “effective immediately.”

There are two immediate and obvious problems with this logic. First, technically speaking, you cannot “resign” from an office that you have (1) never held and (2) been barred by court order from occupying. Second, Johnson could not resign from the seat “effective immediately” because the seat was currently occupied by someone else — Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn, the sitting representative who had chosen not to run for re-election.

Nevertheless, immediately after Johnson’s “resignation” — just seven days after the judge had ruled Johnson was ineligible to run for office in 40B, let alone hold office — Walz issued a writ of special election, presumably to get the seat filled and restore a 67-66 Republican majority to a 67-67 tie as quickly as possible. The election was scheduled for Jan. 28, two weeks after the session’s start on Jan. 14.

Unfortunately for Walz, the state statute is very clear on how to deal with a vacancy caused by an election contest.

From Minn. Stat. § 204D.19, subd. 4: “If a vacancy results from a successful election contest, the governor shall issue 22 days after the first day of the legislative session a writ calling for a special election [emphasis added] unless the house in which the contest may be tried has passed a resolution which states that it will or will not review the court’s determination of the contest. If the resolution states that the house will not review the court’s determination, the writ shall be issued within five days of the passage of the resolution” [emphasis added].

The vacancy in District 40B did result from a successful election contest, so the governor was supposed to wait 22 days from the first day of the legislative session — Jan. 14 — to issue a writ calling for a special election, which would have been Feb. 5. Instead, he claimed the authority to call one on Dec. 27 for Jan. 28.

Recognizing this blatant violation of state law, MVA, UMLC, and the Republican Party of Minnesota quickly challenged the writ of special election in court.

In a bizarre strategy, Walz’s office claimed this pushback amounted to nothing more than “Republicans… trying to use the courts to prevent Democratic legislators from being seated,” as a representative from his office told the news site InForum. How would he know? At the time, the special election hadn’t happened yet.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected this partisan claim, and on Jan. 17, ruled that Walz had unequivocally overstepped his bounds in calling the special election early. Three weeks later, Walz once again issued the writ — legally this time, thanks to the efforts of MVA, UMLC, and the Republican Party of Minnesota.