MRGA: Make Republicans Great Again
To: Chairman David Hann
Republican Party of Minnesota
7400 Metro Boulevard
Suite 424
Edina, Minnesota 55439
Dear Chairman Hann,
It’s been a rough year for your organization; heck, it’s been a rough two decades. The state GOP has not won a single statewide election since 2006 (Tim Pawlenty), and according to a recent article, the party owes rent to the Rochester convention center for its 2022 convention, which indicates that your organization’s flat broke. You lost both branches of the state Legislature, and scandals and intra-party controversies led your predecessor to resign.
The recent passing of a great Minnesotan, and a truly great Republican, Al Quie, has caused us to reflect on the current state of partisan politics in Minnesota. In keeping with TCB’s recent 30th anniversary, looking back three decades, the Minnesota GOP was truly great. It is important it returns to its heritage. If you believe in good government, which has generally been one of the fine attributes of Minnesota, you have to believe in a strong two-party system. As businesspeople, we all know that competition creates better products, lower prices, and a productive economy. The same is true of political competition. Let’s try a test.
The Connor Halsa Test. Connor Halsa, a 14-year-old boy from Moorhead, was trolling for walleyes this past July on Lake of the Woods. Suddenly he felt a solid strike at the end of his line. It wasn’t a fish; it was a soaking-wet wallet. When he opened the wallet, he discovered that it contained $2,000 in cash. He also discovered that the true owner of the wallet was an Iowa livestock hauler named Jim Denney. What did Connor Halsa do with the money? Well, of course, being a great Minnesotan (and young hockey player), he dried out the money and returned the $2,000 to Mr. Denney. Denney offered him a reward, but he refused.
Now the test: If the fisherman had been Al Quie, what would Al have done? Of course, we all know the answer to that. What would Rudy Boschwitz have done? Or Jim Ramstad? Or Arne Carlson? (OK, Carlson would first have criticized the Department of Natural Resources for having too many administrators.) Now extend this thought experiment a bit further: What would Donald Trump have done?
You see the problem. The great Republican Party of Minnesota has given this state many officeholders of unquestioned character and integrity. I’ve just named a few—now we all need your party to do it again.
You can’t Make Republicans Great Again if the party persists in lying about the results of the 2020 presidential election or continues to try to criminalize women’s reproductive choices. That path will lead the state party to become as irrelevant statewide as it is in the city of Minneapolis. And our state, and good governance, would be the poorer for it.
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The Great Minnesota Republicans worked in a bipartisan fashion when good governance required: Gov. Quie on tax increases, Sen. Boschwitz on foreign affairs, Gov. Carlson on funding for higher education, Rep. Ramstad on addiction treatment and mental health facilities. That bipartisan approach is desperately lacking today.
Spending the state’s $17 billion surplus is an example of why Minnesotans need the old version of the Republican Party. There is no question that much of the surplus was spent to meet reasonable governmental solutions (free school lunch, for example), but, again, a binary approach to budgeting did not serve us very well. Ineffective political dialogue with one side saying “spend it all” and the other side saying “give it all back” does not address the reasoned policy decisions taxpayers deserve.
Most of us have run businesses, and this all-or-nothing approach is not the way we addressed major capital expenditures. What should happen is the establishment of a mechanism to measure the success (cost-benefit analysis) of these new programs with the expenditure of our state surplus. As taxpayers, it would be useful to know, one year, three year, five years down the line, if the programs we have established are truly successful in meeting their goals. I suspect some of these programs will be successful and should be expanded, while others should be terminated. But which ones? Nobody knows, and the lack of responsible political dialogue will ensure that ignorance. But we citizens of Minnesota are not going to get that approach without competent political competition typified by civility and bipartisanship. The Great Minnesota Republican Party used to provide the other half of that equation. But no more, and for that we are all losers.
Sincerely,
Vance K. Opperman
Yours for responsible political competition
