This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“Something happens to a man when he sits before a fire. Strange stirrings take place within him, and a light comes into his eyes which was not there before. An open flame suddenly changes his environment to one of adventure and romance.”

-Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

As we dig through our camping gear preparing for our first trip to “the Singing Wilderness,” the place that Sigurd Olson described as to “do with the calling of the loons, northern lights and the great silence of a land lying northwest of Lake Superior,” I have one last edition of the Capitol Update. The last edition is always dedicated to recognizing those in the Legislature who championed the environmental cause. I’m probably violating some sort of copyright or writers’ etiquette, but I will affectionately call these recognitions my “Sig” awards in honor of that environmental giant, Sigurd Olson.

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This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“If all the good things I have ever done are remembered as long and as well as my scrap with Shields, it is plain, I shall not be forgotten.”
Abraham Lincoln

Political negotiations and compromise can appear to casual observers to be some strange tribal ritual still not fully documented or understood by anthropologists. The interesting combination of personality and ideology clashing in the arenas laid out by our founding fathers for the purpose of balancing power can lead to some very odd and compelling drama. Such was the case in the 1840’s when a young and ambitious Illinois Whig legislator engaged in a “scrap” with the venerable Illinois Secretary of State, a respected Democratic Irish politician with a temper to match.

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This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“Of a romantic and jovial disposition, he was not at all averse to playing the part assigned him in this little drama.”
-Dr. William Folwell*

As we celebrate Minnesota’s 150th birthday this week, it is worth reflecting on why we are celebrating it in the capital city of St. Paul.  The above quote from the renowned Minnesota historian, Dr. William Folwell, was describing the role played by fur trader and territorial legislator, Joseph Rolette Jr., back in 1857 in preventing the removal of the state Capitol from St. Paul to St. Peter.  As our territorial government proceeded toward statehood, several of the agricultural-minded interests wanted the state Capitol in a location more central to the prairie.

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Late Thursday, Governor Pawlenty vetoed a bill that would have established an improved system for recycling and disposing of used paint. With support from some in the paint industry, the bill (S.F. 3775) would have created a paint stewardship fee to support proper management of the used paint. The Governor’s veto message essentially called the fee a new tax. The vetoed legislation capped the fee at 40 cents per container. Disposal of used paint costs governments in Minnesota over $5 million annually. The tax already exists, but it’s hidden.

This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

Judith Naughton Ireland … “a deeply religious woman, gentle, dedicated to her church and the care of her family.”*

On Sunday May 11th, Minnesota will reach its 150th birthday, interestingly enough, on Mother’s Day.  In recognition of this historic coincidence, it is worth reflecting on one of Minnesota’s most influential mothers, Judith Naughton Ireland.  Judith was a simple immigrant with roots from Kilkenny, Ireland, where she met and married a widowed carpenter named Richard Ireland.  In the midst of the Irish potato famines in 1849, they mournfully departed their homeland and sailed to the United States with their six children and the four orphaned children of Richard’s sister.  The family eventually worked their way across America by covered wagon and steamboat to arrive at the Jackson Street Levy outside of St. Paul in 1852.  Devoutly Catholic, they were welcomed in the once bustling fur trading town with many French Catholic connections.

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This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“Aye, aye! It was that accursed white whale that razeed [sic] me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!… I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale.”
Captain Ahab
from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I did promise that all of this year’s updates would be punctuated by a Minnesota history twist, but I could not pass up the imagery of comparing this session to the pursuit of the great white whale in Melville’s Moby Dick. I’ll give you an extra dose of Minnesota history next week as we approach Minnesota’s 150th statehood day on May 11th. (more…)

This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“Men are elected to office, not parties.”
Willmar Tribune editorial, April 9, 1913

One would not know it with the partisan bickering that can break out in St. Paul these days, but Minnesota legislative elections were nonpartisan from 1914 until the 1970s.  Minnesota was the first and longest to be a nonpartisan legislature.  The nonpartisan election provision was adopted during the political era when progressives were realigning our parties’ structures.  In the 1912 election, Minnesota went strongly for the progressive candidacy of Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party.  Those progressive legislators were making their voices heard at the capitol in the 1913 legislative session.

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This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“I’ll hold the ball, Charlie Brown, and you come running up and kick it.”
Lucy Van Pelt*

Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Charlie Brown, Lucy and the rest of Peanuts, is one of our favorite sons from Minnesota. His first comic strips were published in 1947 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He grew up in a quiet St. Paul neighborhood and returned there to work after distinguished service in World War II. His subtle and fatalistic humor seemed to speak to the Minnesota soul. We inevitably knew what would always happen to poor Charlie Brown when Lucy called him to kick the football. Time and time again, Lucy always knew how to get Charlie Brown to make that fast charge, only to end up on his backside. The pattern and the results always seemed inevitable. (more…)

This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“Raise less corn and more hell.”
Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890*

Mary Elizabeth Lease was one of the most passionate voices of the prairie populist movement of the late 1800s.  She hailed from Kansas, but her message burned through the populist movement up and down the entire Midwest.  This message took root the deepest in the farm areas and union halls of Minnesota, giving birth to the Farmer-Labor movement.  Though this red-hot flame of progressive thought burned out more quickly in some areas, it grew very strong in Minnesota.  It hit its zenith in the 1930s with the election of Minnesota’s first and most productive third-party governor, Floyd B. Olson.

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Special mid-week Capitol Update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“We live in a political world.
Where wisdom is thrown into jail.”
Bob Dylan (aka Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, MN)
Oh Mercy, 2003

The governor’s veto of the capital investments bill caught most of the Capitol watchers by surprise.  Not so much that he vetoed the bill but the manner in which he did it.  Given the fact that we are living in a “political world” up at the Capitol, it is just another twist in the ever-changing march to the end of session.  Nonetheless, it created an interesting change in the drama, which is something the governor has learned to do so well over the years. (more…)