DFL walkout at the Legislature isn’t without precedent

Illustration by Jerry Fearing, courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

When Democrats in the closely divided Minnesota House of Representatives signaled they might boycott the opening of the legislative session over a power-sharing dispute, it seemed like a new era of hardball politics had arrived in Minnesota.

To be sure, lawmakers in other states have occasionally employed such quorum-denying strategies when they wanted to block a gavel-wielding majority. Ballotpedia, the online political encyclopedia, has identified 12 “noteworthy state legislative walkouts,” dating back to 1924.

But Minnesota, alleged bastion of comity and decorum, has always been free of such gamesmanship, right?

Not exactly. You just need to go back to 1857 for the closest historical parallel.

At the time, Minnesota was on the precipice of statehood, and lawmakers in the territorial government were arguing intensely over the proposed boundaries of the soon-to-be 32nd state.

Republicans — the newly ascendant anti-slavery and anti-liquor party — wanted the east-west boundaries to extend from the St. Croix River all the way to the Missouri River. They also wanted to exclude the non-agricultural parts of the territory, roughly the northern half of present-day Minnesota. Given the Republican dominance in the fast-growing farming areas, such boundaries would likely have ensured a potent governing majority.

Democrats, meanwhile, argued that a more diversified mix of farmland and forest would best benefit the economy. They preferred a map with contours much more like the one that exists today.

On Feb. 12, 1857, the Republicans on the territorial council — the equivalent of the Senate — made their big move. As part of their vision for a more agrarian state, they passed a bill to relocate the capital from St. Paul to St. Peter, a newly formed city in the heart of farm country.

In response, Attorney General Lafayette Emmett penned an opinion holding that the removal of the capital by legislative action — rather than a popular vote — was illegal under the territory’s so-called Organic Act.

Undaunted and unpersuaded by Emmett’s legal musings, the House passed the measure. The newspapers of the day, which were largely aligned with St. Paul interests, howled in protest. The Daily Pioneer and Democrat declared the majority had exhibited “not only a degree of scoundrelism, which was atrocious, but the most audacious impudence.”

Other newspapers suggested that the bill’s passage was the result of bribery. They noted that the territorial governor, Willis Gorman, was an investor in the newly formed St. Peter Company, which was incorporated with the expressed intent of establishing a new capital at St. Peter.

Enter Joe Rolette, a colorful if largely forgotten figure from Minnesota history.

A fur trader from Pembina (located in present day northeastern North Dakota), Rolette, a Democrat, served six terms in the territorial Legislature, where he often dressed in Voyageur garb. He usually traveled by dogsled but, in the winter of 1857, scant snow meant that Rolette had to make the 400-mile trek from Pembina to St. Paul by foot.

His fellow Democrats were glad he made the walk.

Among his duties that year, Rolette served as chairman of the committee on enrolled bills. So, following the passage of the removal act by both chambers of the Legislature, Rolette took physical possession of the engrossed bill. 

He then promptly vanished.

Thanks to parliamentary maneuvers by his allies, the council was both unable to adjourn and unable to proceed with business. For the next six days, lawmakers slept on cots and under desks at the Capitol. One newspaper, The Minnesotian, assured readers that the legislators were “taking most excellent care of themselves.”

“The members all look in good health and spirits,” the newspaper reported, before adding: “Some of them appear somewhat careworn and anxious, particularly some of the older sinners of the majority.”

All the while, Rolette’s whereabouts remained unknown — at least, to his opponents.

Rumors circulated that he’d been killed or was hiding in a brothel or returned to Pembina. In fact, Rolette was holed up at Fuller House, a St. Paul hotel. According to lore, he spent evenings playing cards with the Legislature’s sergeant-at-arms, who, in his day job, was supposed to find Rolette and drag him back to the Capitol.

Rolette’s disappearance enraged his foes. No one, it is said, was more angered than Gorman, the governor.

“The Governor has become insane on the subject and spends most of his time in the public streets and hotels, swearing with all the profanity, though with little of the delicacy, of a fishwoman,” wrote the Pioneer and Democrat.

On March 7, just before the clock expired on the legislative session (or shortly after, accounts differ), Rolette sauntered into the Capitol with the bill in hand. It was too late to take any action, and so, the story goes, Rolette’s gambit had preserved St. Paul’s status as the capital city.

After Rolette returned to Pembina, the Pioneer and Democrat took time to praise the wily fur trader for “fidelity to the true interest of the Territory [and] his loyalty and zeal in the cause of right and justice.”

Did Rolette’s “histrionic antics” really save St. Paul? Not according to historian Theodore Blegen, author of Minnesota: A History of the State.

In that 1963 tome, Blegen noted that the Minnesota Territorial Supreme Court subsequently determined that “the Legislature had used up its capital-locating power when it established St. Paul as the capital.”

“So the scheme collapsed,” Blegen continued. “A half-comic sidelight on the story is that the optimistic St. Peter Company, before its hopes were finally quashed, actually built a capitol which later served as a county courthouse.”

If nothing else, the intense partisanship of the Rolette affair presaged a divisive period in Minnesota politics. A few months after Rolette’s disappearing act, the time came for Minnesota to draft a constitution. Moments after the convention was called to order, the Democratic delegates walked out.

“After such an initial melodrama, one might have expected a cool-headed joint conference to bring about a united convention and put it on an even keel,” Blegen wrote. “But nothing of the sort happened.”

In the end, Democrats and Republicans held two separate conventions and never met once as a whole body, though compromise was eventually forged.

“Both sides maintained a posture of political intransigency to the last moment,” Blegen added. “Somehow, out of the hurly-burly, the constitution of Minnesota was fashioned, and it has been sturdy enough to have lasted as the fundamental governmental framework of the state through all the decades since.”