I suspect that only a relatively small proportion of Minnesotans are aware that DFL legislators want to finish work delivering tax cuts and popular investments to Minnesotans, while GOP legislators have walked off the job and left that important work undone. 

But state legislators spend much of their time with well-informed lobbyists and activists. The State Capitol is an insular island. Therefore, many legislators probably incorrectly assume that most Minnesotans already know all of this.

But many don’t know it, or don’t fully understand the damage it’s causing, so DFLers need to proactively and repeatedly tell the story.  

The policies that Republicans are effectively blocking by refusing to do more work are extremely popular.  Tax cuts. Education and child care investments. Long-term care spending. Police funding.  Infrastucture improvements. Moreover, Minnesotans believe in working hard, and not quitting just because the task is difficult. There is a strong case to be made here.

But if DFLers don’t proactively repeat the point about the GOP’s dereliction of duties, and the consequences of it, many voters will never know about it, or won’t remember come November.

To educate voters about what is happening at the State Capitol, and make it stick in their memories, DFL legislators need a series of provocative tactics that play out between now and the election. A few options to consider:

• Empty Chairs at Mock Legislative Sessions.  DFL legislative leaders should send a letter to all GOP legislators proposing a date and time to return to the Capitol Building for a Special Session.  Republicans won’t agree to attend, but all DFL legislators should show up in the House and Senate chambers at the proposed time anyway. They should wait for the missing Republican legislators for 24 hours or so.  They should use that time  in the half-empty chambers to make it clear that the GOP is refusing to do their jobs, and describe the contents of the legislation effectively being blocked by the Gone Old Party (GOP). 
  
  Then they should record video of the speeches, liberally interspersed with shots of the Republican incumbents’ empty chairs and offices. They should share short videos of the speeches and empty chairs via targeted social media. 
  
  They also should invite DFL challengers to come to the State Capitol to participate in news conferences about the refusal of the incumbents to do the jobs they were elected to do.  Those challengers could record “Looking for Rudy”-style videos to use in their campaigns, humorous videos portraying the DFL challengers searching empty offices for evidence of the GOP incumbent doing their jobs.

• Missing Person Flyers.  DFL candidates could also make tongue-in-cheek Missing Person-like flyers to be used in online ads and postcards. The “Missing Legislator” flyers would include a photo of the GOP incumbent, with a description of the unfinished business they left behind when they walked off the job they were hired to do. 
  
• Poll Documenting Public Frustration.  The DFL Party should also commission a poll asking Minnesotans if legislators should return to work to finish the tax cuts and investments.  They should also use the poll to document the popularity of each of the major components of the unfinished business – tax cuts, education and child care investments, police spending, infrastructure investments, etc . They should publicize the poll results in news conferences and campaign materials. 
  
  Why a poll? The results of a survey would make it clear that this isn’t just an argument between the GOP and DFL. It’s also an argument between the GOP and the overwhelming majority of Minnesotans. That’s an important nuance to stress when framing this issue.

• Pink Slips.  Closer to the election, DFL candidates could develop termination notice forms (e.g. “pink slips”) to use  in advertising and mailing.  The pink slips would be filled in with the legislators name and reason for firing – “failure to show up for work when constituents needed tax cuts, education, and anti-crime help the most.”

Whether or not these are the right tactics, the larger point remains: DFLers need to develop an on-going campaign to make the 2022 elections a referendum on whether Republican incumbents should show up for work when struggling Minnesota families need help.  DFLers stand a much better chance of winning that referendum than the one’s Republicans are stressing, about whether Democrats are sufficiently committed to fighting crime and cutting taxes.  If DFLers allow Republicans to frame the election that way, they’re in trouble.

Mid-term elections are historically awful for the party in power. Beyond that, the post-pandemic economy is unpredictable and unsettling. To be sure, the DFL is facing stiff political headwinds.

For those reasons, this is no time to run a dull, conventional campaign using blah, blah, blah cookie cutter messaging. Desperate times call for desperate measures. DFLers need a provocative campaign that cuts through the message clutter by telling the unvarnished truth about the Gone Old Party and the damage its refusal to work is causing for Minnesota families.