What Refusing a Special Session Means For Minnesota’s Democracy
The debate around Student Resource Officers (SROs) has been going on since Governor Tim Walz and the House and Senate Democrat members passed unclear new rules on how SROs are to act in the face of danger. In the weeks since its passing, police departments have been fleeing our schools and they’ve joined educators and the entire Republican Party has been begging Walz for a special session to fix the situation.
Many departments have spoken out that they are scared to act unless given very clear instructions on what they can and can’t do. And can you blame them? How can they keep our children safe with their hands tied behind their backs? Not to mention public support for police officers is at an all-time low from smear campaigns and the ‘defund the police’ movement that still lingers to this day.
But this isn’t just about handcuffing SROs, not really, it’s just the symptom of a bigger issue that the DFL party refuses to compromise, refuses to work with Republicans, and refuses to recognize our public safety epidemic. DFL leadership refuses to go against anything that isn’t pre-approved by the left even when it comes at a cost to the people who they are supposed to represent.
The left’s partisanship is poisoning any chances of both sides of the aisle being able to work together for the betterment of Minnesota. And all of us are worse off for it. Our government cannot work when half of it is going in an entirely different direction from the rest.
When constituents cast their ballots for the person to represent them, they’re not voting for the state’s government to come to an unproductive halt.
Today it’s about refusing to even discuss SROs fleeing our schools and next week it could be about the DFL refusing to talk about how bad education at our public schools has become. Or it could be them refusing to do anything about the fentanyl crisis because it doesn’t make their party look good. Do the Democrats even realize how much trust they’ve lost with the greater Minnesota community by refusing to even listen?