Minnesota DFL wins House, Senate to secure trifecta

The country voters are waking up to see the results of last night's midterm elections. The big story was the big win, the blue wave. Democrats winning back control of Congress, taking control of the House and the Senate. Fox 9 political analyst Blaise Olson joins us this morning as we continue to take a look at what happened here. Let's talk about specifically our state legislature because we know what happened here last night. And that was another part of that blue wave that we saw with the governor's office. And now what was, A tight Assembly and Senate now, it's going to be in control and it's going to be blue. Is this a rubber stamp kind of a situation for the next couple of years? It's actually near a supermajority, which will create more pressure on Governor-elect Klobuchar. And so, to put it in perspective, you have in the House, which was tied, it is now a 20-seat DFL majority. They flipped. Ten seats away from Republicans, giving them a 20-seat advantage. In the Senate, Democrats flipped six seats. Republicans appear to have flipped one by only four votes up in the Moorhead area. So what's going to happen is we're going to start to see tension between the legislature and the governor. One of the things we've been watching is you're going to have 40% of the legislature new. And then of those returning, 85% of them have only served under Governor Walz. And that's a totally different dynamic than they're going to have with the governor-elect Klobuchar. She's going to set her agenda. Usually we say governors get about 80% of what they want in a legislative session. You heard... Senator Klobuchar laid out last night, I'm going to have things that aren't going to be popular with you in my own party. She also talked about a pro-growth agenda, which is music to business leaders' ears. Because one of the things Minnesotans appreciate is our quality of life. It gets rated really high. But what we saw in all of our polling was that people's sense of our economy was about 20 points lower than our quality of life. And we know you can't maintain that quality of life. Without a good economy. Sure. I still think a lot of questions now. What happens to Klobuchar's seat? And there's the timeline and then there's potential fill-ins. Yeah. Kind of get us up to speed on what you're hearing and what you're thinking. Yeah. Representative Kelly Morrison, Secretary of State Steve Simon seem to be the names that nobody will argue with in Klobuchar world, as we call it. I think Angie Craig could make a case. She has experience in D.C. It'd be interesting to see with Peggy Flanagan's large victory if she would be okay with her primary opponent becoming her colleague in the U.S. Senate. But one of the big things to watch as we go forward is if Jake Johnson holds on and Kelly Morrison is appointed, 50% of the Minnesota congressional delegation will be new in January. You lose a lot of seniority. You lose seats on key committees like agriculture, like transportation, like banking. And so just be mindful. The other thing is Betty McCollum, if they're back in the majority, she becomes the chair of the defense appropriations and a high ranking member of the appropriations committee. She's the last senior person who can really deliver for the state of Minnesota. That primary challenger, not mentioned by name, of course, Angie Craig to Peggy Flanagan. So we'll see what happens there as that all shakes out. But quickly, Blaise, we're almost out of time again here. But when you look to the next election cycle, Republicans, they're throwing up their hands today. I think they know what happened here, largely. What do they do in the next cycle? It's called soul searching. They're going to have to search for the soul of their party. It's been Donald Trump for 10 years. He's not going to go away anytime soon. He posted a red MAGA hat with a veto on it last night. But we have a presidential race in only two years. It starts today. And on both sides, you're going to have ideological battles for the heart and soul of both parties. Buckle up is what you're saying. We'll be back here in two years. Cheers. Another all-nighter for you. At least we get a little bit of a break from the ads and the text. Thank you, yes. Just a little bit. Okay. Boys, thank you so much, as always. Appreciate it. He'll be with us continuing into the next hour as well.