Retired GOP representative says ability to work together is Minnesota‘s ‘competitive advantage’
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Tuesday marks the start of the next legislative session in St. Paul, but a lot of notable faces will not be returning.
Among the 20 lawmakers who retired or resigned is DFL Rep. Gene Pelowski, who talked with MPR News Wednesday about his 38 years representing Winona.
Like Pelowski, GOP Rep. Pat Garofalo of Farmington has recently ended a long career in the Legislature. Garofalo was first elected in 2004 and spent the following 20 years in office before leaving his seat last summer. He most recently served as lead Republican on the powerful budget-setting Ways and Means Committee and took a policy interest in energy, education and gambling issues.
Garofalo joins MPR News host Nina Moini to reflect on that work and share what’s next.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
And today, we have former GOP Representative Pat Garofalo of Farmington on the line who left office last summer. Garofalo was first elected in 2004 and has spent the last 20 years in office. He most recently served as Lead Republican on the powerful budget setting Ways and Means Committee and took a policy interest in topics like energy, education, and gambling, among others. Thank you for being with us this afternoon to reflect, Representative Garofalo.
PAT GAROFALO: Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.
NINA MOINI: Well, I'm sure it feels a little bit different after 20 years, not getting ready for the session in the same way come Monday, and I'm sure you're doing a lot of reflection. How are you feeling as this next session starts?
PAT GAROFALO: Well, candidly, I'm feeling wonderful.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm glad I'm not up there dealing with the assorted fights that are going on and posturing that's occurring. But certainly, if anyone ever doubted that the Minnesota electorate is incredibly unpredictable, wow. This is another example of just how many unique things happen in the state of Minnesota when it comes to elections and politics.
NINA MOINI: Yeah. And along those lines, I understand that most of your time in office were in the minority party rather than the majority party. What do you think about the makeup that is starting to take shape and some of the unanswered questions, even about where the power will lie? Does it make you wish at all that you would have stuck it out? It sounds like not at all.
PAT GAROFALO: Well, of course, there's so many great experiences that come from being a legislator, and it's not the things the public would generally expect. It's the opportunity to learn things. It's to meet really smart people who can educate you in ways and having access to great people that the normal public just doesn't have. But certainly in the state of Minnesota, there's this issue of majority versus minority.
And I think sometimes when you take a look at the House of Representatives, there's 134 members. People say, well, what's the difference if you've got 66 Republicans or 68 Republicans? Well, there's a huge difference. When you talk about water, well, water at 33 degrees is really different than water at 32 degrees, and it's the same thing in Minnesota where the majority party and the minority party status.
And now that there's this opportunity for what will eventually likely be a divided legislature, instead of a few people doing all the compromising and negotiating at the end of session, there's an opportunity for more legislators to be involved in those compromises and trade offs early in session, and that's a pretty cool opportunity. And we'll see which legislators are successful in doing that and which ones are unable to deal with that new environment.
NINA MOINI: Yeah, we'll see. This morning, we had a nice story on Morning Edition from our Clay Masters where he was kind of running down everything going on at the legislature, and he played some audio that reminded me how the last session ended with some shouting and a little bit of chaos in both of the chambers, it sounded like.
And then fast forward to this morning, the funeral of President Jimmy Carter, seeing all five living presidents together. A lot of people were remarking on that, even if it's just being in the same room, that even show of unity, just being together and sitting together. It seems like people are really craving unity and people working together, even though we often hear about the more divisive or explosive moments. What do you think about that?
PAT GAROFALO: I could not agree more. It's funny, because I periodically take these breaks from social media. I just take a day or two off.
NINA MOINI: Good call.
PAT GAROFALO: Yeah. It always amazes me how much more relaxed I am when I'm not doing that. But one of the things I did see was that there was a lot of right wing anger at Jimmy Carter, and I felt completely disconnected from this. Because if you look at the record of Jimmy Carter, yes, he was a Democrat. But this is a man who campaigned on unfair taxes, government waste, and runaway spending. I mean, he was frugal. He was thrifty.
I mean, he was authentically not only just conservative in his own disposition, but in his policies. I remember reading a story about how when he got became president, he sold the presidential yacht, and he banned hard liquor in the White House. And so that sort of thrift, responsible disposition, I think that's one of the admirable qualities they have now. Unfortunately, he kind of got caught up in current events, and his experience was not with what was happening in the world.
But when you translate that to today and what people want, Minnesota, as much as people try to frame it as a hard left, hard Democrat, or a red conservative state, if they're trying to make their case, Minnesota's pretty 50/50. And so the last two years, the Democrats had very, very small majorities, and they interpreted that as a mandate to redesign the state.
And then this year, voters kind of took a step back. They're not saying they want to have Republicans in total control, but they certainly said that they want to have balance in Minnesota government. They want to see more people involved in the decision making. And as legislators try to get the upper hand and fight with each other, I just hope we maintain a government where both Republicans and Democrats, as messy as it gets, that they're required to work with each other, because ultimately that's Minnesota's real key strategic strength.
In the past, we have always worked together better than in other states, and that's our competitive advantage. And as the country gets more polarized and partisan, if that's allowed to seep into Minnesota's politics, it's going to do more damage here than other places. We don't have the energy resources of a Texas. We don't have a tourism climate of Florida.
We're not the financial center of the western hemisphere like New York. We have to differentiate ourselves. And that ability to work together, that really has been our competitive advantage. And I'm hoping going forward, we're going to see more of that. But I think it's going to be a pretty bumpy week at the legislature right now, the next couple of days.
NINA MOINI: Sure. I do want to narrow in on some of the areas of legislation that you were influential in that were important to you. Legalizing sports betting in the state is something that it seems has gained momentum in recent years, but it did fall short of the necessary support to pass last year. What do you think needs to happen to get that across the finish line this year? Do you foresee that happening given the makeup of the legislature?
PAT GAROFALO: Yeah. It's funny. You spend 20 years in the legislature, and you work on important things like alternative teacher licensure to improve the quality of educators in our classroom, to modernize our tax code, to make sure that we're incentivizing workforce development, really important issues. And when I leave, everyone's going to think that all I did was sports gambling.
[LAUGHTER]
NINA MOINI: Well, it's been a hot topic.
PAT GAROFALO: It is. It is.
NINA MOINI: It's kind of one of the things that people are talking about.
PAT GAROFALO: Yeah, no. But it is funny because even today, I run into people, and that's what they bring up. But the gambling issues are provocative, and they're controversial, whether it's sports gambling or otherwise. And ultimately, this is an issue that's not partisan. There are Republicans and Democrats who just philosophically are set in their ways of being either in favor or against it. The fights are really about who's going to make money off this.
I think there's agreement on providing more resources for gambling treatment, making sure that this is gated so that those who are 21 years old and up are the only ones accessing it. It's really more of a fight between how much of the money goes to charities, how much goes to tribal casinos, how much goes to the horse racing tracks.
And if those three groups are able to figure things out and go to the legislature, I think legislators will be able to reach an agreement pretty quickly on it. If those three organizations are fighting, and they're posturing for leverage, then you're likely to see a stalemate, and Minnesota will continue to be one of the few states in the country that does not have this.
NINA MOINI: We'll be watching it closely. I know Brian Bakst and the politics team will be watching that closely. Another interesting tidbit about you is that your new job as the President of the Minnesota Grocers Association, and you took that job in July, so you'll still be probably at the Capitol in some capacity. How does your experience as a lawmaker all those years and your connections inform this new role?
PAT GAROFALO: Well, the Minnesota Grocers Association has been around for 125 years. It's Minnesota's only trade organization that represents food from the farm all the way to fork at the table, so we do a lot of things besides being involved in government affairs. And candidly, the more I'm at the Capitol, that's the worse I'm doing my job. We have a government relations team, and we have a lobbyist on staff who will be doing that.
But I think a few important things I would say is that there's been a lot of concern about food pricing lately, people not being able to afford their groceries. And unfortunately, in the midst of a presidential campaign, you get misinformation out there, whether it's Trump saying that immigrants are eating cats and dogs, or you got people saying that price gouging is why food went up.
In Minnesota, we have one of the strongest independent grocer networks in the nation. And our profit margins, you're talking about something around the line of 1.5% So statements like big business profiting, that doesn't really apply to your Minnesota independent grocers. Certainly, we're different than your Walmarts and your Targets. Those are very large entities.
But for your independent grocers in Minnesota, we want to make sure we get the word out to people that contrary to what you may hear, your local grocer is not the problem. A lot of these things are international and national issues of supply chain. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is we always-- like many businesses, we're struggling with workforce development and workforce training. There's a shortage of workers, and so being able to have programs that are getting people to stay with a career within the grocery industry, also to get those to enter it, that's really helpful.
And then third, and finally, anything we can do on the cost containment side. Again, we are very different than Walmart. When a government mandate comes down on Walmart, they've got an international footprint they can shift those costs to. If you're a local independent grocery store with three or five stores, you've either got to reduce service, reduce hours, or increase prices.
They're running at max efficiency right now. So just educating legislators on both sides to be, in the words of Jimmy Carter, frugal and responsible. We really do need to get down costs and the degree to which government can do or not do things, that's really important to our members and to our customers.
NINA MOINI: Well, I know you won't be at the Capitol on Monday, but it sounds like you are definitely keeping busy. Thank you so much for joining us, Representative Garofalo, and reflecting on your years of service. I appreciate it.
PAT GAROFALO: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Hope to talk to you again.
NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was former Republican Representative Pat Garofalo of Farmington.
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