State of the State speech gets Capitol homecoming

Gov. Tim Walz will be back in the Minnesota House chamber on Sunday to deliver his annual State of the State Address, a purposeful return to the Capitol where he’s spent relatively little time the past two years.

The last two State of the State speeches have been delivered through video feed from the governor’s residence in 2020 and a Mankato classroom in 2021. 

“I'm sure legislators have been incredibly sad they have not been able to sit there and listen to me speak for several hours. They will be back,” Walz said Wednesday. “But in all seriousness, it's going to give me an opportunity, I think, to highlight a thanks to a whole lot of Minnesotans for getting us through the worst part of the pandemic, for rebuilding and coming back and solving problems around public safety and criminal justice reform.”

Aside from the annual remarks, Walz has conducted much of his business remotely — in part due to the pandemic and in part to a concerted push to take his message on the road. 

Avoiding the daily statehouse skirmishes also has strategic importance to a governor trying to appear above legislative fights in an election year. He’s worked to present a sunny outlook in the face of more-pessimistic appraisals of the state’s direction on his watch that rivals convey.

This week, he stood in a line of bipartisan leaders hoisting shovels of dirt to mark a major milestone in the lane expansion of Highway 14. He told those at the ceremonial groundbreaking in tiny Courtland that it was a long time coming.

“It’s always great to be here on a good news day and seeing a lot of old friends here,” Walz said. “Literally there are people in this crowd who have worked on Highway 14 for decades.”

Walz has made dozens of stops the past few months from urban settings to the suburbs to cities across Greater Minnesota.

In March, he sized up a 911 call center in Stillwater that he hailed as a model for responsiveness. He's held roundtables to talk about plans for crime prevention, paid family leave and child care. Walz has been to schools, too, where he’s read to kindergarten classes, looked in on preschool programs and thanked staff for extra efforts during a trying two years.

“As Minnesota Lutherans, we know if you do a good deed and talk about it, it doesn’t count. So we don’t say anything,” he told teachers and support aides in a school library in Inver Grove Heights. “We’re out here to talk about the good deeds you’re doing.”

The sites of his stops are carefully scouted and the attendees largely pre-determined.

Every now and then, critics get a word in. 

“Don’t forget he locked you up,” a man shouted at Walz at a gas station, a clear reference to his now-lapsed COVID-19 restrictions. 

Walz was there to talk about his proposal for tax rebate checks as an antidote to rising prices. He paused briefly trying to determine what the man said, then moved forward with his remarks.

Public safety, infrastructure upgrades and the tax rebate plan are the topics Walz is hitting the most on the road.

Republican House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt has taken note. 

“When he's out there on the PR campaign, he's sounding a lot like a Republican in this election year,” Daudt said. “Because that's the flavor of what the electorate wants.”

Daudt said it’s getting to be session crunch time, and the governor will have to start hunkering down at the Capitol just like lawmakers.

“My advice to Governor Walz would be: Get engaged in the legislative process. We're only here for another five weeks,” Daudt said earlier this week. “And this is his opportunity to really shape what the Legislature passes. If he sits on the sidelines and doesn't play an active role, it's probably not likely we're going to get a lot done.”

To be sure, Walz was in the building for a couple of public events this week to tout aspects of his agenda. He has also held closed-door meetings with legislative leaders.

DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman said Walz has both put forward proposals and been involved in early negotiations, helping strike a deal around a health insurance measure and working to break a logjam over the state unemployment fund and pandemic worker pay.

“The governor is fully engaged and will remain fully engaged,” she said.

Abou Amara, who used to work as a legislative leadership aide and has also advised Democratic campaigns, said Walz appears to be trying to strike a balance. 

“The governor understands stepping out to take a look at the big picture. The big picture is not necessarily the day-to-day things happening at the Capitol, although that matters,” Amara said. “But it's really to make sure Minnesotans understand what he's been trying to do on behalf of them. And so I don't think he's avoiding the Capitol. I just think he's taking his message to Minnesotans, as opposed to having conversations just in the Capitol itself.”

Amara likes that Walz is holding this State of the State speech in the traditional setting after two years of delivering them into a camera without an audience.

“Symbols matter,” Amara said. “And the governor giving the State of the State in the Capitol again is a symbol to Minnesotans that we've returned to a sense of normalcy.”

In his first address in April 2019, Walz delivered an idealistic recitation of how he and a politically split Legislature could jointly proceed.

“Tonight, gathering together for the first time all of us together gives us an opportunity to reaffirm why we are here,” Walz said then. “I know for certain that we're not here to have petty arguments against one another. I'm absolutely certain we're not here to send out mean tweets towards one another. And I know and I think this is especially true of our new members, we're not here to be actors in a story that is already written for us.”

There have been plenty of pointed tweets and arguments in the years since, but not even Walz could have predicted the choppy waters he and the state would encounter. Just how well the governor has navigated those waters will be debated by his opponents and decided by voters over the months ahead.

MPR News reporters Tim Pugmire and Hannah Yang contributed to this story.

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