Capitol View for February 9

Good morning. A long week calls for a super weekend.

Yesterday was one of those days where it’s made clear how many detours this presidential race will encounter. The morning’s dominant story was the U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s eligibility for ballots as the potential Republican nominee. The afternoon shifted to President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and how he came off in interviews with the special prosecutor, who declined to recommend criminal charges.

In the Trump case, justices sounded deeply troubled by the prospect that a state or states could alter a presidential race by keeping a prominent candidate off the ballot. The court must decide if and how an insurrection clause in the U.S. Constitution applies here. Carrie Johnson of NPR captured how justices on the ideological right and left posed many questions skeptical of the Colorado move to bar Trump, a former president, from ballots. The Colorado case is just one of many that have been filed. Chief Justice John Roberts raised the prospect that if Trump is blocked, subjective standards could be used in other states to deny candidates ballot access and possibly tip races for the nation's top office. A lawyer for the state of Colorado says the clause laid dormant for so long that it’s not prone to abuse and is reserved for extraordinary circumstances.

On the Biden front, he dodged criminal charges but the narrative in the special counsel’s report could be just as problematic. The report says Biden willfully held onto classified national security information, shared material with a ghostwriter who wasn’t authorized to have it and demonstrated lapses in memory when interviewed by authorities about it. The last part is the one the White House pushed back against, saying the portrayal wasn’t accurate. But the nod to memory problems in a report of this magnitude will also feed existing concern that an 81-year-old Biden isn’t mentally suited for another term. NPR has a story here and the full 388-page report is available here.

The presidential campaign, however, goes on. Donald Trump swept the delegates in Nevada at Republican caucuses there. In Minnesota, we have new numbers that echo our reporting from earlier in the week that primary voting is fairly quiet. So far, 22,745 absentee and mail ballots have been marked accepted for Minnesota's presidential primary. New statistics released yesterday by the Secretary of State's office show that many more ballots have been sent out but not yet been returned to election officials. See county-by-county stats here. The figures were not broken down by party. Republicans, the DFL and the Legal Marijuana Now Party are all holding primaries. Minnesota is part of the March 5 Super Tuesday voting. But early voting began here last month. In 2020, there were about 750,000 presidential primary votes.

DFL lawmakers are proposing a bill that would protect some people without legal status from immigration officials. MPR’s Sarah Thamer reports on what backers are calling the “North Star Act” that would make Minnesota one of a dozen or so sanctuary states. Under the proposal, state and local agencies would be prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration authorities to deport people. Nearly four dozen Democrats have committed to signing the bill ahead of the legislative session, but it isn’t high on the list of DFL policy priorities, and House Speaker Melissa Hortman downplayed its prospects. If the bill did become law, all state law enforcement and other government agencies, including public schools and health care facilities, would not be allowed to ask about a person’s immigration status or assist in immigration enforcement.

Legislative Republicans plan to highlight recent raises for Minnesota state agency commissioners as examples of excessive spending by DFLers . As we reported here earlier this week, several leaders of state agencies saw salary adjustments of $30,000 or more per year. The highest-paid commissioners now make about $187,000. That’s notably more than a year ago. The Legislature approved the pay recommendations put forth by a compensation council. A law change last year provided more flexibility in setting management salaries going forward. Those who pushed for raises say the new pay rates bring the state government in line with comparable executive positions in the private sector. Republican House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth says the raises are too much. “We're definitely going to let people know about that. Those were five-figure raises for commissioners. Everybody works hard and deserves to be compensated but that's out of touch for Minnesota," she told Dana Ferguson yesterday

The fires that severely damaged a constellation of offices for conservative groups have been deemed arson, and one of them is offering a cash reward for information about the incident. MPR’s Matt Sepic reports that the Jan. 28 fires at a Golden Valley office building targeted the Center of the American Experiment and two other conservative organizations, TakeCharge and the Upper Midwest Law Center. A $15,000 reward is now on the line for information that leads to a conviction. A variety of small businesses were also displaced, and restoration work is expected to take months.