Republican senator says "bipartisanship is dead" after vote to end power-sharing agreement

A Republican caucus member at the Minnesota Senate press event said bipartisanship in the chamber "is dead" and called it "extremely disappointing" that, he said, minutes after Sen. Doran Clark was sworn in a vote was taken to end a power-sharing agreement.

"We saw today that minutes after, we swore in Senator Clark, there was a vote taken to end bipartisanship," the Republican caucus member said. "Immediately all of those, very partisan votes came out once again. And so we're disappointed."

The speaker said Republican members had worked in a bipartisan fashion in recent weeks on issues including alleged fraud in state agencies, reinsurance in the commerce committee and energy items in the energy committee, and that the change will "infect the senate again." He criticized an eight-member "Blue Dog Caucus" that had pledged bipartisan cooperation, saying, "they really proved they're they're more lap dogs than they were guard dogs."

The Republican caucus member said party leaders had hoped to delay rescinding the power-sharing agreement at least until the following week to allow committees already scheduled to meet to hear items. He said that, in his view, that delay would have allowed continued bipartisan consideration of committee business and that cutting off committee work was "really disappointing."

When asked about whether committee chairs would continue to share the gavel, the speaker said he was "not very optimistic on that." The speaker also framed the coming weeks as potentially more difficult if the House remains unorganized.

The assertions reported by the Republican caucus member describe his view of events and their likely effect on committee business; the press event did not include a named Republican official identifying himself by role, and some committee schedule and chairing details were described as expectations rather than finalized changes.