Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz embraces the politics of compromise in final year at the Capitol

MINNEAPOLIS - As major pieces of his agenda stalled in his final session at the Minnesota Capitol, Gov. Tim Walz reframed his view of success around finding compromise in the most closely divided Legislature in state history.

Speaking to reporters in the session's final days, Walz said the budget deal he struck with legislative leaders was "some of the finest legislative work" of his tenure, even though it did not include his top proposals on guns, taxes and economic relief from Operation Metro Surge.

With an evenly split House and narrowly DFL-controlled Senate, Walz shelved his more partisan goals and zeroed in on infrastructure, fraud prevention and a distressed healthcare system.

The shift reflected a broader recalibration for Walz after years of full DFL control, when Democratic majorities and a massive budget surplus allowed him to notch some of the most progressive achievements of his governorship with little Republican input.

In his final two years in office, Walz was forced to embrace bipartisan dealmaking with a Republican speaker of the House and make concessions to address a looming budget deficit.

"It's his eighth year - that's the legacy year - and you've got the closest Legislature in the history of the state," said former DFL political operative Todd Rapp. "I think he's looking to be able to define one area of legacy that government can continue to work together even as people watch, for example, the national government. By every poll, the confidence in the national government is underwater."

Walz's end-of-session pragmatism comes as he weighs his political future beyond the Capitol. The two-term governor rose to the national stage as the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 2024 and recently launched a political action committee aimed at recruiting and electing Democrats in rural areas and small towns.

Walz still occasionally reverted to the more progressive posture that defined his trifecta years in his final legislative session. He was initially adamant that Republicans vote on proposals to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines following the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School. He also wanted to impose a new tax on social media companies to fund workforce development on artificial intelligence, among other things.

But Republicans stood firmly opposed to new gun restrictions and showed no fear of the lame-duck governor. Members of Walz's own party cast some of his other proposals aside, including a cut and expansion of the statewide sales tax.

As those priorities languished, Walz increasingly framed fiscal restraint as his top priority.

When DFL and GOP legislative leaders brought forward their requests, Walz said he and his team repeatedly asked: How are you going to pay for it?

"My job is to hand this off to the next governor," Walz said, "to hand off a state that is in solid financial shape."

Teddy Tschann, one of Walz's senior advisers, said that emphasis helped the governor protect priority investments made in 2023, such as a child tax credit and free school meals.

"He's proud of his record and the fiscal position we're leaving the state in," Tschann said.

In the session's final weeks, Walz and legislative leaders narrowed in on a shortlist of shared priorities. They struck an agreement with days to spare that includes aid for the financially distressed HCMC, some modest property tax relief and a bonding bill to fund local public works projects.

Walz ceded some ground on the relatively high vehicle registration taxes that he and Democrats passed into law in 2023, agreeing to reduce the tab fees for one year. That was a victory for Republicans, who one year earlier got Walz to roll back part of another 2023 law that provided state healthcare coverage to undocumented adults.

"The work that we're finishing up over the next few days really puts an exclamation point for Minnesotans on how much better they are with some Republican voice in Minnesota state government," said House GOP Floor Leader Harry Niska.

While DFL legislative leaders largely embraced the agreement to end this year's session, they lamented that there wouldn't be further action on gun-related proposals.

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, was not happy with how the deal was reached. Walz and legislative leaders held weeks of closed-door negotiations. The Senate leader said those talks should have unfolded in public and included committee chairs who have expertise on each of the topics.

"I think this process is broken," Murphy said, adding that backroom talks became more common in the Walz era.

"Over the years of the Walz administration, this is something that they have grown accustomed to."

But Walz expressed pride in the agreement the narrowly divided Legislature reached. It also included significant investments to fight the fraud that has plagued state social services programs and clouded his final year in office. Legislators were racing to pass the proposals included in the final agreement on Saturday, ahead of their May 18 adjournment.

Walz and his advisers have repeatedly noted that, during his tenure, Minnesota has avoided the government shutdowns and brinkmanship seen in Washington.

"In a backdrop against a very chaotic and very dysfunctional federal government that runs massive trillion-dollar deficits and goes into shutdowns," Walz said, "this group of bipartisan legislators sat down cordially … and fiercely debated our positions and came to compromises."

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(Nathaniel Minor of The Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)

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This story was originally published May 16, 2026 at 6:59 PM.