Many Minnesota legislators spent most of Sunday waiting, just like the public, lobbyists, and the media: making sleep-deprived conversation and obsessively checking phones beneath the hum of air-conditioning.
“Instead of sitting around together and writing [bills] together line by line, we all float around in our separate worlds waiting for the phone to ring,” said Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, who stationed herself in the hallway of the State Office Building between morning session and late afternoon caucuses, waiting to be summoned for a committee meeting.
“It’s a little bit like going in each day and banging your head on the wall,” she said. “That’s what our work is like.”
“It’s boring,” said Rep. Jerry Newton, DFL-Coon Rapids.
Before construction at the Capitol pushed nearly everyone and everything out of the building, all the legislator, lobbyists, and members of the public were consolidated in a single building. This year, the different groups remained more distinct, Hausman said.
Senators mostly stayed in their new building north of the Capitol building while representatives stayed on their respective floors in the State Office Building. Lobbyists hovered in halls and outside offices, or the basement committee room that televises house sessions.
While legislators caucused in private, lobbyists and a handful of House pages drifted outside to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. People with armfuls of coffee drinks, sandwich orders, and the smell of Chinese takeout also indicated the occasional forays off campus.
But for the most part, everyone sat and waited to see what was going to happen as the clock wound down.
“There was more anger and more hope yesterday. Today, it’s more accepting your fate,” said lobbyist Tim Spreck as he sat outside the empty Secretary of State’s office, slowly draining a cup of coffee he bought for $1 out of a vending machine.
He and Rep. Brian Johnson, R-Cambridge, were joking together as they caught up in the hallway of the first floor – humor is one of the few ways to keep from going crazy when faced with the amount of work they have to accomplish (at least four pieces of major legislation) on such a limited sleep (three hours average) they said.
“In a little less than nine hours–” Johnson said as he and Spreck glanced at their watches simultaneously to confirm the countdown. “We’re on this train, in this tunnel, hurrying toward the end. And at 11:59 we’ll know if there’s a light at the end or a brick wall.”
For everyone, Sunday was the culmination of several fractious, sleepless, days at the Capitol. Otherwise carefully-tended office plants languished in sunny window. The children of both legislators and the press came to visit, or used video-chat to check in.
Rep. Ron Erhardt, DFL-Edina, brought his dog, Dickens, to the Capitol so he’d still be able to feed and walk the wire-haired fox terrier despite long hours.
Erhardt walks Dickens two or three times each day and takes breaks to relay water between the sink and the dog’s water bowl using a paper cup. Occasionally when the door is open and people cluster outside, Dickens whines a little — he wants to be with them — but for the most part, he’s very quiet and well behaved.
As for Erhardt and the rest of the humans: “There’s been a lot of wandering around and waiting for things to happen,” Erhardt said.
