Last week, during a contentious legislative floor hearing ahead of the Easter/Passover break, members of both major parties voiced the same concern — social media is making it harder to get anything done at the Minnesota Capitol.
They weren’t talking about trolls or misinformation in the abstract. They were talking about the very real, very personal ways that posts from colleagues, party units and campaign arms are shaping behavior inside the building.
When every hearing, hallway conversation and floor speech can be clipped, edited and weaponized by the people around them, the incentive to legislate shrinks while the incentive to perform grows.
This year’s legislative session was always going to be complicated. It’s a short session. It’s an election year. And not just any election year — all 201 legislative seats, the congressional delegation and the state constitutional offices are on the ballot. Add to that the fact that the legislative session directly overlaps with endorsement caucuses (culminating in both the DFL and Republican state conventions falling on the same weekend, May 29–31, less than two weeks after adjournment) and we’re living through a perfect storm of political pressure.
In this environment, social media isn’t just background noise. It shapes debate, disrupts relationships and affects the outcome of the session.
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Legislators seeking endorsement know that the people who show up to caucuses and conventions tend to be more ideologically driven than the general electorate. That’s not a criticism; it’s simply a reflection of who has the time, interest and motivation to participate in party processes. But it means that, for many legislators, speaking to the base during endorsement season becomes more immediately important than governing. It’s easy to look down on that kind of self‑preservation, but if you’re feeling judgmental, remember: You probably act differently when your boss is actively evaluating your job, too.
Remember trackers? Trackers were people campaigns hired to follow candidates and record their every move. It used to be a weird, aggressive, intrusive job that only a few people had the stomach and the nerve to do. But now, we’re all trackers.
If you’re a legislator trying to pass a bill, you might worry that a single awkward phrase in a committee hearing will be clipped and blasted out by an opposition researcher. But in 2026, the threat isn’t just the other party. It could be a primary challenger, an independent expenditure committee, or a hyper‑online activist group that sees compromise as betrayal.
If your opponent doesn’t grab the video of you saying something silly, someone else will. And when the viral moment happens to an opponent, it’s treated as a gift: embarrassing, distracting and often more politically valuable than any amendment or bill passage.
The stakes of going viral are higher than ever. A sharp exchange or a fiery floor speech can draw attention, eyeballs and campaign donations. Social media algorithms reward outrage, and campaigns feel the pressure to feed that machine. (Even more so if a legislator has a monetized YouTube or X channel; the more views their posts get, the more money they earn.)
That pressure changes behavior. It encourages legislators to introduce bills that are messaging tools rather than policy proposals. It encourages testimony designed for TikTok, not for problem‑solving. It encourages moral framing because moral framing performs well. And it leaves the legislators who genuinely want to get things done — especially those retiring and hoping for one last legacy session — deeply frustrated.
It’s not just elected officials caught in this dynamic. Each caucus employs communications staff — these are state employees — whose job is explicitly partisan. Their role is not to explain policy neutrally; it’s to frame issues in ways that benefit their side. Layered on top of that are party and caucus campaign staff who operate in a different lane (they’re not state employees, but they work directly with legislators) and often with even sharper incentives. They aren’t rewarded for policy nuance or bipartisan accomplishments. They’re celebrated for hot takes, viral clips and posts that land punches.
In recent years, there have been several instances of legislative staff posting partisan attacks on their own social media — usually against the other party, but occasionally against legislators in their own caucus. Back when I was a legislative staffer, an action like that would have been an invitation to get fired. But now? I’m not sure. Those who are most aggressive online, instead of being fired, seem to climb the ranks and are promoted into more powerful positions. What gets rewarded is what will continue. And when staffers see their peers being rewarded, they learn to repeat these tactics. We’re teaching them to troll.
And the incentives aren’t just internal. In a Politico interview a few years ago, then–DFL Party Chair Ken Martin described his job as “taking the low road so my candidates and elected officials can take the high road.” It was an unusually candid acknowledgment of how the system works: negativity isn’t eliminated — it’s outsourced. The attack ads, the sharp posts, the viral clips that distort context don’t appear out of nowhere. They’re produced by people whose job is to generate them. And when that machinery is humming, it becomes even harder for legislators to trust one another inside the building.
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For legislators, this isn’t an abstract situation. Every legislator has been the subject of attack ads. When your colleagues on the other side of the aisle employ and publicly support people who take your words out of context or weaponize them for partisan gain, it becomes genuinely difficult — on a human level — to set that aside and walk into a negotiation in good faith. Legislators are still people, and most of them do come to the Legislature with moderately thick skin. But being misrepresented or mocked by someone paid by your colleagues doesn’t just sting; it erodes the very relationships that make bipartisan work possible.
Minnesota has examples of leaders trying to push back against the negativity machine. Sen. Julia Coleman, R-Waconia, has said she would sign a positivity pledge if presented with one, committing to avoid negative ads. Back in 2020, then‑Sen. Matt Little, DFL-Lakeville, publicly denounced attack ads run on his behalf against his opponent, now‑Sen. Zach Duckworth, R-Lakeville, and asked his own party to stop running them. That kind of public accountability is rare, and it matters. (It also matters to legislators who might try the same thing that Little wound up losing that race.)
We can’t turn back the clock on social media. But we can change the incentives. The session is short. The stakes are high. And the people who stepped up to serve deserve a chance to do the work without being punished for it.
Shannon Watson is the executive director of Majority in the Middle, a St. Paul-based nonprofit. She’s also a longtime State Capitol observer and will provide occasional Voices commentaries during the 2026 legislative session. You’ll find Watson’s first Middle Aisle column here.
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