Minnesotans like to tell ourselves a nice story about our citizen Legislature: that it’s a part‑time job for “normal” people. We imagine teachers, farmers, small‑business owners, nurses and retirees taking a few months out of the year to serve the public as legislators before returning to their regular lives. It’s a nice idea. It’s also increasingly fictional — and maybe starting to border on unfair to the people we elect.

We also say we want legislators who are “just like us.” But normal people break the law. Normal people make mistakes. Normal people get traffic tickets, lose their tempers, forget paperwork and occasionally exercise poor judgment. (If you doubt that, spend a few minutes with the organization We Are All Criminals, which documents how common it is for everyday Minnesotans to have committed something technically illegal at some point in their lives.)

So when legislators like Republican Reps. Elliot Engen and Walter Hudson end up in the news after a traffic stop, the public reaction often reveals our double standard. We want them, and other law-breaking legislators who’ve come before them, to be relatable and human — until they act like humans. Then we want them to be better.

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To be clear: when lawmakers break the law, there should be consequences, just like there are for every other Minnesotan. Accountability matters. But accountability is not the same thing as exile. A system that treats every misstep as disqualifying will eventually produce only two kinds of legislators: unicorns who have never done anything wrong, and those who are very good at hiding their wrongdoings. 

There’s another pattern worth naming — the empathy gap. When a member of our own political party gets into trouble, we tend to talk about the importance of due process. When a member of the other party gets into trouble, we tend to talk about consequences. The same behavior becomes either a personal matter or a moral failure depending on who got arrested that day.

Lawbreaking becomes less an opportunity for empathy and more an opportunity for embarrassment. (For that reason, the person I felt the worst for as Engen-Hudson story was breaking was DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott. His status as another candidate for state auditor who also had a prior DUI situation meant he was named in every single story about Engen.)

Legislators themselves fall into this trap. Many have spoken eloquently about the importance of withholding judgment when a colleague from their own caucus is accused of wrongdoing. But when the accused sits on the other side of the aisle, the tone shifts. Suddenly the issue is not due process but character. We put condemnation ahead of the investigation. 

The real question: What do we want from the people we elect? If we want legislators to be perfect, we should say so — and accept that the pool of eligible candidates will shrink to almost nothing.

And then there’s the matter of compensation. The job is technically part‑time, but the expectations are full‑time. The pay (currently $51,750) is low enough that many legislators need a second job, yet the logistics around holding outside employment are tight enough that only a small segment of Minnesotans can realistically make that work. If you have a small business, you can work for yourself. You can work for an organization that’s comfortable with its employees being in “political” roles.

In recent years, advocacy groups have been willing to hire legislators; social services and local governments seem to be increasingly OK with it; large corporations, in recent history, have not. So if you work in any industry that might have business before the state — which is to say, almost everywhere — you risk having, or being accused of, a conflict of interest.

That’s the dynamic now facing DFL Rep. Alex Falconer, who is the subject of an ethics complaint filed by Republican legislators. Legislators are required to file a form, called the Statement of Economic Interest, with the Campaign Finance Board. It details where legislators earn their non-legislative compensation, any other businesses they have ties to, and any property they own. The idea is to be transparent about where their money comes from, so the public can be confident that legislators aren’t sponsoring bills that would enrich themselves.

The economic interest forms are public, and anybody can look them up. The ethics complaint suggests that Falconer has a conflict of interest because he’s been carrying bills that are supported and lobbied for by his employer. In addition, Falconer’s job (federal government relations manager for Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, aka Save the Boundary Waters) makes him a “legislator-lobbyist,” which is prohibited in Minnesota state law. 

Whether the complaint is well‑founded or not, the larger point remains: We have built a system where conflicts of interest are not an anomaly but an inevitability. When legislators bring their expertise — whether that’s in education, or health care, or family law or science — sometimes working on the issues they know the most about and care the most about creates potential for conflict. We shouldn’t be surprised when the structure produces exactly the outcomes it was designed to produce.

Of course, the boundaries of what are and what are not a conflict of interest aren’t hard and fast, nor do all legislators agree on where the boundaries are, as demonstrated in the Senate ethics committee examination of DFL Sen. Bobby Joe Champion’s potential conflicts last year. That situation stemmed from Champion carrying bills for past clients of his law practice, without disclosing that relationship. Champion asserted that since the work he’d done was pro bono, he was unpaid so there was no conflict to disclose.

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If we want legislators to be human, maybe we should build a system that acknowledges humanity: Pay them enough that they don’t need a second job. (To be clear, I am not advocating for a full-time Legislature.) Or, if we insist on a lower level of pay, accept that outside employment will sometimes create conflicts. And if we want “normal people,” we should expect normal mistakes — and judge our leaders not by whether they err, but by whether they learn.

Minnesota’s citizen Legislature is at a crossroads. We can keep pretending the job is something it isn’t, and keep punishing people for failing to meet impossible expectations. Or we can be honest about what the role requires, what the public deserves and what accountability should look like in a system built for real people. The question isn’t whether legislators will make mistakes. They will. The question is whether we want a politics that treats those mistakes as a reason to cast people out — or a reason to let them demonstrate leadership by demonstrating what doing better looks like. 

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 previous Middle Aisle columns here.

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