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Published March 28, 2012, 12:00 AM

Franson: Leadership lacking in Legislature

State Representative Mary Franson says the Legislature lacks what she calls “genuine leadership.” The first-term Alexandria Republican wrote in a Star Tribune opinion piece that she finds “an institutional pull toward the passive, the safe, the groupthink.”

State Representative Mary Franson says the Legislature lacks what she calls “genuine leadership.”

The first-term Alexandria Republican wrote in a Star Tribune opinion piece that she finds “an institutional pull toward the passive, the safe, the groupthink.”

While that may be understandable, she added, “What this fosters is all too often a lack of genuine leadership.”

Original ideas suffer because of that, she said. “Big ideas are not welcomed in either party; the respective caucuses fight each other over a very narrow band of ideas. It recalls nothing so much as the futility of World War I trench warfare – high costs for little gain.”

GOP Governor Scott Walker and Republican legislative majorities in Wisconsin passed major changes, Franson said. “Nowhere in America are differences within the same political party greater than those between the Wisconsin and Minnesota Republican parties.”

She said nothing suggests Minnesota Republicans will turn to a Wisconsin-style “principled leadership.”

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