State Senator Michelle Fischbach will likely be Minnesota’s new lieutenant governor, after Governor Mark Dayton announced he’ll appoint Tina Smith to replace Al Franken in the U-S Senate. Fischbach, a Republican from Paynesville, says about supporting Democratic Governor Dayton’s policies, “I seriously doubt it… but I don’t know if that is what he would necessarily ask me to do.” And what agenda would Fischbach push, if Dayton for some reason could not complete his last year in office? “That’s a lot of speculation and I would rather not get into it at this point, about anything horrible happening,” she says. Fischbach says her positions are clear after serving 20 years in the state Senate: “I’m a Republican…. Probably instead of going into a whole lot of policy issues, it might just be easier to explain that I am a Republican.”
Fischbach and Dayton meet privately on Friday. She says legal precedent allows her to retain her state Senate seat while serving as lieutenant governor. The Dayton administration disagrees.