When legislators convened in St. Paul in February, no one knew whether hard times and a broken bridge would knit Minnesota's warring political tribes together or drive them further apart.

Six weeks later, the chasm keeps growing.

"We're like the Serbs and Croats here," said Rep. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, who was caught in partisan crossfire when he broke ranks to help DFLers pass a transportation bill. "We keep shooting at each other no matter what, even though all our constituents want is for us to make peace and figure things out."

At stake as the session winds toward its May 19 close is whether Minnesotans' tax burden will rise or fall during a struggling economy, and what kind of cuts may befall programs that provide health care and spur job creation. It all depends on whether the DFL-led Legislature and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty can find common ground on resolving a nearly $1 billion projected budget deficit.

The balance of power may rest with the tiny House Republican caucus, which despite its small numbers has the power to uphold Pawlenty vetoes or help DFLers override them. The caucus is still binding self-inflicted wounds suffered when Abeler and five others were stripped of leadership posts for voting to override Pawlenty on the $6.6 billion transportation bill that carried the first gas tax increase in a generation.

"We've moved on from that," said House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall. "Feelings were pretty raw, but we're healing and we've unified on the issue of fiscal discipline. There will be no more overrides."

The numbers that divide Pawlenty and the DFLers are smaller than their fire-breathing rhetoric suggests.

Both sides propose to use one-time money as a Band-Aid to shore up the immediate budget problem. Both leave a sizable budget hole in the years ahead should the state's economy continue to sputter.

"From a fiscal perspective, the goal here should be to fix the $936 million deficit for 2008-09 and as much of the projected deficit as possible in '10 and '11," said state Finance Commissioner Tom Hanson.

Nationally, most economists are convinced that the country is in recession. DFLers want the state to respond by jump-starting the state economy with a fat construction, or bonding, bill; "investment" spending on schools and infrastructure, and extra padding for the safety net they say Pawlenty has frayed.

Pawlenty counters that he is the brake to the runaway train of DFL spending, accusing Democrats of fiscal irresponsibility and painting them as willful children who want it all.

The heated rhetoric and actions to match have made for a nasty session in which DFLers and Pawlenty have traded blows even as nonelected staffers work feverishly to maintain back channels for the negotiations that must take place in the next five weeks.

A bad beginning

Before the Legislature had even convened, Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, declared that Republican rule had taken Minnesotans on a forced "march to mediocrity" that DFLers would halt. He accused Pawlenty of gimmickry and an obsession with national prominence.

Days later, Pawlenty brandished a red veto pen at his State of the State address and swore he would use it to stop DFL tax increases in their tracks.

The DFL-led House responded with a jaw-ringing blow -- the first veto override of Pawlenty's gubernatorial career, on the $6.6 billion transportation bill that imposed the first gas tax increase since 1988.

Soon after, Senate DFLers unceremoniously dumped Carol Molnau, Pawlenty's lieutenant governor, from her transportation commissioner post, saying she had bungled the MnDOT job.

Since then, both bodies have acted to cut or curtail the governor's pet projects -- a JOBZ economic development program pegged as flawed by a Legislative Auditor's report and Q-COMP, a teachers' merit-pay initiative. They also served up what Pawlenty called a "credit-card busting" bonding bill that left out two projects he wanted: funds for what would be the first new state park in 40 years, at Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota, and for a new Minneapolis veterans' nursing home.

Last week, Pawlenty used his line-item veto to trim $208 million from the $925 million bonding bill, cutting out prized DFL projects, including the Central Corridor light-rail line to link downtowns in Minneapolis and St. Paul .

"If you poke a bear in the eye often enough, it bites back," said Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership and a longtime friend and political ally of Pawlenty's. "The truth is, they're not that far apart on things. Everyone could still get out of here with good stuff to brag about."

The alternative? DFLers and Pawlenty fail to reach agreement on a budget solution and Pawlenty winds up using his "unallotment" authority to cut spending single-handedly.

"Nobody wants the governor to unallot," said House Majority Leader Tony Sertich, DFL-Chisholm. "We know what he'll go after. It will be things like health care."

Getting personal

But politics is personal, and the personalities involved have conflicts.

DFL leaders have complained throughout the session that Pawlenty has been "disengaged" and too busy auditioning for vice president to make deals in St. Paul.

House Rep. Tom Rukavina of Virginia summed up DFL frustrations with Pawlenty in a recent floor debate. "The governor thinks there are three branches of government," the pugnacious Iron Ranger said. "Me, myself and I."

McClung says there is equal frustration on the administration's side with what he said are DFL attempts to over-personalize differences in an effort to demonize Pawlenty. Sertich on Friday said a governor's staff member had called recently and threatened him with bonding vetoes for past remarks, allegedly telling Sertich that "cheap shots are cheap, but they aren't free." McClung confirmed late Friday that Pawlenty's chief of staff, Mark Kramer, made the call but declined to divulge details of the conversation.

"None of this is personal," McClung said earlier. "We're not going to raise taxes, especially in this economic climate. If Democrats were so concerned about specific projects, they should have listened more closely to the governor's message on the need to prioritize. The governor is an integral part of this process."

After a decade of watching similar grenades lobbed back and forth, Abeler said he's tired of the fireworks.

"He [Pawlenty] wants a park and a nursing home. Didn't they get that message?" Abeler said of DFLers. "They want the Central Corridor. We get it. I could do this. It's easy math. It's all part of a dance that, it seems, must go on."

Patricia Lopez • 651-222-1288

THE ISSUES

What's still uncertain at the Capitol, and what's been done A10