Let’s move beyond the flag debate

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The 2023 legislative session was certainly a busy one. The DFL “trifecta” set 30 goals and passed each of them, ranging from abortion rights to family leave, from taxes to education spending, from legalized marijuana to a giant capital spending package.

The minority Republicans couldn’t stop the avalanche of legislation, but it certainly gave them plenty of targets to campaign against.

And what they’ve chosen to focus on is … the state flag.

Really.

The process of coming up with a new emblem for Minnesota was loud, messy and transparent, at times painfully so during the end-of-the-year push to meet the mandated deadline. Some observers played it for laughs. The commission created by the Legislature played it straight, putting all submissions up for public review no matter how frivolous or serious.

It is clean and simple, without the chaos and unrecognizable detail of the current flag. Plus it drops the racial imagery of the Native Americans being forced off the land. When the new flag takes effect as scheduled on Statehood Day, May 11, Minnesota will go, in the consensus view of flag design experts, from one of the nation’s worst state flags to one of the best.

The current flag was hardly beloved, unlike the flags of such states as Texas, Alaska or Colorado. Until the Republicans started their “save our flag” campaign, one seldom saw a Minnesota flag other than at a public building.

And yet the GOP sees this as the hill to fight on. They somehow imagine that a process that featured more than 2,500 submitted designs and repeated public hearings lacked public input.

They recently held a rally on the State Capitol steps demanding the Legislature revisit the issue. They want the effective date pushed back. They want the design put up for a public referendum.

And they drew a whopping crowd of about two dozen to amplify those demands — far fewer than attended the commission’s in-person meetings last year.