Lisa Demuth is first woman, person of color to lead Minnesota House GOP caucus

Newly elected Minnesota House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth said she asked her Republican colleagues to choose her for the top leadership role because she's qualified, not because she's making history as the first Black woman in that role.

"I don't need to check a box," Demuth said in an interview last week after she was selected to lead the 64-member GOP caucus.

For the past two years, Demuth has been assistant minority leader to Rep. Kurt Daudt, the former House speaker who had hoped to resume the position if the GOP regained control of the 134-member House in the midterms.

But the DFL retained control, Daudt stepped aside and Demuth stepped up, becoming the first Black leader of any of the four legislative caucuses and the first woman to lead the Minnesota GOP caucus.

She's one of three new leaders of the four caucuses. Only House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Fridley, is returning to her post; she will be Demuth's counterpart.

Demuth said she has a different approach to her leadership role than Daudt did and calls her style collaborative.

"What you're going to see from me is the desire to work with the Democrats when there are reasonable provisions that we could agree on, but there will be no hesitation of standing against those policies or ideas that come across both in committee and on the floor that would hurt Minnesotans," she said.

On the potential for working with DFLers, she said, "the conversation is wide open."

Demuth, 55, just won re-election to her third term. She lives in Cold Spring, almost 90 minutes northwest of the Capitol. Before she ran and won a House seat in 2018, she was elected as a write-in candidate to the Rocori school board in 2007 and re-elected twice.

The married mother of four and grandmother of six runs a commercial property, and her husband, Nick Demuth, is president of Avon Plastics in Paynesville. Her last name rhymes with Namath, as in Joe Namath, the NFL Hall of Fame quarterback.

Like the other caucus leaders in the newly elected and closely divided Legislature, Demuth declined to lay out specific legislative goals. She said the GOP caucus has a two-day retreat later this month to discuss priorities and assignments. But she said the main issues are unchanged: tax relief, public safety and getting kids caught up in school after the pandemic.

"As a leader, I'm not going to come in and say, 'Here's our priorities, now get behind them,'" she said, adding that the caucus as a whole will discuss an approach.

Her ultimate goal and measure of success is clear: reclaiming control for the GOP in two years. She didn't say it, but a Republican majority would put Demuth in position to make more history as the first person of color to be speaker of the House.