Restore the Flag Minnesota Actually Loved
Rocco for State Senate — SD 65
Minnesota did not lose its flag in a fair fight. It lost it in an omnibus. The old banner — the 1983 blue field, the state seal, the North Star motto people grew up saluting at ballgames, veterans’ halls, and county fairs — was retired by a DFL trifecta that never put the question to the body of electors. The replacement is a two-tone blue sheet with an eight-point star that half the state still calls the new Somali flag. Rocco’s position is the grassroots position: fly the flag Minnesotans loved. Restore it.
How they did it
In 2023 Democrats held the House, the Senate, and the governor’s office. They did not pass a clean flag bill and send it to the voters. They parked a State Emblems Redesign Commission inside the State Government Finance Omnibus — Chapter 62 — a spending-and-policy dump. The commission got about four months and $35,000. It was told to adopt a new flag and seal by January 1, 2024. Voting members were a mix of governor appointees and seats handed to identity councils. Republican legislators on the panel were non-voting. They wrote a minority report. The majority did not need them.
More than 2,000 designs came in. Six official flag finalists. Then three. On December 19, 2023, the commission picked a variant of Andrew Prekker’s F1953 concept: dark-blue Minnesota silhouette, white eight-point North Star, light-blue field. Unless the Legislature blocked it, the new emblems became official on Statehood Day, May 11, 2024. There was no statewide referendum. There was no up-or-down vote of every elector. Republicans were spectators. That is not consent. That is a trifecta using the calendar.
The Constitution they ignored
Article IV, Section 17 of the Minnesota Constitution is not poetry. “No law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.” The clause exists to stop logrolling — stuffing a flag, a tax, a board, and a pet project into one pile so no member can vote the symbol on its own. Courts have already used that clause to carve pieces out of later omnibus monsters. A flag that changes what every school and courthouse flies is not a footnote in a finance bill. It is a single subject that never got a single-subject vote. Democrats knew that. They did it anyway.
Runner-ups, Somalia, and the flags nobody wanted on a pole
The open contest was a magnet for junk. Among thousands of public submissions were designs that looked like foreign militia banners and joke flags that had no business in a statehouse packet. The official short list was cleaner on paper and still walked into a political landmine. Prekker’s original stripes — white, green, light blue — were immediately compared to the flag of Puntland, a Somali regional government. The final stripped-down version — light blue field, white star — was compared to the national flag of Somalia: light blue, white star. Designers and fact-checkers say coincidence. Minnesotans with eyes say they know what they are looking at. In a state with the nation’s largest Somali population, after a year of meal-site and Medicaid fraud headlines, you do not get to scold the public for noticing a star on blue. You get a vote. They refused the vote.
Rocco does not need a designer’s affidavit. He needs the old flag back on the pole.
What they tore down
The 1893 / 1983 flag was busy. It carried the seal: farmer, Native horseman, rifle, motto, the story of a frontier state. Critics called it a “cluttered genocidal mess.” That is the left’s method. They do not argue a better painting. They declare the icon immoral, appoint a commission stacked with the right interest groups, run out the clock, and replace living memory with a logo. Tear down the flag. Tear down the names on buildings. Tear down the statue. Write a new caption. Call dissent hate. It is the same move every time: destroy the inherited symbol so only their revision is left flying.
The state voted anyway — city by city, county by county
Minnesota law does not force a city to fly the 2024 design. So the people did what St. Paul would not. Counties including Becker, Nobles, and Wadena moved early. Cities followed: Champlin, Zumbrota, North Branch, Detroit Lakes, Pine Island, Crosslake, Babbitt, Wadena, Chatfield, Plainview, Elk River, Inver Grove Heights, and more. Some fly the 1983 flag. Some fly both. Some fly none rather than fly the new one. Elk River surveyed residents — more than 75 percent wanted the old banner. That is the electorate the commission skipped. DFL lawmakers have floated punishing cities that fly the historic flag by cutting local aid. First they take the symbol. Then they fine you for remembering it.
Rocco will push the Legislature to restore the historic state flag as the official emblem and to put any future change on a standalone bill — one subject, one vote — or on the ballot. No more omnibus ambush. No more non-voting Republicans. No more “commission said so.”
The old flag was loved because it was ours. The new one is controversial because it was imposed. The left only knows how to smash an icon and lecture the rubble. Restore the flag.
Stop voting for the same people who got us in this mess in the first place.
Stop voting BLUE no matter who. Vote RED instead, and together we can make a better tomorrow.