Event on Thursday, February 26th, 2026 at the Mermaid Event Center, Mounds View 2200 County Hwy. 10, Mounds View, MN 55112
Check-in and Social Hour Begins at 5:00 P.M. — Dinner 6:30 P.M. — Program 7:00 P.M.
LEA reports on 2025 sessions, announces honorees
Download the 2025 LEA report press release.
Download 2025 LEA Report (.pdf)
2025 Honorees:
Senators Cal Bahr, Steve Drazkowski, Steve Green, Keri Heintzeman, Jeff Howe, Bill Lieske, Eric Lucero, Andrew Mathews and Nathan Wesenberg
Honorable Mention: Senator Bruce Anderson. Representative Drew Roach.
St. Paul, MN, December 12, 2025 — Legislative Evaluation Assembly of Minnesota (LEA) is releasing its report on the Minnesota legislature’s 2025 sessions. The 2025 LEA report rates the votes of all 201 legislators on 16 selected bills. The report summarizes these bills and analyzes them in more depth and detail than seen in the popular press.
The tone for this year’s legislature was set by the irresponsible walkout of the House DFL caucus. They insisted they had a right to parity even though one of their winning candidates was ineligible.
The Minnesota Supreme Court’s bizarre ruling that quorum wasn’t effected by office vacancies made a power-sharing agreement inevitable. The legislature continued the same bad trends of consolidating more legislation into fewer omnibus bills and having more legislators checking in remotely as became prevalent during the COVID years. Even worse, this legislature stripped from their rules any reference that tied remote participation by legislators to emergency use. The Senate even instituted per diem payment eligibility for legislators participating remotely. The House put in their rules that an election contest could not be heard in the legislature until the courts have made a determination, abdicating the powers granted to them in the state constitution that gives members the right to decide eligibility of fellow members, and then only if the equally-split ethics committee makes an affirmative recommendation to allow a contest to proceed.
Given that amount of concession, it is not surprising that the House did not end up divided on very many consequential bills (aside from the omnibus human services budget and the phase-out of government health benefits for adult illegal aliens). The Senate was more divided. Of course, it is easier for many Senators to vote NO on various budget bills when they are in the minority and their votes do not necessarily impact passage, but our 2025 report also features many non-budget bills where this pattern of principled dissent is evident only in the Senate. This led to the absence of House members in the LEA’s top scorers.
Six of the 2025 Honorees (Senators Cal Bahr, Steve Drazkowski, Steve Green, Bill Lieske, Eric Lucero, and Nathan Wesenberg) were also honorees last year. They are joined this year by Senators Keri Heintzeman, Jeff Howe, and Andrew Mathews.
Senator Bruce Anderson passed away on 7/21/25.
Sad news for our members, something we haven’t experienced before–an LEA legislative honoree has passed away suddenly while serving in office.
During his long and distinguished service in the Minnesota House and Senate, Bruce Anderson’s voting record resulted in him receiving 18 LEA honoree awards. Every time he was an honoree, he graciously showed up to accept his award at our annual banquet, also taking the time to share thoughts and listen as well. He lived a life of service, devoting much of his life to the military, and never forgot his agricultural upbringing.
Senator Anderson’s physical absence will be noticeable at the next LEA banquet. Along with his family, friends, and constituents, the LEA board mourns his passing. Rest in peace.
It is shocking that anyone would try to murder our state representatives.
Our prayers go out to Sen. Hoffman and his wife for their rapid and complete recovery and to the family of Rep Hortman and her husband who were killed. It is hard to accept that anyone would have attacked these duly elected representatives of the people of Minnesota.
The LEA has been evaluating legislators since 1972. We do our work to educate Minnesotans about the legislation produced by each legislative session. It goes without saying that we are saddened and appalled by these violent acts. We mourn for the damage done by this attack on our citizen legislature.
-Don Lee, President of LEA
Below are some pictures from the 2025 LEA Honors Banquet, Feb 24th 2025. Hover over the thumbnails for detail. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger, more detailed photo. The entire address by Mr Cuccinelli can be seen at youtube Here.
Event on Monday, February 24th, 2025 at the Mermaid Event Center, Mounds View 2200 County Hwy. 10, Mounds View, MN 55112
Check-in and Social Hour Begins at 5:00 P.M. — Dinner 6:30 P.M. — Program 7:00 P.M.
The upcoming annual 2025 LEA awards banquet, where we recognize the top scoring legislators in the 2024 session, is set for February 24th, 2025 at the Mermaid in Mounds View.
Our keynote speaker will be Mr. Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia and holder of several high offices in the first Trump administration. He is expected to address us on election integrity and immigration issues.
Details will be announced soon and will also be updated on our website at https://lea-mn.org.
Please save the date! We hope you can attend our event honoring select Minnesota legislators and our speaker.
LEA reports on 2024 session, announces honorees
Download 2024 LEA Announcement Flyer (.pdf)
Download 2024 LEA Report (.pdf)
2024 Honorees:
Senators Bruce Anderson, Cal Bahr, Steve Drazkowski, Justin Eichorn, Steve Green, Je Howe, Mark Koran, Bill Lieske, Eric Lucero, Paul Utke and Nathan Wesenberg
2024 honorable Mention:
Honorable Mention Senate: Gene Dornink, Rich Draheim, Glenn Gruenhagen, Jason Rarick Honorable Mention House: Shane Mekeland
St. Paul, MN, October 18, 2024 — Legislative Evaluation Assembly of Minnesota (LEA) is releasing its report on the Minnesota legislature’s 2024 session. The 2024 LEA report rates the votes of all 201 legislators on 16 selected bills. The report summarizes these bills and analyzes them in more depth and detail than seen in the popular press. In 2024, LEA calls particular attention to many changes in Minnesota statute, including election laws, many insertions of discriminatory language, and statewide price controls, especially tennant/landlord regulations.
In 2024, LEA again felt the need to expand its printed report from 12 to 16 pages pages to adequately summarize and evaluate 16 bills. “The 2024 legislature continued to push the envelope with a large number of major, radical changes in policy, statutes and appropriations.” noted LEA President Don Lee.
Despite the LEA report in 2023 being the largest in decades, we did not have room to score some major legislation.by John Augustine Before LEA turns all its energy toward promoting the 2024 LEA Report (soon to be delivered to … Continue reading →
The 2024 St Croix Review annual dinner is being held at the Lowell Inn October 25th, 2024. More details can be found Here.
LEA will be there. Come visit us and talk about the Minnesota Legislature’s performance in 2024.