How a 'foreign exchange program' for state lawmakers is helping bring civility to the Capitol

NINA MOINI: Time to turn to our weekly regional team check in. For the past several weeks, you've been hearing from our reporters from across the state and about the stories they're covering. Today, we're talking to Rochester Bureau reporter Catharine Richert. Catharine doesn't just cover southeastern Minnesota, she's also behind our Talking Sense project. It's a series which helps people have hard political conversations better by telling stories of people who are bridging divides.

Catharine joins me now to share more about her work. Thanks so much for being on the show, Catharine

CATHARINE RICHERT: You're welcome, Nina. Happy to be here.

NINA MOINI: So for people who are unfamiliar with Talking Sense, it's such a great project that you started. Tell us about it and how it came to be.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Well, it really goes back to both my time covering politics and then covering the COVID-19 pandemic. I think I was just in the midst of many years of seeing how political division is really not just affecting how we consume the news or how we might interact with a neighbor, but really how we are interacting with the people we were closest to like our parents and our siblings and childhood friends.

I think the pandemic really put a finer point on it for me when I realized that people were breaking up relationships, long-term relationships over differences regarding the pandemic, whether it was getting vaccinated or wearing masks or even just taking it seriously or not.

So Talking Sense was really born out of this idea that as a news organization, we could both highlight stories of communities or families working through political differences, but also give our audience some ideas of how they could do it themselves, especially in a very polarizing election year. So that was really a weekly project for us back in 2024.

NINA MOINI: Your story this week gets at the heart of political polarization. Tell us about this, this story in particular. I understand you had these lawmakers swap districts, that's really interesting.

CATHARINE RICHERT: So this is actually a project of the Citizens League, and they are a nonprofit in St. Paul that promotes civility in politics and policy and just civic engagement in general, and they adopted this idea from a guy named Jonathan Perman, who is out of Chicago. But he started doing this with congresspeople back in 2018.

And so they adopted it for Minnesota. And in part of the reason they did it for Minnesota is because our legislature is so evenly divided. So they've done four swaps, so eight lawmakers. And the idea is that you are pairing up two people who seemingly have nothing in common. Geographically, their districts are very distinct.

They're coming from opposite political parties, and then they're very intentionally spending two to three days in each other's districts, meeting with local leaders, seeing the big tourist attraction, whatever that might be. And the idea is that you're getting out of your geographical silos, but also your cultural and political silos to really understand why someone, for instance, from the Iron Range, might feel really strongly about mining. It's not just an industry to them, it's part of their cultural identity too.

NINA MOINI: And how did that come about?

CATHARINE RICHERT: So we knew that this project was going on in the spring, and they did a few pairs. The Citizens League created these trips and helped put together the logistics of it. And they invited me to come along on this trip up North. And my understanding is that Representative Cal Warwas, who represents the area of the Iron Range that includes some of the biggest Iron mining operations in the state, was really interested in pairing up with another freshman legislator, Representative Anquam Mahamoud.

She's from South Minneapolis and she's a DFLer, and they had met during those first few weeks of session when things were really contentious. You might remember there was a debate over who was in charge in the Minnesota House at the time, and had gotten to each other a little bit. But Representative Warwas was like, I think I really like her a lot. I think I'd like to bring her up here. And so that's how the two of them got paired up.

And Representative Warwas is planning to come down to her district in South Minneapolis before the end of the year. My understanding is that they found out, among other things, that they both really love eating. And so she's like, I'm going to take you to all the good spots in my neck of the woods.

So I think that'll be fun. I plan to tag along with them then too. It'll be fun to watch that.

NINA MOINI: And what do you think about people who just say, well, this is for show, we know people aren't working together? What do they need to about where these different areas of the state where they never go or they don't know anybody? What do you think the point of all of this was, and how does that represent overall goal of Talking Sense for you?

CATHARINE RICHERT: Great question. So I can say this in the 36 hours that I spent with them up on the Iron Range, a few things really stood out to me. One was they were having a really good time, lots of laughing, lots of joking, lots of, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way before. And I think that's really important.

The thing that I think these trips offer to legislators is an opportunity not only to build a relationship with someone that they may have to work with at some point at the legislature, when literally the floor of the House is divided between Democrats and Republicans. They are busy, they don't really have time to get to each other. So it's relationship building.

But Representative Mahamoud told me something after she had returned, which is what stood out to her most were personal stories about whether it was rural health care, which is she's really passionate about, mining, tourism, and how important it is to that part of the state as well. And I really think that one of the big lessons I learned in reporting Talking Sense is exactly that, that stories can really shift how you see the world.

When it becomes personal and you really understand why someone believes what they do because of the way they grew up or where they went to school or what their parents did for a living, really humanizes them and personalizes an issue that might otherwise feel very uncomfortable and foreign to you.

NINA MOINI: I love that you also have done some stories with kids and the youngest among us, and we can also learn a lot from them, I think a lot of the time. So you did a story this month too about how a K through 8 schools teaching young kids how to work through conflict, starting them young on how to do that in a healthy way. I really like that. Cat what else did you learn?

CATHARINE RICHERT: Gosh, that was a fun day. So I was at Friends School of Minnesota, which is in St. Paul, and they have very baked into their curriculum, conflict resolution. And when I say baked in, I mean, there are little stations all over the school where students as young as kindergarten can fill out a form and say, I'm upset with so-and-so. They did X, Y, and Z, I need a conference, is what they call them.

And then teacher will sit down with the two students, and I got to observe this as well. And they create a framework in which these two kids can talk it out. I think what I was most struck by was how frequent it happens throughout the day, and how there are ground rules for these conversations that are pretty basic like, listen, don't interrupt.

I think things that adults often forget when they're talking to each other, and also how the older kids at that school, they don't use the conferences as much because they have learned how to work this stuff out on their own and maybe are taking those skills out into the world as well to deploy them with conversations as they get older around politics.

NINA MOINI: Many of us didn't have a framework how to handle conflict that young. So I bet the idea is that when they do it a couple of times, then hopefully they just learn those skills throughout their time.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Yeah, exactly.

NINA MOINI: So what is coming up for Talking Sense? What are you working on or looking forward to?

CATHARINE RICHERT: Right now I am looking forward to checking in with some of these legislators who have been doing these district swaps in a few months to see, especially as the legislative session starts. I'm like, OK, well, you did this trip, did it result in legislation? Are you co-sponsoring or working with someone across the aisle on a bill that might benefit a community, both in your district and also outside your district? I feel like we don't always hear about that stuff in the news. So I'm excited to check in on that.

The other thing I would say is that, side project, Talking Sense that we started last year called Walk a Mile in my News continues to evolve. And this is the idea where we take two people who have very strong opinions on an issue, but on the opposite sides of that issue. We have them get to each other a little bit, and then they swap news sources on that topic, and then they come back together and talk about it. So we have another one of those walk a mile in our news stories, in the works that we're hoping to publish in the next few weeks.

NINA MOINI: Oh, Cat, you're the best. You are always thinking of ways to be better and to serve our audiences better. And you're doing so much great work. It's just amazing. Before I let you go, Halloween coming up, I'm sure you've been doing a lot of work around Halloween too I don't know.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Oh, yeah.

NINA MOINI: What are the costumes? I know you have three kiddos, what's going on at your house?

CATHARINE RICHERT: So the youngest is going to be-- you've seen these inflatable costumes that blow up, so he's going to be an among us character. He just looks like a big orange like blob walking around the house. My middle child, my daughter Amelia, is going to be a character from Nico DeAngelo from the Percy Jackson series. Very niche, very, very niche.

And then my oldest is also going to be an inflatable, but he's like a Frankenstein carrying a dinosaur outfit, I don't know. But Nina, guess what I'm going to be?

NINA MOINI: That's what I really want to know. What are you going to be?

CATHARINE RICHERT: I'm going to be one of the people who robbed the Louver. I'm very excited about my costume.

NINA MOINI: A little sack of jewels, like sack of rocks.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Yeah, exactly. In the news.

NINA MOINI: Catharine Richert, thanks for stopping by Minnesota Now, really appreciate it.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Thank you, Nina.

NINA MOINI: That's MPR News, Rochester Bureau reporter Catharine Richert.