GOP senators move into building they fought to stop

Sen. Warren Limmer’s new office in the politically toxic Minnesota Senate Building has a smashing view that includes a close-up of the State Capitol, St. Paul’s High Bridge, the downtown Minneapolis skyline and the northwestern horizon that stretches toward his own district in the Maple Grove area.

“I’ve got it all. I’ll never get any work done,” Limmer joked Thursday, the day he and fellow GOP senators moved into the building they once bitterly opposed — and which many in his party brandished like a weapon against DFLers. “I’ll just sit up here and daydream.”

DFL legislators quietly pushed through funding to build the nearly $100 million stone-and-glass edifice in the final hours of the 2013 legislative session, handing Republicans a potent talking point that many believe was a factor in the DFL’s loss of its House majority in the next election in 2014. “A luxury office building for politicians” is how attack ads described it.

“I think in a couple of very tight races it might have been the deciding factor,” Limmer said.

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