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When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota's first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history. Pawlenty prided himself on never raising state taxes -- the most he ever did to generate new revenue was increase the tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack. Between 2003 and late 2010, when Pawlenty was at the head of Minnesota's state government, he managed to add only 6,200 more jobs.

During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85 percent on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000 when filing jointly -- a tax increase of $2.1 billion. He's also agreed to raise Minnesota's minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women. Republicans like state representative Mark Uglem warned against Gov. Dayton's tax increases, saying, "The job creators, the big corporations, the small corporations, they will leave. It's all dollars and sense to them." The conservative friend or family member you shared this article with would probably say the same if their governor tried something like this. But like Uglem, they would be proven wrong.

Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota's economy -- that's 165,800 more jobs in Dayton's first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms combined. Even though Minnesota's top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. According to 2012-2013 U.S. census figures, Minnesotans had a median income that was $10,000 larger than the U.S. average, and their median income is still $8,000 more than the U.S. average today.

Gail Jamison, a lifelong Republican, voted for Sam Brownback for governor in 2010 believing he would restore school funding that had been greatly reduced by the recession.

Four years later, she has joined with more than 100 prominent Republicans in publicly throwing their support behind Brownback’s Democratic opponent — because, she said, Brownback pursued a hefty tax cut for the rich that deprived schools of needed resources.

“I am shocked by what’s happened,” said Jamison, president of the Board of Education in this Wichita suburb. “I find it personally a very extreme stance.”
Advised by Arthur Laffer, the father of supply-side economics, and supported by special interest groups backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, he pushed through legislation that cut taxes and spending, eliminated state jobs and denied far more applications for welfare assistance — not to mention that he tightened abortion regulations and loosened gun rules.

Brownback promised that the efforts would drive economic growth, create jobs and stabilize the Kansas budget. But the state is now reporting a more than $300 million revenue shortfall. The poverty rate increased. The state’s economy expanded a total of 2.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms over the past two years, half the rate of its four neighbors. And Kansas’s credit rating has been downgraded.