He said there is no incentive for bipartisanship anymore in Washington, arguing that his friendship with Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson, of South Dakota, was used against him in a primary race this year.

He accused both parties of colluding to stifle any third-party competition, characterizing them as private corporations that have formed a duopoly and do not answer to voters.

Without any third party, he said, it’s impossible for anyone to climb the ranks in either party without making concessions to their values and principles. They must either be an ideological match or enact a “hostile takeover” to reach a leadership position.

To improve things, Phillips encouraged voters to turn out for primary elections, support ranked-choice voting and help end gerrymandering.

“If we don’t have competition, I can guarantee you this will get worse, not better,” he said.

For his last question of the evening, Phillips sifted through a container of handwritten questions from the audience to find a difficult one. He picked a question about the Israel-Hamas war.

Theresa Jones was one of roughly 2,000 people who stopped by Union Gospel Mission this week for a free turkey and bag of groceries. In recent years, the turkey pickup has become part of how she makes it through the holiday.

“Since COVID, it’s been really getting stressful,” said Jones, 62, of Inver Grove Heights, who can’t always keep up with the costs of rent, food and the car she needs to get to her St. Paul job. “I was considered median-income and now I’m considered low-income, because I can’t afford nothing.”

The number of people struggling to afford to eat has climbed over the past decade and Minnesota is on track for its third consecutive year of record-breaking visits to food shelves. The state is poised to see close to 9 million food shelf visits by the end of this year, about 1.5 million more visits than last year. Rising prices have driven more people, particularly seniors, to seek help.

This week, Gov. Tim Walz announced the state will use $5 million in remaining federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to help food shelves that are straining to meet the high demand. The COVID-era act provided resources communities needed to bounce back from the pandemic, he said, and the state has to commit any remaining dollars before the end of the year.

“That recovery still continues for many families,” Walz said. “They are still behind, they are still trying to make do.”

Food shelves will get the money early next year, said Sophia Lenarz-Coy, executive director of the Food Group, a Twin Cities nonprofit that will distribute the dollars.

The sharp growth in food costs that walloped families during the pandemic slowed this year. Food prices overall are expected to increase 2.3% in 2024, and food from grocery stores and supermarkets — not including restaurant purchases — is only supposed to climb 1.2%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Legislative leaders announced this week who will chair committees in the next session, appointments that will shape the tenor of debate in the Minnesota House that will almost certainly be evenly divided in a rare tie between DFLers and Republicans.

Bills are typically debated and amended in at least one committee before going before the full House for a vote. In a typical year, bills could pass out of committee on a partisan vote. But the two caucus leaders, Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park and Rep. Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, say committees will consist of 14 representatives, seven from each party. And next year’s rules will require eight votes for a bill to pass out of committee — not just a majority of the representatives present.

“So that we’re not playing the ‘who went to the bathroom’ game or, ‘whose car got stuck in the snow’” Hortman said. “That was part of the problem they encountered in 1979,” the last year the House was tied.

Instead of trying to find a partisan advantage at any opportunity, Hortman and Demuth said they both want to work on a bipartisan basis.

When a bill comes out of committee, Hortman said, it will already have bipartisan support. She compared the process of finding bipartisan agreement on a bill in committee to conference committees during divided government. When the DFL controlled the House and Republicans controlled the Senate from 2019 to 2022, she said, Republicans and Democrats had to come to agreements on bills. She and Demuth are confident that can happen again.

In a normal year with one party in the majority, the majority party would appoint representatives to run committees. But this year, each committee will have two co-chairs, one from each party.

Hortman said the plan is for the Republican and Democratic co-chairs to each lead about half of the committee meetings, setting the agenda for the day. Maybe that will mean a week of DFL-run meetings followed by a week of Republican-run meetings, she said, but more likely the partisan co-chairs will just alternate days.

Demuth and Hortman said they worked together to decide how many committees there would be and which subjects they would work on. The caucuses appointed committee co-chairs independent of each other. Demuth said she was focused on seniority and subject-area expertise.