MARSHALL — Winning back seats in the state House of Representatives is going to be a key goal for Minnesota Republicans this fall, speakers at the Lyon County Republican Convention said this weekend.

“It’s our hope and our dream that we can, as a House majority, at least take back the Minnesota House so that we can have some sort of a stopgap between reality and the Democrat dream,” said Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent. “It’s with that strong vision that we’re working towards, and we’ll bring it to St. Paul.”

Lyon County delegates met with other Republicans from state House District 15A on Saturday to endorse Swedzinski for re-election. Lyon County Republicans also chose delegates to attend upcoming Congressional District and state conventions.

The county convention was held Saturday morning at the Marshall Area YMCA. Delegates were elected to represent Lyon County at the 7th Congressional District Republican convention, which will be held in Morton on April 26-27, and at the state convention in St. Paul on May 16-18. Delegates elected Saturday included residents of Marshall, Minneota, Balaton, Tracy, and Eidsvold, Lynd, Vallers, Amiret and Lake Marshall townships.

Speakers at the event included area state legislators, and representatives of Republican candidates running for Congress. Swedzinski thanked area Republicans for their support.

“You know these last couple years have been pretty difficulty, especially with a firm (DFL) majority in the House, the Senate, and the governorship in DFL control,” Swedzinski said. He said a “St. Paul knows best” attitude from majority legislators was something that frustrated most people he knew. “I come to St. Paul to first defend what we believe in, and really to work toward finding goals and solutions that will really work for Minnesotans across the state,” Swedzinski said.

Sen. Gary Dahms, R-Redwood Falls, also spoke during the convention. Dahms said he wanted to talk about some of the positive things happening in the state Legislature. One recent action was the approval of updates to the laws governing use of force by school resource officers.

“We were able to come up with a bill that the law enforcement community could support, and so that’s a long ways from where that bill was,” Dahms said.

Dahms said it was also positive that a couple of other controversial proposals, including a bill to make Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for undocumented immigrants, were not moving forward.

“Right now, they do not have the votes to pass sanctuary state,” Dahms said. “Some of the other things that have been talked about is assisted suicide. At this point, they don’t have the votes to pass assisted suicide.”

While there were positive outcomes to this year’s legislative session so far, Dahms also raised concerns about the cost to taxpayers of Democrat-backed legislation like universal free school lunches.

“The governor had said earlier, no new taxes, no new spending. As of Monday, the governor is now saying, ‘Well, we need to spend some money,'” he said. “The fiscal notes they did last year were not correct. And they underestimated the amount of money that was being spent on a lot of these bills that they were passing, which, we kept calling them out on that.”

Dahms said legislators had to pass an additional spending bill “to make up for the mistakes that were made in the fiscal notes for education.”

“The school lunch program was off about 82%,” Dahms said. “That’s just not acceptable.” The number of students who would be participating in the free lunch program had been underestimated, he said.

In response to an audience question, Swedzinski said the push to have a statewide ballot on the new Minnesota state flag design was “highly unlikely” to go anywhere this session.

Dahms and Swedzinski emphasized the importance of this year’s elections for taking back a Republican majority in the state House.

“We need to win at least four seats. That’s the bare minimum. Obviously a robust majority is ideal,” Swedzinski said.

“We’ve got an opportunity in November to make sure we get rid of the (DFL) trifecta,” he said. “Each and every one of us have to do everything within our powers to make sure that happens, so that we have balance in government.”

“If we get the House back in November, that’s going to give us an opportunity to stop a lot of the things that are happening now that go against the philosophy of Republicans, the philosophy of conservatives, and in many cases just the philosophy of what’s right and what’s wrong,” Dahms said.