What Motivated You to Run for MN Congressional District 6?

We have a mental/behavioral health crisis in our communities. and across the Nation. I want to partner with behavioral health specialists to come up with programs beginning with children. If we don't get it right with the children, it becomes exponentially more challenging as teens and adults. Click the picture for additional information on addressing youth mental health.

I stand with all women and their right to choose. I do not believe anyone should be making healthcare decisions for another person except for the healthcare provider and the individual. If you want to read about the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade, click the picture.

Medical treatment is an essential right, full stop!  The government has the resources to accomplish this. It is already happening for our service members and their families; we can do this for all of us. Click the picture for additional information. 

Our Veterans deserve so much better, and we can give it to them. Their sacrifice has been great, and many of those wounds are not seen. There are heroes sleeping on our streets and in tents, and we should not allow this to continue.  Click the map for Veteran Homelessness data from 2022 (Section 5). 

We all know someone, or a few people that have had their lives destroyed by the drug crisis in our communities and across the nation. I am certainly not immune. Across the country, in a rolling 12-month period, we continue to lose more than 100K people to drug overdoses. In MN, we have lost approximately 1400 to this crisis. As your representative I will work hard to minimize these senseless deaths! Click the picture for some stunning data from the CDC.

I believe we need to protect the BWCA by not allowing mining of any sort. Recently there has been a 20-year mining moratorium in the BWCA watershed. This has caused some to complain about the "hypocrisy", given this is currently being mined in other countries, and greatly unregulated, however, there are other areas of the US and its territories where the mining can, and should occur. (Alaska, California, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and Tennessee.) Click the picture for info on the moratorium.

This is a very personal issue for me and my family. My wife is an Educator in the Eastern Carver County School District, and our youngest three children attend Middle and High Schools in the state. Additionally, many of our family members are Educators and Administrators around Minnesota. Our children and their educators deserve protection from school shootings and active shooter incidents. Our children are our most vulnerable, and we have an obligation to protect them. Click the picture for recent violence data within our schools.

Our first responders are vital to the safety, security, and well-being of all Minnesotans. Their courage and willingness to run towards the fight is one that needs to be protected and respected. I will fight to assist with resources that will directly affect our citizen's safety. We must not defund the first responders; we must provide better tools and training to perform their jobs safely so that they too can return home to their loved ones. 

I will always stand with our LBGT+ community. They deserve to have a voice and, if needed, I will be that voice on their behalf.  We all have family and friends that have felt the oppression based solely on the fact that they identify as LGBTQ+, and we need to be a MN that embraces them and advocates for them. Click on the picture to learn more about what it means to be an ally.

Our National debt is completely out of control.  I challenge any one of us, individual or corporations, to budget like our federal government and see how long it takes you to have to file for bankruptcy. Our government cannot continue overspending like this without the economy crashing completely. I want there to be transparency and accountability for our hard-earned tax dollars at work. Click on the picture to take a closer look at the data behind our out-of-control budget.