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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

We have a stark choice on Nov. 8, and the DFL is the party that decisively backs rural interests. 

Republicans talk incessantly about inflation, but they have no plans to stop it. Oil companies made record profits again in the third quarter–mainly by jacking up prices–and Republicans’ plan is to extend Trump’s debt-ballooning tax cut to corporations, rewarding them for squeezing customers at the pumps.

Republicans are not for us, and they’re not for rural people who are dependent on driving. They’re for the profiteer class, and they’re not hiding it.

Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, sensible legislation that will help bring down costs for regular people, for example by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug costs. Jeff Ettinger supports it. Brad Finstad voted against it, calling it “an easy no.” 

Jeff Ettinger is the congressional candidate who will stand up for us. Ettinger is for rural seniors who are living on fixed incomes.

The Republican candidate for governor, Scott Jensen, pushed an ideology that killed cops, which Peggy Bennett and Gene Dornink supported. COVID cut down nearly 500 law enforcement officers in 2020 and 2021, by far the largest cause of on-duty law enforcement deaths. These politicians helped spread misinformation that COVID was mild, and they later supported vaccine skepticism. These were deadly stances, and they ripped holes in law enforcement agencies across the country. Four officers in Minnesota died of COVID last year. 

Jensen, Bennett and Dornink helped compound these devastating frontline losses. They cared more about keeping businesses open than keeping people alive.

Republicans are not for us, and they’re not for rural people with reduced access to healthcare. They’re for business interests ahead of people, and they’re not hiding it.

Tim Walz is the governor who stands up for us. He fought tooth and nail to save people’s lives against massive Republican resistance, and he successfully kept Minnesota’s COVID death rate one of the lowest in the country. 

At the Legislature, Bennett and Dornink walked away instead of going back to fight for bonding money that our district desperately needs. Bennett didn’t use her seniority to get a single penny for us. Why? They prefer tax cuts for the highest income earners. Furthermore, it’s part of the Republican state platform to eliminate local government aid. Republicans want to place our communities at an even greater disadvantage to the wealthy metro. 

Bennett and Dornink are not for us, and they’re not for rural. They’re for the metro keeping a greater share while leaving us behind, and they’re not hiding it. 

Mary Hinnenkamp and Brandon Lawhead will go to St. Paul and do everything they can to secure bonding money and local government aid for Albert Lea and Austin and the many small communities in their districts.

Mary Hinnenkamp and Brandon Lawhead will stand up for us.

Keith Ellison is the people’s lawyer who has won hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements from opioid manufacturers for Minnesota. His opponent, Jim Schultz, is a hedge fund lawyer who has spent his career working for wealthy clients. Do you want someone who fights hard for regular people or someone who boosts the interests of the wealthy while leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves against corporate abuses?

Keith Ellison is the Attorney General who stands up for us. 

Re-elect Steven Simon for Secretary of State and Julie Blaha for Auditor as well. They have done an outstanding job, and their opponents are 2020 election deniers who can’t separate fact from fiction. 

One final point. Many Republican politicians loudly label themselves “Christian”, but their beliefs and actions are decidedly pre-Christian, pro-hierarchy, and pro-idolatry (worshiping Mammon).

“Christian” is useful as a cultural identity to these politicians, but what they’re promoting is largely estranged from the teachings of Christ, if that is something meaningful to you.

Rather, many of these politicians are serving an Old Testament patriarchy. This is why they attack LGBTQ children and gay marriage. They think relationships should be made of a dominant male and a submissive female, and LGBTQ upends that hierarchy. It’s also why they want to ban abortion and prevent women from making their own choices.

Furthermore, it’s a hierarchy wedded to top-down corporate power in which labor is subservient to capital, rural is acquiescent to urban, and anti-factualism for the sake of profits is placed above science.

Billionaires and other wealthy people aren’t looking out for us. We are the ones who will look out for us. The Republican party has been fully captured by corporate and patriarchal power structures, and it is no longer grounded in facts or interested in serving us.

Out here in rural, we can’t afford politicians who aren’t grounded in reality and aren’t serving us.

Vote for Democrats, who are of, by and for The People.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.