By Albert Lea Tribune and Faribault Daily News

FARIBAULT — The DFL Party endorsed U.S. Rep. Tim Walz for re-election at the 1st District Convention on Saturday.

“Tim knows that in order to get something done, you can’t point fingers and call people names,” said 1st District party chairman Shawn Groth. “He looks for common ground and then pushes forward to get it done.”

A DFL Party convention wouldn’t be authentic without delegates, candidates and incumbents quoting the likes of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Paul Wellstone and Garrison Keillor.

Saturday’s DFL convention for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District managed to pay homage to all three while still touting the hard-won successes of DFL southern Minnesotans.

DFL politicians from all different roles of Minnesota government flocked to Faribault Middle School on Saturday to energize the party base and discuss pressing political issues, while delegates elected by local caucuses determined the platforms that will be sent on to the statewide congressional convention.

As of 2012’s redistricting, Rice and Le Sueur counties are the newest additions to the 1st Congressional District, a seat currently held by Rep. Tim Walz, DFL-Mankato.

In attendance were local state representatives like Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, and state Sen. Vicki Jensen, and Gov. Mark Dayton’s lieutenent governor candidate, Tina Smith, cabinet-level incumbents such as Auditor Rebecca Otto and Attorney General Lori Swanson, as well as federal representatives Walz and U.S. Sen. Al Franken.

“This is the incubator of national politics,” Walz said of the convention atmosphere. “We have all walks of life here in this room. This is the way it’s supposed to be, people choosing the issues and candidates for themselves. It invigorates me.”

Many of the issues at the heart of discussion at the convention centered on the “L” of DFL — labor. Walz said investments in clean energy solutions and education — not cuts — are the best way to bring back jobs to the U.S. and Minnesota, while Franken pointed to the importance of funding institutions like South Central College to “increase workforce training and fill the skills gap in the job market.”

At the state level, Fritz, Jensen and Smith all hailed the passage of the minimum wage increase, a budget that paid back loans from the school district and pushed the need to continue on the same path.

Smith, who has been Dayton’s chief of staff for over three years, pointed to the governor’s ability to “stop a lot of bad things from happening” and vetoing bills that limited funding and ability of abortions, cut education and human services funding and more over the three years he has been in office.

Despite the differences between the DFL and the GOP, Walz and his colleagues emphasized their abilities to cooperate with the other side and the need to cut down the rising partisanship in politics. Upholding a republic is never easy, Walz said, but “it’s designed to protect minorites, designed to force compromise so that we may have equality of opportunity and fairness.”

“We all do better when we all do better,” Smith said, quoting Wellstone.

The Republicans for the 1st District nominated Aaron Miller, a senior account hospital manager with Revo Biologic and a command sergeant major in the Army Reserves, at their convention April 5 at Southwest Middle School in Albert Lea.

“This selection will give southern Minnesota a choice between the big government policies of Walz/Obama and my policies of limited government, fiscal responsibility and the repeal and replacement of Obamacare with real health care reform that actually improves patient care while lowering costs,” Miller said in a news release.

The most recent campaign finance reports show Walz has more than $400,000 in the bank heading into re-election. Miller has about $43,000 in cash on hand as of the end of March. Miller has made multiple $40,000 loans to his campaign.