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My Point of View by Robert Hoffman

Hanukkah has begun, winter (officially) starts today, Christmas will be celebrated all weekend long, Kwanzaa will begin soon and New Year’s Eve and Day will be celebrated in a little more than a week. We have a busy few weeks ahead with holidays, family, (winter storms) and right after our newly elected officials are sworn into service in very early January 2023.

Longtime local leaders like Sheriff Kurt Freitag and Mayor Vern Rasmussen have passed the torch to well respected and very deserving successors Sheriff Ryan Shea and Mayor Rich Murray. We are again in great hands with our top local elected officials. All of our local Republican elected officials won their re-elections, and we are blessed to have our Republican state Rep. Peggy Bennett, Republican state Sen. Gene Dornink and Republican U.S. Congressman Brad Finstad each serving us again.

Peggy Bennett, a former local teacher, will also be serving in the state House of Representatives again with fellow state representative to the east Patty Mueller, also a teacher, and state Rep. Bjorn Olson to the west of us, a teacher as well. Each won their re-elections again and our southern Minnesota region is well represented by Republican teachers with our best interests in mind. These bright and re-elected officials have the strength to say, “this is not working, this will hurt people and this is what I think we should do.”

Our regionally  elected officials have their work cut out for them with the out-of-control and out-of-touch Democrat-controlled Legislature and governor, but our U.S. Congressman gets to tell Nancy Pelosi “you’re fired” very soon with a now Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

Locally, for the last two elections now, the Republicans have won every single race. A recent letter to the editor from the local DFL claimed their county Democrats are one of the most respected in the state. That’s a participation trophy if ever there was one — they’ve lost every single race for two straight elections.

The local Democrats did get two of their Democratic school board members elected and their Democratic city councilman elected — that deserves recognition. One of our members of the Freeborn County Republican Board of Directors will fly out to Washington, D.C., to participate in the swearing in of U.S. Congressman Brad Finstad on Jan 3. That deserves celebration and is a great example of the reach our local Republican Party has earned.

By the next time another article like this is written we will have celebrated many holidays together, started a new year and sworn in most of our newly re-elected officials. We have a lot to celebrate these next few weeks, but we have a lot of work to do these next few years. The 2023 session is just about to begin (but so are the 2024 elections.) When told to do so, the Democrats will simply re-elect a failure of a president like Joe Biden. They just did the same with Governor Walz after his constant failure after failure. The local Republicans also know we’re being attacked by those who claim to be

Republicans but are at best Republicans in name only, (some card-carrying Libertarians), and despite attempts to include and trust we are let down over and over.

We have a strong group of local and regional Republicans and need to continue to build this team up. We have a rough few years ahead in Minnesota and need to do so. A quote from the WomansDay.com website says it the simplest: “What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Robert Hoffman is chairman of the Freeborn County Republicans.