Jeff Johnson said he wants people to know he’s a strong believer in focusing on the people, the individual, as opposed to a focus on institutions, whether that’s government or big business.
“That’s a big difference in the race,” the Republican candidate for governor said just eight days from the election. “One side seems to be focused on ‘What can we do for government, to make government bigger or work better or have a bigger influence on people’s lives?’ and I am always going to come back to ‘What can we do to give people more power in the state?’ That is the message of the campaign.”
Johnson, Republican candidate for governor and Hennepin County commissioner, stopped in International Falls Monday with the other Republican candidates for state offices on a two-day media swing through the state.
Johnson was joined by his lieutenant governor candidate Donna Bergstrom, Doug Wardlow for attorney general, and Pam Myhra for auditor.
Johnson faces among others on the ticket, DFL candidate Tim Walz.
Like several candidates for state and federal office, Johnson said the biggest issue he’s hearing from people about is health care, and he sees a two-fold approach.
“People are scared to death about their health care,” he said. “We need to make sure we continue to take care of people who need help, whether it’s just that they don’t have enough money to afford it or because they have preexisting conditions.”
Johnson stressed that despite what’s being said in ads, he’s always pledged to continue to guarantee affordable coverage for people with preexisting conditions. “We’ve done it in Minnesota for decades and we’ll continue to,” he said.
The other half of the equation, mostly ignored, is the high cost of insurance premiums many people are paying, whether through their employer or on their own, he said.
Forcing more competition into the system to give people more choices and options is needed — just opposite of the single payer system proposed by Walz and other Democrats. “That means we don’t have any insurance any more and we’re all on one government plan, and I think taking away all options for individuals is a bad direction to go,” he said.
People are also talking about taxes, he said, noting finance website Kiplinger just ranked Minnesota as the least tax-friendly state.
“I just think we’re overtaxed in this state,” he said, adding he favors lowering taxes, beginning with income tax, because it affects the largest number of people, first lowering the bottom tier, and working up. “How far we go depends on the budget and forecast,” he said.
His next priority would be to end state tax on Social Security benefits. He noted Minnesota is one of very few states to tax the benefits, adding the benefits are already taxed and often impacts people on a fixed income.
Immigration is the third issue most often raised on the campaign trail, and he said the conversation in Minnesota surrounds a push by Democrats to become a “sanctuary state,” which he said has never been discussed.
“We’d be the only one in the Upper Midwest and it would essentially forbid state employees, including law enforcement, from cooperating in any way with federal immigration authorities,” he said. “We’d become a safe space for illegal immigrants. Combine that with our very generous welfare laws and we’d become a magnet for illegal aliens throughout the country.”
He said the state already has many demands on its budget and often doesn’t take care of the people who already reside here. Adding illegal people will make it much harder, he said.
How would Johnson address the discrepancy between the economy of the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, specifically Borderland?
“If every region of the state isn’t thriving, the state is not thriving,” he said, noting he grew up in Detroit Lakes and his wife in Crookston. “The success of the state is not being distributed equally.”
He pointed to K-12, transportation and local government aid funding formulas, which he said have all become metro-centric the past decade. “I think we need to essentially start over with those formulas, and try to make sure we have a fairer system that doesn’t send such large chucks of money to the largest cities in the state.”
Doug Wardlaw
Wardlaw said he wants Minnesotans to know that the politics need to be taken out of the attorney general’s office, which should simply enforce the law.
Rebuilding the office’s criminal law division to provide resources to county attorneys would be among his priorities, he said.
“We need to fight human trafficking, and take the lead against the opioid epidemic,” he said. “We have increasing problems with methamphetamine in this state. We need to provide leadership on those statewide criminal issues and we can only do that if we rebuild the criminal division which has been eviscerated over the last couple decades.”
In addition, he said protecting consumers from financial scams that target seniors must also be addressed, and he’d assist in lower health care costs by considering contracts between insurance and care providers, to ensure legal pricing.
Pam Myhra
Myhra cites her vast background and experience for state auditor, noting she is a certified public accountant with an active license; a former audit manager at KPMG, a multinational public accounting firm; and a two-terms legislator, who authored two bills on government transparency that unanimously passed the House and was signed into law. She said she has the continued professional education required by government auditing standards put out by the Government Accountability Office.
“Minnesotans really care how their tax dollars are used,” she said. “I am the only CPA in the race, those qualifications earned me the Star Tribune endorsement (Sunday). I am an auditor running for Minnesota state auditor.”
When tax dollars are spent in ways they weren’t intended or ineffectively, it leaves less money for programs that impact families, like fixing roads, reducing class sizes, funding government pensions or even reducing tax burden.
Myhra said her office would “lead and set the tone for independent effective financial audits and performance reviews to give taxpayers accountability and transparency in how their tax dollars are used.”
