WILL’S PRIORITIES AND VISION
Urban Prosperity | Public Education | Decarbonization | Government Accountability | Resisting Extremism
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URBAN PROSPERITY
As your legislator, I will:
Promote affordable housing, especially in affluent, high-opportunity suburbs that have historically lacked such housing.
Work to reform the Met Council, especially by introducing accountability to its leadership structure, so that it can promote balanced and managed metropolitan growth.
Continue Representative Hornstein’s phenomenal legacy of transit advocacy.
Pursue every mechanism to bring business investment back to struggling central city commercial corridors and neighborhoods.
Give cities better tools to address public safety and quality-of-life concerns, while ensuring that law enforcement is effective and accountable.
Strengthen urban growth rules to protect undeveloped and agricultural land, limit costly suburban sprawl, and encourage more densely developed suburbs.
I love Minneapolis and I want it to grow and thrive. I support policies that advance broad urban prosperity, both by bringing economic growth and revitalization to the urban core, and by helping suburbs grow denser and more welcoming to people from all walks of life.
Historically, the Twin Cities have stood out from other American regions: they have dynamic economies, and an affordable cost of living, featuring stable, safe neighborhoods.
But starting in the 1990s, these advantages began to erode. Ill-conceived housing policies, government neglect, and private-market disinvestment and discrimination have spurred the growth of racial segregation and intense concentrated poverty in the region. This was not inevitable -- other regions, like Portland or Seattle, started in the same place but never developed the same pockets of poverty and disinvestment.
After the convulsions of 2020, many of the region’s problems have worsened. Some of Minneapolis’s key business districts -- especially those in or near District 61A -- are full of vacant buildings or underutilized office space. The region’s strong transit system suffered from neglect and service disruptions for years, though efforts by Representative Hornstein and the DFL have begun the process of rebuilding this network. Housing has remained a profound issue, with high costs leading to an increase in homelessness. And nonstop political battles over policing have led many to lose sight of certain obvious truths: that law enforcement needs to do its job professionally and effectively, and that communities can’t grow if members feel unsafe.
What’s especially frustrating about these changes is that Minnesota has a unique and powerful set of tools to address many of the problems. The Met Council, at least in theory, has the authority to ensure that the benefits and burdens of urban development are shared across the entire metropolitan area, so that cities like Minneapolis are not stuck trying to solve problems that span outside their borders. But in recent years, the Met Council and other agencies have failed to effectively use these tools, the product of an unaccountable, unelected leadership structure that prioritizes the political sensitivities of statewide politicians over the wellbeing of the Twin Cities.
This loss of regional focus has immense costs. Too often, political discussions about urban revitalization, density, and development get stuck on intense battles over a handful of core city neighborhoods, while the vast majority of the metropolitan area remains unacknowledged. More than 70% of the region’s population live in the suburbs, which means that the benefits of growth in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are easily washed out by the costs of exurban sprawl. Bringing back the region’s historic growth boundaries and enforcing fair share affordable housing obligations in low-density suburbs are among the most effective remedies to protect the environment and encourage housing growth.
I want to rebuild Minneapolis into an economic powerhouse, with balanced and well-managed regional government. That means giving cities the tools they need to fill vacant businesses and revitalize commercial districts. It means fighting concentrated poverty with targeted efforts to foster economic growth and create jobs in historically segregated areas. And it means making sure that all cities -- not just Minneapolis and Saint Paul -- do their part creating denser and more affordable housing.
Urban prosperity requires reforming some existing agencies. Our law enforcement agencies must be professional and responsive, and built around the common purpose of allowing all residents to feel safe. And the Met Council, as the regional government, should be made directly accountable to residents, through direct elections or other mechanisms.
All the communities in the Twin Cities region are economically and socially interwoven. The region cannot succeed if some suburbs are able to put up walls and become enclaves of wealth, while other cities are stuck trying to solve all social and economic problems on their own.
PUBLIC EDUCATION
As your legislator, I will:
Work to promote strong, diverse, integrated, and fully-funded public education in every neighborhood in the state.
Pursue greater state oversight of district spending, to ensure that state funding increases are reaching teachers and students first.
Protect and support Minnesota’s professionalized teaching force, ensuring that salaries are competitive with similarly credentialed careers.
Seek a statewide minimum teacher salary pegged to cost of living, so that early-career compensation does not leave teachers living on the financial brink.
Resist efforts by outside interests to fracture or weaken a universal education system that serves all students, regardless of race, income, or geography.
I am an uncompromising advocate of strong, universal public schools -- schools in which every child has an equal opportunity to learn, feel safe and included, and ultimately go to college. Minnesota has historically offered a world-class public education system, with schools serving as pillars around which entire communities could be built.
But that system is under heavy pressure from forces great and small. Changing demographics have led to rapid ongoing resegregation of schools, especially in the Twin Cities suburbs. Too many policymakers have sought temporary fixes and pursued complex, unproven Rube Goldberg schemes to improve the education system -- often at the behest of billionaires with outside agendas.
All too frequently, when these efforts failed, it has been educators themselves who are blamed. Teachers in Minnesota are often underpaid and overworked. In 2023, I conducted a massive statewide analysis of teacher compensation, and found that teachers are paid far less than other, similarly credentialed professionals. These pay disparities are most pronounced early in teachers’ careers -- the average Minnesota educator must work 9 years before they can pay cost of living in their area.
And while the DFL has massively expanded funding to public schools, so far those funding increases are not reaching teachers or students. The share of school district spending on things like football fields and facilities has risen while educator pay has remained relatively flat. Vital student services, like student mental health support, remains underfunded.
I believe in reviving our schools the old-fashioned way: by making sure schools are fully funded, truly integrated, and staffed with a strong and professionalized teaching force. Schools need to feel like safe, welcoming, and supportive environments for students and teachers alike. No expense should be spared to educate Minnesotan children, but policymakers must understand that certain deficiencies cannot be corrected with cash alone. The worst problems in K-12 education are often the result of geographic or social isolation rather than fiscal disparities. No child should ever be required to attend a school that offers only dead ends instead of pathways to a better future.
DECARBONIZATION
As your legislator, I will:
Tirelessly work towards meeting the 2050 decarbonization goal passed into law by DFL legislators.
Prioritize decarbonization plans that are at a sufficient scale to meaningfully reduce emissions.
Champion new technologies to promote electric grid stability when paired with renewable sources.
Incorporate zero-carbon goals into areas where decarbonization has posed a greater technical or political challenge, like construction, agriculture, and land use.
Climate change is the most significant long-term problem we face. Look around: Minnesota’s winters are vanishing. Droughts, storms, and wildfires are becoming more frequent. Records are smashed almost weekly. And we are still only a fraction of the way towards the total temperature change that scientists currently predict. Three words should govern climate policy: “Must go faster.”
The only permanent solution for climate change is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that are released by the modern economy. These gasses are produced by energy production, by transportation, and by agriculture and construction. In other words, decarbonization is a society-wide policy project, and cannot be accomplished through electrification along a single dimension.
The DFL has made great strides setting aggressive goals for greenhouse gas reductions. But goals are easy, implementation is hard. At present, we have not surmounted all the technical hurdles necessary to fully decarbonize. Getting over these hurdles will require difficult, complex policy choices, informed by full understanding of the infrastructure underlying systems like power generation or transportation.
We need real, urgent decarbonization -- not on paper but in our cities and communities. As your legislator, I will be committed to pursuing decarbonization with speed, vigor, and attention to detail. My guiding principle will be producing meaningful reductions in the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions, with a technologically feasible plan to reach zero, because in the end that’s the only metric that matters.
This means finding ways to fill the gaps in current efforts to decarbonize the electric grid, and scaling up grid decarbonization sufficiently, to meet current and future energy demands. It also means adoption of energy efficiency technologies, to lower overall energy demands. And it means looking at climate-adjacent subjects like land use. For example, the way we build our cities and transportation networks “locks in” energy use and carbon emissions; we must ensure that future growth will be less energy-intensive, not more.
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
As your legislator, I will:
Prioritize oversight of public funds that are granted to private entities.
Avoid excessive reliance on opaque public-private partnerships to provide government services, and ensure any partnering organizations are credible and proven.
Ensure real cost controls are in place for privately-managed services such as affordable housing construction.
Use subpoena powers and other legislative authorities to root out misuse of funds, in order to better legislate against corruption and waste.
Government can’t work if it’s not trusted by constituents. Voters and taxpayers will allow their elected leaders to do more, and solve bigger problems, if they have confidence that their money is being spent wisely and achieving important goals. Corruption, waste, and misuse of government funds undermines people -- like me -- who believe that we should strengthen the capacity of government to address major problems. That’s why good oversight of public spending and public officials shouldn’t solely be the province of fiscal conservatives.
Minnesota’s recent history in this respect has been mixed, at best. Billions of dollars of public funding flow into private entities, often in the form of weakly-monitored nonprofits. From K-12 education, to subsidized housing development, to social service provision, we increasingly rely on public-private partnerships.
This money is hard to track, and handing it out to organizations with inadequate oversight creates incentives for mischief. It also creates large interest groups whose primary goal is keeping the money spigot flowing -- groups that can then turn around and lobby the government for more cash. And when public objectives are outsourced to private entities, outcomes are hard to track and policy changes are difficult to make.
Recent history in Minnesota has shown that these concerns are very real. Just this year, a Minneapolis charter school closed abruptly mid-school year, telling shocked parents “There is no more money.” It was worse than that: the school was nearly a million dollars in debt.
Subsidized housing spending is also a continual frustration. Even affordable housing advocates recognize that the industry has a cost control problem. It is not uncommon to find government-subsidized units -- usually studio apartments or a single bedroom -- being built for more than half-million dollars apiece. Meanwhile, in places like Dakota County, public agencies are building multi-bedroom subsidized units for less than half the cost.
These issues took spectacular form in the Feeding Our Future scandal, the full scope of which is still becoming known. Lax oversight of public financing of a basic social service led to over a quarter of a billion dollars being stolen.
Ultimately, responsibility for public money falls to the legislature. Legislators should think long and hard before committing large sums to poorly-monitored private entities, and should build programs that are simple, transparent, and have easily-monitored outcomes. When in doubt, public agencies should serve public functions, not private nonprofits. And when misuse of funds does occur, the legislature, with subpoena powers, has unique tools to root out scandal or corruption. Legislators should not be shy to deploy these authorities to protect the public trust.
RESISTING EXTREMISM
As your legislator, I will:
Vocally support the U.S. Constitution and Minnesota Constitution, and the traditional American values of tolerance, openness, rule of law, and democracy.
Encode federal civil rights laws in state law, including laws protecting people of color, LGBTQ people, all sexes and genders, voting rights, and reproductive rights.
Resist any and all efforts to harass, harm, remove, or discriminate against our neighbors for bigoted or xenophobic reasons.
Focus state leaders and law enforcement on dangerous or seditious far-right extremism, radicalism, and violence as a serious and ongoing threat to our nation’s stability.
Commit to standing as the last line of defense between everyday Americans and far-right radicals in the federal government and judiciary.
American democracy is being tested by far-right extremist politics. The election of Donald Trump has ushered in an era of emboldened radicalism on the right, which previously caused the Charlottesville protests and culminated in the horrifying attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But these forces have not been defeated, and Trump, as their ringleader, is once again threatening to damage or even topple long-standing democratic institutions.
I am committed to listening to voices across the political spectrum -- with a key exception. For over a century, far-right extremists have not been motivated by sincere ideological belief but an inner desire to commit violence, dominate the weak, bully the unpopular, and mock the unusual. Their policy commitments are typically insincere or even nonexistent; their motive force is the pleasure they take in causing pain.
I will resist, completely and without compromise, efforts by the far right to make headway into Minnesota and national politics. Should the worst come to pass, and the extremist right once again seize power at the federal level, the state government stands as the last line of defense between ordinary Minnesotans and those who would hurt them. I want to be on that line of defense.
Some avenues of resistance rely on formal powers of law: encoding in state law existing federal civil rights rules protecting people of color, LGBTQ people, and immigrants, as well as core rights such as voting and reproductive rights. Others simply require a willingness to stand firm and speak up when extremist ideas are on the rise. I will name these ideas, declare them unacceptable, and never compromise with those who traffic in hate or bigotry.
Finally, resisting the far right means finding the parts of our society where hate and bigotry has increasingly begun to fester. While free speech is protected by the Constitution, efforts to commit or incite violence are not. Nor are efforts to interfere in elections, subvert the normal operation of government, or even, as happened on Jan. 6, overthrow democratic institutions in favor of authoritarian leaders. Groups plotting such actions are a direct threat to our democracy and should be a focus of both policymakers and law enforcement. As your legislator, I will be tireless in my efforts to keep these ideas far from the mainstream.