All right, we're going to give you a couple rules for the road here.
We have a couple people going to be roaming with mics, so if you have a question,
raise your hand, and they'll come to you so that everybody can not only hear you,
but we can get the question on recording also.
So yes, raise your hand, don't just blurt out your questions, we want to be able
to get them recorded. Number two, one question per person
to begin with. Once everybody has had a chance to ask a question,
if we still have time, then you can come back with a second or third or whatever.
So make your first question the best question you want to ask,
because it might be the only one for the evening, then again there might be
chance for more. Number three, in order to facilitate more questions,
don't give us a five-minute backstory to your question.
You know, sometimes a little bit of dialogue is needed to kind of set the
scene, but we don't care what you had for supper at Thanksgiving when you were
watching TV, and this took place, and you build it forward.
So try to keep it short so we can have more questions done.
And also this crowd feels pretty good, I don't think it'll be an issue,
but let's keep the... in case you get riled up about something,
angry, let's keep the attitudes calm, because we want to all be civil here,
right? And the meetings go much better if we stay calm and relaxed.
So I will moderate that way if someone gets a little bit feisty.
These guys don't have to deal with it, I'll take care of it.
So hopefully it just stays all nice, calm, and even.
If you have a question directed for any particular one or both, just state that at
the beginning so we know who you're talking to, and we'll go from there.
So let's start in. Anybody have a question?
Right up front here, first hand up.
Snooze, you lose.
It's questions for Nate.
Nate, thank you, you did a good job helping us understand
the role of the state auditor and handling city council local sorts of deals.
What's still not clear, at least not my mind, and I've been running around the
Capitol for a decade, is who chooses the legislative auditor, what do they really do,
and which of the sides really is more responsible for the fraud we're finding out?
How does that all play together?
Yeah, I appreciate you asking that.
So the legislative auditor is in a pointed position by the
legislative audit commission, and they report directly to the legislature.
And so one of the issues and complaints I hear about most often is, well,
when you have a certain party that's in control of the legislature,
well, then they control who the legislative auditor investigates or doesn't.
Or doesn't is always the part was the asterisk, right?
And so that's why we see such...
We've seen a lot of quietness coming from that side over the years,
while reports are finally starting to come out.
They also didn't really kind of have a choice because now it's full public knowledge.
So you had another part of your question as far as the fraud, right?
Yeah, so what's the number up to?
It changes every day, like 19 billion estimated now on the high end.
A lot of that is solely in the legislative auditor's purview
by having the oversight of the state agencies and state programs.
Now, if a complaint is received at the local level to the office of the state auditor,
and they start pulling on that thread and it crosses into state programs and state agencies,
they ought to be and they can be pulling the legislative auditor into that investigation.
And so that's kind of what we have an issue of is the fragmentation of our auditing apparatus
as a whole. Everybody's off kind of doing their own little thing.
Nobody's really getting together to collaborate on anything.
So if I can add on to this, I'm not running for the auditor's name, but this is classic leadership.
Each one of those commissioners, their jobs is to make sure that the money is not being misused.
You know, the auditor is the safety valve, the responsibilities with the leaders in each
one of these organizations. If you got something going wrong in your organization,
that's your leadership job as a commissioner that reports into the governor that that's
something out of whack. So am I in my line there? Okay.
All right. Any questions on this side? Right back there. Who's got the mic? There you go.
I got a question for each one of you, Nate George. Who audits the voter rolls locally?
And I know you can't do it on the top level, but who audits the voter rolls?
So that would deal with the Secretary of State when it comes to elections and when it comes to
complaints at the county level, then whoever's in charge of your elections in the county.
And you audit the local level government too, right?
Finances. Not elections. Right, but finances too.
Correct. And Kendall, who backs you for campaign contributions? Is it
do you get NGOs or is it corporations? Well, yeah, happy to answer that question.
So I'm the only candidate that has donations from every 87 counties of the state.
We have zero and I don't ask for it, don't want it, but no one's offered.
And I wouldn't take it. I have no PAC money or lobbyist money.
Okay, that's... There's other candidates that do. We do not.
And we raised the most in last year in 2025. We raised the most in any other candidate
and it's all been funds from local citizens grassroots.
I'll have to clear that up on Roxanne Cowes then.
All right. I would just say same in my case too.
When you see campaign reports, be very mindful of the context of those reports.
Some of them might have a lot of money compared to another candidate,
but look where that money's coming from.
That's right. It's all public information.
I have a question for both. I mean, I'm sorry. I have a question for each one of you
differently and I'll state both of the questions.
My first question for Nate is more of a clarification.
If you are elected, you'll be part of the executive board, correct?
Executive council, yep.
In order for the governor to make mandates and such,
he has to have the vote of the executive board?
That's absolutely correct. Yeah.
And for those of you who don't know, the executive council is the mechanism
that was put in the place to keep the governor in check.
Yeah, that's been working really well.
And so anytime the governor wants to implement an executive order,
it actually gets voted on by the executive council first and they yay or nay it.
And so everything... the executive council, which is made up of all the constitutional
offices, so your AG, your secretary of state, and your auditor, and lieutenant governor,
they're all complicit in the decisions that the governor makes.
My second question is for Kendall.
And my understanding is, is you've been talking to a lot of the farmers
and you've been talking about a relocation of a possibility of relocating the educational...
Yeah, yep. I'll let you continue.
Yeah, so good question.
I could have stayed up there for another half hour to talk about all the things we're going to do.
But you know what? At this point of our state, we need radical transformation.
Yeah.
And we can't keep doing the same things we've been doing over and over again.
No organization does that, except if you're a blockbuster
and then you go into bankruptcy.
Right? I don't want to go into bankruptcy.
I don't want our state to do that.
So she was asking specifically about Department of Agriculture.
So one of the things I've talked about, not just with the Department of Ag,
this goes with the DNR as well, Department of Natural Resource.
Our agribusiness in this state is $26 billion a year.
It's the third, second or third largest industry any given year.
And they treat it like second-class citizens.
Not only is it a way of life, but it's their business.
And the permitting, the regulations, all of these things
are causing them to work harder for the same amount of money.
And it's eating into their margins and everything else.
It is terrible.
And I come from the business world, from sales and marketing.
And you know what, from my perspective?
When you're closer to the customer, you get better customer service.
You get better results and better ideas.
I want to move that Department of Agriculture out of St. Paul
and move it to someplace like Wilmer.
And by doing that, what you wound up doing is, well, guess what?
Some of those people that are in St. Paul, who've never worked in agriculture,
may not want to move to Wilmer.
And that's a good thing.
Because we'll hire the people that know ag and want to be more responsive.
Same thing with the Department of Natural Resource.
I'm looking at moving it to like Bemidji.
It is starting to shake things up.
So, thank you for the question.
Anybody in the center section, right up front here.
Got the hand up first.
And my question is, what are we doing for our youth?
You know, for those that have to leave their home
because they've been in trouble.
I worked for many years with youth in trouble,
but there's no place to go with them,
except for chemical dependency types of things.
And I worked with St. Frank camps.
It was a Wilder Foundation program.
I'm just wondering what happened to Wilder
because it's not available anymore.
You know, they had both the girls and the boys.
Camp that was a 90-day program.
And we just don't have programs in Minnesota like that.
Have you done any thinking about that?
Or what might happen in the future?
So, here's a sad fact.
And I say this as a fact.
You know, when I came out of the 70s, 80s,
with a broken home, in both cases,
worked full-time, paid my way through calls,
all those different things.
I went to different camps and all those things.
I could not have gotten out of poverty
in today's Minnesota.
I would have been stuck.
I would have been one of the statistics.
And I have a heart.
I've mentored for a Minnesota adult and teen challenge.
I'm on the board for Hope Farm School.
This is a boarding school.
These kids have never gotten in trouble yet.
It's their last chance.
And it's a 400-acre working farm
where these kids take care of cows, chickens, everything.
This is the coolest thing.
I'm going like, man, I wish I would have went to high school here.
And they have a bee farm and everything.
And not only do they raise these crops and the livestock,
they sell them.
So they see the full cycle of farming
to the economic component as well.
And so I'm on the board of that.
My son graduated high school there
because he was a peer leader amongst those group of boys.
So we believe in these things.
And so to answer your question,
we plan on doing a lot of things differently.
I mean a lot.
So example, returning vocational education back into high schools.
Okay?
They never should have left.
And I'm giving the example of a program
that has been working in other states that we're going to do here.
Look, all of our states, our 50 states are laboratories
for ideas and innovation.
And one of the things we're going to do,
what they've done in other states,
is that we partner with contractors.
So this is a public-private partnership
where we partner with contractors.
We take over like an old, dilapidated home
in a neighborhood that's kind of seen as better days.
We purchase that home.
We let the kids work with the contractors.
We do the roofing, do the tiling,
the plumbing, the electrician, all of that stuff.
Well, from the 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade,
now they're certified in the trades
to get a job where they can get middle-class wages.
And after six months of being in that job,
and they've shown that they have the work ethic
to be there and be dependable,
they can get low-interest loans to buy the home
that they've been renovating for the last three years.
Isn't that cool?
So in one area, Birmingham, Alabama,
they actually have finished one complete neighborhood
and they're moving to the second one.
That's something for the inter-core, urban core,
but also rural Minnesota.
Our kids in greater Minnesota need the same thing.
Boys and girls.
So those are the things we're looking at doing,
not just having fun and keeping out of trouble,
but give them a sense of pride of something
they can take into adulthood.
You want to speak into it?
Yeah, I think I can offer just a little bit of insight
from an auditor perspective.
I think when it comes to the question
of what happened to those programs,
I think the answer is pretty similar
to what happened to a lot of programs
that we're finding is just they then
fraud it into non-existence.
And so that's something that the state auditor
could help with the governor in acting his vision
by making sure that there's oversight of those programs
so that they stay solvent and they don't disappear
because of misuse or fraudulent use of those funds.
Excellent. Anybody over here?
We'll just go section to section.
And I'm a registered public health nurse
and I'm also the mother of a 27-year-old young man
who lives with an autism spectrum disorder.
My question is, how will you as governor
empower the people that have the boots on the ground,
that have lived experience when we come to committees,
we want our voices heard?
I've been a part of local committees,
the special education advisory committee.
Most recently, I've been on the waiver
reimagined advisory committee
for the state of Minnesota.
And I can tell you, they may hear us,
but they do not implement our feedback.
And for people who have lived experience,
we know how money can be saved.
What's really concerning is
waiver reimagined is going to move forward,
even though we had three years of the committee,
the Department of Human Services
is going to bring the proposal to CMS in March,
even though they didn't use any of our feedback.
As people, we want to be involved,
but how can you get that power down to the people
to make our voices not just heard, but implemented?
Yeah, well, and guys,
I want you to know what type of Republican I am.
I'm a constitutional Republican.
And what that means is,
is that power is shifted down locally,
the committees and actually to the people,
not to committees, not self-appointed.
Right now, we have so many committees in this state
that it doesn't matter where the legislators passed,
I mean, literally the tail was wagging the dog
in a lot of cases, right?
And so what I want to be able to do, again,
like as I mentioned, we are a state of 50 laboratories,
50 innovative laboratories.
And one of these things is health,
we're going to implement healthcare,
traditional healthcare as we know it,
but also mental, we have a huge mental health problem
in our country.
And the best ideas come from local.
And that includes the autism spectrum as well.
If our experts were right in everything we said,
we wouldn't have been wearing masks
and being six feet apart.
We wouldn't have to be forced to take medications
that didn't work.
And all of these different things these experts tell us.
When I come from the world in healthcare,
where outcomes matter,
if you tell us that global economic systems
work by offshoring all of our manufacturing
to China, because the experts tell us,
and then we're left with a huge hole
and millions of Americans not working,
I don't, I'm losing trust in the experts.
Because their outcomes have never played out.
When it was green energy or even healthcare,
they've lied to us blatantly.
And again, I know I'm going,
I'm using examples outside of yours,
but the point of it is, is that
we've, we've, we've relied too much
on experts to guide our way as Americans.
We're smart enough to manage these things on our own.
And we, I want to make sure that you guys get the power
that you get down at the local level.
Like I give you an example of the Met Council.
The Met Council members are appointed by the governor.
They should be elected by the, by the counties
that the seven counties that represents that met,
not by the governor,
or he hand picks his, his cronies.
It should be, it's an elected position.
And that's one of the things they're looking at doing.
As much power that we can push down
at the local level as possible.
Okay.
You go ahead.
And the follow-up is, I mean,
I do think we need these committees
because it's how you get token buy-in
from the people who have the lived experience.
How will you hold those committees accountable?
Because like the leaders of DHS, they came,
they sat, they heard what we had to say.
We told them, this is how you will save money.
And they just flipped it.
And they went and followed the playbook
from HSRI for the consultants.
And that's simple.
Okay. How did the committee get,
who's, how did they get on the committee?
Yeah.
It was a legislative proposal from a parent who said,
DHS is just making these changes without us.
Back in 2019, this started.
And then in 2022, the committee came along
after we've re-imagined it already been in play.
So three years we had time to say, look,
you will save money if you keep people
with disabilities in the community.
Understand.
But how did they get appointed on the committee?
Who appointed them?
You had to apply.
You applied and then DHS chose you.
So...
Okay. So that's the problem.
So basically, it's still,
it's still the government choosing their people.
Yes. That's true.
But we had very outspoken people there as well
who made sense.
Okay. I did.
And they just didn't take our...
The people of these committees,
I believe, need to be voted on.
There should be...
Let's just say there's a three-person committee.
Two of those people should be voted by the people,
and then DHS can appoint one of them.
Sure.
One of the self-appointed experts.
Right.
There needs to be a counterbalance.
Right.
Well...
With power back to the parents.
Thank you.
Okay. Some of this stuff is just,
you know, it's common sense.
Thank you.
Right in the middle.
Do you have any ideas about how to get the...
to counteract the media?
Because, like, Governor says a big lie.
Attorney General says a big lie.
And nobody ever comes out to counteract it.
We don't hear that in the...
So you got any ideas about, you know,
having a Republican press release or something
to get the truth out?
Well, I want to flabbergasted to hear,
for the first time that the Governor
and the AG had been telling lies this whole time.
I had no idea.
So that's concerning.
I thought they'd been doing their job this whole time.
One of the things that I could do as the auditor,
even though I may not have a direct role
in a lot of the state side of things,
you know, in state agencies and state programs,
being on that executive council, though,
I do have a seat at the table
when it comes to executive decisions.
And hopefully we get somebody like Kendall,
who I support by the way, want everybody to know that.
We can get them in there
because I know he's going to make good decisions
and I won't really have to go and raise my hand
and say, that's a bad idea.
But even if there's a situation where I do,
or let's say we're super unlucky and we don't flip that seat,
I don't think that's going to happen.
But if we don't, and somehow I get elected still,
then I can still be the voice of reason in the room
and say, this is a bad idea.
And take that information back with me,
even if I'm out-voted,
because I have my own independent media division.
And I can use that to put the information out
and message out to the people
and let them know what is going on
and what decisions are being made
behind closed doors without their knowledge.
And at least use that to inform the people again,
because again, that's where I feel, much like Kendall,
that's where the accountability lies.
The power is in the people.
The government works for you, not the other way around.
And that's what we need to get back to.
Yeah, you know what?
We're in the middle of a transformation with our media,
and it's really great.
I love that Elon Musk bought X.
That was great, near Twitter.
But the social media platform is circumventing,
and while all of this is happening,
media audience and the credibility legacy media
has gone down, down, down, down.
I mean, that MSNBC, they had to change their name.
It's like MSCOW or something, right?
Now it's cow, not now, but cow.
I mean, now.
Yeah, but literally, their viewership is so low.
I mean, I think they have their parents,
and there may be some friends from high school that watch them.
Their credibility has gone down.
They still have an influence, because they're overwhelming.
In our state, sorry, Tribune, they are like 250,000.
Can they...
Look, and I can't wait to expose these.
If a reporter asked me about, well, the Star Tribune,
I said, wait a minute, are you really going to ask me,
are you using the Star Tribune as a reference?
Does you mean the same institution where
the general manager for the Star Tribune
used to work directly for Tim Walls in the last administration?
Really, it's a propaganda piece.
Alpha News now gets more viewership than the Star Tribune.
So there's a catastrophic resizing,
if you will, seismic shift of media outlets.
So one of the things that we're going to do,
and in fact, my wife Sheila and I,
we started a weekly little two to three minute question
and answer session on our social media platform.
We're doing it on the weekly.
When we get elected, we're going to do just like,
FDR dead.
We're going to do a weekly,
but I can't call it a fireside chat,
but we're going to do kind of like a media side chat.
What's going on?
Take the truth and just get,
so you can get that information directly
and not filter through reporters.
And it's going to work.
They're going to have to find a new business model
because what they're doing now is not working.
And that works on both sides of the aisle, too.
Don't be fooled by any of that.
We as independent individual citizens,
it is our duty to make informed votes.
And as many of you know,
I Santy County has some of the highest property taxes.
And Kendall, I know that you did answer this question today
on your Q and A,
but for those who didn't hear it,
what are your plans, especially for property taxes
and especially for people,
senior citizens who are on fixed incomes?
Right.
So, you know what?
This is Ron DeSantis.
He kills me for...
He always gets out there front.
You know, he's elected.
I'm not yet, so I get it.
And he has this analogy.
Look, when I go to the store,
I buy a big-screen TV.
I pay the taxes on it.
I don't pay for taxes every time I watch something.
It shouldn't be the same way on your home.
You bought it.
Even if you still have a mortgage on it,
the cost of it shouldn't go up just because you...
So, we need to figure that out.
So, the school's got to be funded some way,
you know, something...
But this idea that you're going to be priced out of your own home.
Is wrong.
It's wrong.
So, we've got to figure that out.
But in the short term, what we can do,
short term, here's the solution,
is that for seniors, those are 65 and older,
regardless if your house is paid for or not,
50% reduction on your property taxes,
and it's frozen.
Frozen.
So, it's not 50% of whatever goes up.
50% and frozen.
What I like to do is find ways to actually...
How do we eliminate that as a source for revenue
for local counties?
But that's a big committee.
Why don't they go back to committees?
I hate doing that.
But we need to have smart answers around this thing.
But I'm going to tell you, it is wrong
for someone that's been working 25, 30, 35 years or longer,
they're on fixed income,
and you're pricing them out of their home.
It's wrong.
Like I said from the beginning,
this issue, the issues that we're facing
are not Republican Democrat,
they're right and wrong, good and evil.
It's wrong.
And we're not going to let that continue.
Yeah, I got to stand up for this one too.
This is kind of hits close to home.
All right, so a lot of the issues that we're seeing too
is on the local level.
It's the mismanagement
and the bad policy making at the state.
If you didn't catch it,
I was one of the mayors that spoke
at the press conference a couple of weeks ago
at the state capitol.
I was the second person after Mayor Jackson Perferst
who is a good friend of mine.
Him and I were the original creators
of that letter that went out
that now has over 261 signatures on it.
It's the bad policy decision making at the governor,
governor's level,
and the radical agenda that Tim Walz has.
He's the puppet master.
He's steering the ship.
So he's telling his majority Democrat legislators
what to do, what bills to push,
what not to support.
And it's not for the lack of effort
on our Republican legislators part.
A couple of them are in the room tonight.
They're doing what they can to fight for us,
but when they're outvoted by the majority,
there's not a whole lot that they can do.
And so we need to put that blame squarely where it falls,
because it's these unfunded mandates,
like we talked about paid family medical leave
or whatever it's called earlier today,
is those types of things that come from the state
that make it difficult for local leaders
to really mitigate the impact on the local property tax levy
and mitigate the impact to you.
But that's also where, as a state auditor,
I can really come into play and make sure that
local governments have the resources they need
to be better fiscal stewards
and control those levers and mechanisms
that they can control at the local level
to make sure that they're not just arbitrarily
increasing your property taxes
for the sake of arbitrarily increasing your property taxes
or because they're basing their budgets off of bad numbers
and fluff that doesn't even need to be in the budget.
And so those are the different mechanisms
and the different factors at play
that have a direct impact on those property taxes.
And that's why we need to make sure
that we don't just flip one seat,
we got to flip them all.
Or we're not going to see any of the changes
that we want to make.
Anybody in this section?
My question is for Kendall.
Although in the big schema thing,
not that important,
what's your plan for the Minnesota State flag?
Oh, what?
That is important.
That's not in a grand scheme that is important
because you know why?
Again, if you've been taught world history
and the different types of mechanisms
like capitalism, socialism, Marxism,
if you know Marxism,
one of the first thing they do
is erase the history of an organization
that they've just taken over.
A country or an institution
they've taken over, erase the history.
And there were 13 people that decided
to change that flag.
It wasn't a vote against the, you know,
to Minnesotans.
It wasn't even in the legislature.
13 people committee changed that flag.
And we're supposed to take it and love it.
And I'll tell you, so Sheila and I,
we were at a fundraiser
at a Republican fundraiser event near Duluth.
And there was an auction for the state flag,
the original state flag.
It was the last one that flew
on the state capitol before they switched.
We bought it.
We have a safekeeping.
I said, and I've got an association meeting.
This is going to be a safekeeping
and we have a great place for it when we win.
We'll go way over the other side first
then we'll come back.
Thank you both for being here.
Kendall, I have a question for you.
I love the idea of getting more law enforcement
into Minneapolis,
but I am a little concerned
about how effective that would be
when we have judges who like to reduce sentences,
reuse the same excuses,
and recycle criminals right back onto the street.
So, you know what,
so here's the,
this is where you use the bully pulpit
of your office, right?
Yes, we're going to get the officers,
but whenever we have something that has gone wrong
because a career criminal is out on the street
then they shouldn't be,
there's something about the bully pulpit
of the office how you can use it.
So, number one is that I'm going to have
the victims' families up in the stage with me,
and we're going to broadcast this across the state,
and I'm going to have on the tripod
the picture of the judge let him out.
Okay?
Because shame has power.
Okay?
No one wants to be around at the cocktail party
with someone else that,
because they caused trauma in someone else's life.
And it's not that, it's not,
you know, I'm not like the Democrats,
like getting their face,
and you let them know and wag,
no, it's public shame.
That's number, that's number one.
Those things make a difference.
And I'm going to do that.
It only takes a few times before people get it.
And because everyone else around the state
will get riled up as well.
That people's lives have been changed
because you made a decision
that affected someone else's life in a bad way.
It's time to start holding people accountable, okay?
Vonda, you're next.
The mic's coming your direction.
We have a housing problem in Minnesota.
An affordability problem.
We have people that are buying up properties
to turn them to rental properties,
and suddenly the rent is higher
than a mortgage would ever be.
I personally know somebody,
single mother, three children,
qualifies for a $225,000 house
and can't find one that will,
that is livable for her and her children.
She's already priced out at $225,000.
What can we do to be able to make housing affordable
for people that are out there working,
supporting our state?
Yeah, you know what?
This is one that I'm keenly attuned to.
I have five kids, adult kids,
that I want them to stay in Minnesota.
It is harder for them to get started
than it was for us.
Me and Sheila, Sheila and I bought our first house
when we were 23 years old.
The interest rates were 9.5%.
We thought we had a good deal
because six months before that,
it was 11%.
And it's harder for kids today
to get started for what you just talked about.
So here's what I'll do,
and I'll do this with Amy Klobuchar.
Guys, the biggest contrast,
the way for us to have a candidate
that has the biggest contrast
between a career politician
and an outsider from the business world
plus an outsider from the business world
that started with nothing,
the eight government surplus cheese
that lived in these conditions
and just wanted a better life.
And that's nothing wrong with that.
We shouldn't apologize for it either, right?
But it's the government's job
to make it affordable,
make it easier for its citizens.
It's not harder.
And her party has been doing it
for over 20 years.
So she can't defend it.
In neighboring Wisconsin,
it costs $53,000 less
for a same home in Minnesota,
a new home bill.
$53,000 less in Democrat Wisconsin
than it does here.
That's because Democrat Minnesotans,
oh, I don't want to call them a name,
they make it harder.
They deliberately make it harder.
And so things that we'll do,
I mean, again, rolling back regulation,
this is why having our own trifecta
is so important.
You got to roll back the regulations,
roll back the taxes,
roll back all the permitting,
all those things that increase its cost.
But the another thing we can do
is this is classic supply and demand.
The more you have of things,
the less it costs.
The permitting and regulations,
everything slows down the build
and rises the cost of things,
raises the cost of things.
So those are the things that we got to do.
We got to have more inventory,
lowers the cost.
And look, I'm a big fan of,
we've got a lot of older homes.
It's time to put some sweat equity back
and renovating and bringing some luster back
to some of our older homes and older neighborhoods.
I think we can do,
especially with a lot of the younger generations,
if we give you,
if you go in and you work with this crew
to restore this home and renovate it,
you know, we give you a special interest rate
with a special price.
And we can do those things as well.
So there's a lot of creative things that we can do
from a public-private partnership
to make this work.
But the old part of this thing
is capitalism, supply and demand works.
I do have a follow-up.
Okay, yes, ma'am.
There's kind of an incentive
for people to get rates and special treatment
if they are within on government programs.
And this is another thing that I've seen
on more than one individual
where they're trying their best
to not take part of a government program
and somehow they lose twice as bad.
This started under President Obama.
They used to brag about the number of people
that they're supporting or helping, right?
I'm going to tell you, I've lived under government.
Once you're in it, you're going to be hooked
for generations.
And it is hard to get...
And here's the problem.
We have one of the...
We're the second highest state
of government benefits.
Government benefits, we pay out.
They want you on it.
And they want you on it
so you can be a permanent voter,
but dependent on it so you...
If you vote out, you don't have a way out.
Even if you get a good private sector job.
And we saw it on steroids during COVID.
Paying people to stay home.
And look, I'm going to...
You know what?
Here's what I'm going to share with...
And I'm already getting calls from a lot of
Democrat leaders in the African-American community.
That's what they call...
They're DFLers, leaders in African-American caucus.
And what they realize is
they had $18 billion surplus, Democrats.
They had a trifecta.
And the black community in North Minneapolis
and South Minneapolis are the same condition,
if not worse, than before the George Floyd riots.
And they're going like, what happened to us?
We see the Somali community getting $9 billion.
And they're...
And we look, our situation hasn't changed
or it's gotten worse.
So, Kendall...
But they're coming to me.
I'm not going out there.
They're coming to me because of this issue right here.
And we're going to win because the Democrats...
Once they trap you when they're trapped, you're hooked.
And I'll share this information.
Like I said, I say the same things,
regardless of the ethnic group that I'm speaking with.
There's a data that just came out two weeks ago.
The spread between black and white,
the wealth gap between black and white citizens in the United States,
7 out of 10 of those are Democrat states, including Minnesota.
So when I speak to them, I said,
look, you've been loyal for 20, 30, 40 years all your life.
They've controlled everything in this state for 30 years.
How about give us a chance?
What programs, what are you going to...
I don't...
Why do I need to tell you what programs?
It's going to be better than theirs.
We got the largest wealth gap
in the United States.
And the 10 states, they had a list of the 10 states
with the least wealth gap,
7 out of 10 of those are Republican states.
So whatever we're going to do,
it's going to be better than what they've got.
So, you know, look, I just come with them facts,
and also I come with...
From... look, we as Republicans, we have a heart.
We want everyone to prosper.
We got the great programs,
but we're lousy at sales and marketing it.
We live in a time in history
where more than ever, we need Christians
who happen to be politicians,
rather than politicians who happen to be Christians.
How does that speak into where you're at?
You know, I think I shared part of that
already earlier for me.
But here's the thing.
The left are going to use my faith against me.
And I'll say bring it.
Bring it.
When I say bring it because what I stand for
used to be the norm.
You know, it's ironic.
Even President Joe Biden used to be one of the Democrats
that stood for, I can't remember, the Hyde Amendment.
That's what it was called, the Hyde Amendment.
And what that was, it was for those people that believed
that abortion shouldn't be paid for with government tax dollars.
But when he got on the ticket,
he immediately dropped it
because that Democrat party is long gone.
What I, you know, where I stand used to be the norm
for a lot of Democrats.
They have left God.
I didn't.
And just because they have,
does it mean that I am going to...
No, I'm not changing anything from where I stand
as a pro-life candidate.
All of that hasn't changed.
But what I do realize is this.
If we want to win power, we have to prioritize where we...
If we need to, if we got to win,
so we can have righteous people in these roles,
how do we prioritize and meet people where they are
and then bring them along with us?
That's what Jesus Christ did.
He came down to met us in our grummy little lives,
met us where we are,
and then brought us along with them with the 12, right?
And that's what we have to do with people.
And that's where I'm at.
I tell people, I'm not going to shove my beliefs down your throat.
Christians don't do that anyway.
That's what the left wants to believe,
tell people they believe them.
So I'm a proud member of the Christian faith,
but you know what, I'm smiling because I just remember,
I said this three days in a row,
I was then speaking to church.
On Saturday, I spoke at a church in Burnsville
to do a marriage conference, a workshop.
On Sunday, they had me come back and speak
and do a marriage renewal for marriage
and then also give the sermon.
I had no idea I was going to give the sermon.
He told me right there, okay, now we...
I was like, holy smoke.
And now here Monday, I'm speaking about this as well.
I am so comfortable in this space because you know what?
I live the life because before I was a Christian.
I know what the before and after.
Man, I tell you what, it's so much better on this side.
And I'll have no problem sharing it,
but I understand I got to meet people where they are first
and bring it along.
That's how you do it.
This is probably for Nate.
On your little chart you had with the red and the yellow
where do you think the state stands right now
as far as that chart goes?
Well, I think they broke it.
The needle's just spinning at this point.
Yeah, there's obviously a lot of work there
that needs to be done.
And again, it goes back to...
I've got some great ideas,
but we've got to get the legislature in place
to be able to support those ideas
for all the candidates across the ballot.
Because we can pitch ideas all day long,
but a lot of this stuff is rooted in statute.
And the only branch that can change statute
is the legislature.
Anybody in this section?
Right there.
And we'll come over to the man in the red.
I'm going to address Governor Qualls
because I'm calling it.
Thank you.
We've discussed the homeless.
We've discussed old people.
We've discussed children.
What about our veterans?
We haven't discussed what you're going to do
with our veterans that are homeless
and have nothing.
Yeah, you know what?
Thank you for that.
You know, on my social media post that I did today,
that reduction in property taxes
also goes for the veterans.
And I was in conversation with a guy today
that has a ministry for veterans
that I'm going to be a part of.
And then we got to take a look
at how do we care for these guys.
I don't have answers directly right now,
but it is something that we take care of those
who try to take care of us.
Right?
They represent less than 6% of all of us.
And right now, we're not showing...
I don't believe in our state that reverence
that we need to for those that serve
and put everything online for us.
So don't have a direct answer,
but we will be doing something.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm a Vietnam veteran
and a lot of water's gone under the bridge.
I mean, a lot of years gone by since then.
And...
Thank you for your service, sir.
Thank you.
It's country's worth it,
and we all got to keep on looking out after her.
I just had something to say to both of you, Nate.
I mean, I've been paying attention
for the last four or five years.
I mean, since I felt like
slapped around, you got to be kidding me
with, you know, all that's going on
just the last four or five years.
For that, I've never been paying attention
to anything political.
But now we all have to
and don't ever forget that.
No matter how good it ever gets,
pass it on to everybody you know,
especially everybody under your youngins.
And, Nate, I just want to say to you,
well, I learned a lot.
I didn't know anything about what
you taught us here today.
And Kendall, I agree.
I could go on hours just in conversation
with you. I agree with everything you say.
But one thing I just want to share
with everyone here,
movie, you know, Warner Brothers put it out in 1951,
an old movie called I Was a Spy for the FBI.
If you've never seen it,
it hits right on what Kendall Calls
was talking about with
sort of going after black people
to separate people.
Socialism is behind it.
Communists are behind that.
And that movie shows it right straight out.
And that movie was made in 1951 by
Warner Brothers, and it was supposed to
took place in the 1930s.
So this is ain't nothing new here.
So if I can't comment real quick.
First of all, for a very long veteran,
your age, you look great.
I mean, you got more hair than I do.
Okay, okay.
I second that.
And second, when it comes to veterans,
you know, my son just got off
an active duty, he's fourth generation.
He's been five years.
He's finishing up his college at Crown College.
But so no one has more of a heart
for veterans than I think we do here.
But when it comes to our nation,
having served and having been,
I served in South Korea, North Korea,
South Korea, communist free.
I mean, it's the night and day difference.
What's happening in our country,
people have no idea this is being delivered.
And I'll give you an example,
especially in the black community.
And every major city around the country,
we think it's poverty, all these poor...
No, this, these, there are black
mayors of these cities,
superintendents of schools, police chiefs.
You think it'd be a utopia for black Americans.
It's not generational, five generations of poverty,
five generations on government welfare.
When you have, and then you have elite few
that are getting wealthy and they're in power
at the local level, to get power at the local level
and they're getting wealthy.
They want to do it off of government dollars.
Outside of the country, if that was a,
if that was a nation state,
it would be a communist socialist country.
And it's not a coincidence that every major inner city
in a black community like that,
because there's socialist Marxist first.
They don't care about these people.
They keep them locked into schools
that where they can't get an education to get out.
It took me five years to figure this out.
And the fact that we've gone from 80% two-parent families
in my lifetime in a black community,
to 80% fatherless homes,
there's never been one initiative
to reverse the trend.
That's when I said this is evil.
And it's exactly what you just talked about.
And most Americans have no idea
and that we're trying to educate people on.
And it's gone beyond the black community
and spreading out even further.
Any more questions in the far section?
We're going to start cleaning this up now
and call on it to an end.
Well, okay, so I'm Todd Christiansen.
I don't have a question for you.
I just want to say to both of you guys,
thank you so much for taking on this fight
because it is an uphill battle,
but thank you for doing it
and being willing to put yourselves on the line for all this
because I'm sure you've got a lot other things
you'd rather be doing than that.
So, and then the other thing I was going to say
when you brought up about the flag,
and that is so important.
It might seem like a simple thing,
but it is just another example
of what they're trying to do.
And in Sandy County,
I'm actually a county commissioner.
And we still have the right flag flying.
Yeah, God bless you.
That's right.
We did not cave like the city of Cambridge
is flying the new flag.
So, sorry, don't offend anybody, but yeah.
So, and as long as I'm a county commissioner,
I will always be trying to push
for the keep that flag up there.
All right, that's the vermin.
If I can say one thing before we close, guys,
I'm going to be announcing
my Lieutenant Governor on March 2nd.
Okay, on March 2nd.
It's just a couple of weeks.
It's going to be historic in nature.
It's not what you think.
It's not going to be...
It's not a race thing or anything like that.
It's going to be historic in nature
because it's going to meet the crisis of the moment
of what we are dealing with in our state.
So, stay tuned for that March 2nd.
Excellent.
Anybody else?
We have two more questions.
We're done.
And then Dale wanted to share something quickly.
Go ahead.
So, in 22,
two walls in Jensen,
that race was about a 7 to 8 percent.
You mentioned earlier that
winning Minneapolis St. Paul
or capturing 5 to 7 percent.
Do you have documented data that shows that?
I mean, is that realistic that you can pull
that many out of those typical Democrat
blue cities, counties to win this?
Because that's where I kind of, you know,
numbers are still numbers.
Do you have that on that?
Yeah.
So, if you go to the Secretary of State
and look back at the CD3,
Third Congressional District race in 2020
where I ran, okay,
you'll see my results that they over-indexed
the President and the Senatoral candidate.
And then you extrapolate that across the day.
This is just doing a math modeling, right?
Extrapolate that over the Metro Congressional Districts,
CD3, 4, 2, and 5.
And just extrapolate that and then extrapolate that
out of Duluth as well as Rochester.
That'll kind of give you the numbers.
But at the end of the day, then what's the message?
What's the message that will help motivate
those people in the middle, the centrist middle,
to maybe vote Republican for the first time ever?
Now, you've got to remember,
the crisis that we had with President Trump
in this last election when he won,
in the swing states, in the battle states,
the six, the six battle states, right?
He got 22% of the black vote.
And they've been calling him a, you know,
basically a, you know, the grand wizard of the KKKK
for the last six years, 24-7.
And he got almost the highest vote
in the black community since Richard Nixon.
So I think I can get a few black votes, okay?
And but also not, and it's not just,
but also, there are suburban moms, right?
Right now, I got data that shows
that CD3 is underwater for the Democrats.
CD3, again, this is the western suburbs,
Minnetonka, Wyseta, Maple Grove,
that it's underwater for the Democrats by 3%.
Wow.
Okay. I got data.
And in fact, I shared it with the CD3
leadership so they can feel a good candidate.
My point is that they're vulnerable
because if left is gone so far left,
they're leaving some of their people behind.
So what are the message for our campaign?
It's just three things.
They're not about for Republicans.
They transcend party.
Number one, economically.
People want to thrive economically.
They don't want to just survive.
We're going to re...
We have robust economy.
We're going to lift the economy.
That is number one.
Economy transcends politics.
Number two, we're going to fix the crime problem.
Crime transcends politics.
These people...
Criminals don't care what party...
They don't ask you what party you are.
Are you a car guy?
They'll car jack you either way.
They don't care, right?
And number three is everyone wants a good college...
I mean a good education for their kids.
The public school education.
We already talked about the numbers.
Those three things are universal that transcend politics
that focus and where the people that felt left behind
by the Democrats, they'll respond to that with a candidate
they can believe in, they can trust.
And they're going to see on March 2nd,
when you see this, you'll see...
Boy, these guys are totally different.
Talking to the people in that neighborhood,
I absolutely can tell you what Kendall is saying
is 100% true.
There's a very quiet population of people
in these traditionally blue areas who are just fed up
and they're waking up.
It might be a little bit slow, but they're waking up
to how worse off they've been this whole time
under Democrat leadership.
And so I think there's a very large population
of traditionally dark blue voters
who are just waiting for the opportunity to make a switch.
Last question.
So there's been a lot of talk about
meeting the legislature both yet.
And thinking about election fraud,
and how Trump kept talking about
need it too big to rig.
And that you both need the legislature
to be successful at what you're doing.
What are your plans to make it
so that the legislature isn't rigged,
if that makes sense?
Thank you.
That's a tough question to answer from
from the purview of an auditor.
I can give you what my personal recommendations are.
And just from having conversations
with people who have been directly involved in elections,
a lot of the fraud or a lot of the capability
to produce the fraud and the amounts and capacities
that they have when it comes to elections
is the mail-in voting system.
And so how do you beat that?
Don't do mail-in voting.
Show up on election day and vote.
And encourage everyone around you
to do the same thing.
Because what they're doing is
they're using these systems,
these early voting and absentee ballots and whatnot
to get an idea of how the numbers look ahead of time.
So they can determine where to build the gaps,
how many more votes they need to make up
to win the election.
And when you vote on election day,
you take away their ability to do pre-planning like that.
Yeah, and so in the last election,
the presidential election,
Laura Trump was here.
She was co-chair of the RNC.
And she said one of the things they did
in some of these swing states
was that they had attorneys in these suspect precincts.
And they would file injunctions
when they saw something nefarious going on
and that the judge had...
They stopped all the voting
until the judges adjudicated that issue.
What that did, it put everybody else on notice.
And so it's just in the military they do this.
You know what people respect what you inspect.
And when you start shining a light on it,
you know that's an issue.
So we'll have attorneys and precincts
and judges and all that,
but the judges, we want judges to be attorneys
so they can file.
Second part of this is look,
throughout my career,
I never played the race card or anything like that.
But this time,
with Democrats history of,
you know, stunting the black vote,
they always come on blame Republicans for doing this.
It's been the Democrats throughout the history
of our election.
And it was primarily in the South.
They don't care where they are.
They're in the North.
I'm going to look.
I'm going to put it on full on notice.
President Trump, Pam Bondi, we need you.
Because they'll do anything to cheat line still.
Why do you want to say that?
Because they did it with Norm Coleman.
We know six months after that he lost his election,
there was not it done.
There was like 400 votes that were counted
that should not have been counted
because they were felons
and they were not eligible to be vote.
And they put Al Franken in the office,
the one vote they needed for Obamacare.
They'd done it.
And this is, you know what,
we've never been able to fix this in the Republican Party.
We should have been focused on this years ago.
This is, again, guys,
this is why as an outsider I'm running,
it's, you know, I love the guys
that have support the party.
You're on the front lines of this thing.
But we need to go harder because
we're also as a Republicans responsible
for what has happened in this state.
If we haven't filled in enough competitive candidates
that win the Secretary of State in 20 years,
the AG since 1970,
and the governor for 20 years,
we are responsible as well.
This is why I'm involved.
We have to do something different
to help this get us over the top.
Pastor Frank, thank you so much.
God bless you.