Well, good evening, everyone. It's good to be with you.
Great to be with you this evening. My name is Lisa Daymouth.
I am a candidate for governor.
And I have to tell you with hosting this at your church,
how many of you attend this church?
All right. Hosting this at a church makes me feel very much at home.
So I'm going to let you know a little bit about me.
I'll let you know a little bit about my background
and the work that I'm doing.
And then I want to tell you just more
why I'm running for governor
and why Minnesota matters so very much to me.
I was born and raised Minnesota in Painesville.
So thanks, Central Minnesota.
I know I talked to someone that grew up near...
Yes, there you are, grew up in the Cold Spring area.
My husband's family lived in the Cold Spring area
and they had many foster kids that they welcomed into their home.
And so I got to meet someone that actually remembered that time
and the horses and the farm.
And I appreciate that.
But Minnesota matters.
And I think where we look at where we are right now,
it's not what we remember.
And I'm not talking about as we look forward to what could be.
I'm not talking about taking us back in time,
but some of those core things that mattered very much.
So when you think about Minnesota being a place
that families could just afford their lives,
they knew that their kids,
if they chose public, private, whatever school,
they were going to get an excellent education.
You know, basic things.
And also that our tax dollars,
when we chose to send them in to the state,
that they were used wisely.
Remember when it used to be invested into things that mattered,
our infrastructure, our law enforcement,
our cities and our schools.
We've come so far from that.
And yet to me, Minnesota is too good to give up on.
And that is why I've chosen both to serve in the legislature,
but now making the decision to run for governor,
because I don't want to give up on this state.
And I hear when people talk about,
well, I have to leave the state for six months in a day
because of the taxes.
I have four adult kids and seven grandkids,
and I don't want to have to be gone.
I want to go to everything they have.
I have a grand kid running track tonight.
My husband is there so that he could cheer that kid on while I am here.
But that is what I want people to be able to stay.
Now, for people that get a little tired of the winter and weather,
if you want to go for a week or two weeks or whatever,
that is great. I think that's wonderful.
But you shouldn't have to feel like you can only afford your life
if you move out of state.
And so, growing up, we lived in the Painesville area
until I was seven.
My dad is black. My mom is white.
So I was mercilessly teased almost every day called the N-word
in first grade.
Now, I was a big fourth grade kid.
I don't know who he was.
But I had a principal and teachers that said,
that is wrong. And I had no idea what that word meant.
But they said, that is wrong. You come to us.
And so I felt like I had an advocate there as a seven-year-old.
But yet, my parents said it was too hard.
And so we moved to the metro area just for a little bit more diversity.
Went to a private Christian school that first year.
And we moved to South Minneapolis.
And then because of housing and jobs,
then we moved to Robinsdale and to St. Louis Park
and back to South Minneapolis and in Bloomington.
So we moved around a lot.
But I think the reason I tell you that about my background,
I never quite fit in.
And sometimes that makes you stronger later on.
I was never black enough for the black kids.
And I was never white enough for the white kids.
And so I just worked hard and did whatever made sense to me.
Had a really super loving family and good close friends.
But I think when people talk about challenges that you end up finding as an adult,
I think maybe that's why I can let so many things roll off.
Because that's how I learned to do.
Don't let those things hold you back that get in your way.
Push through them and do the right thing.
I moved back as an adult back to the Painesville area by choice.
And it's an honor to be from that area, from greater Minnesota.
I have the unique perspective as any of the other Republican candidates for governor
of living in greater Minnesota and the metro area at two different times.
So I kind of have a little bit more unique perspective.
My husband and I, like I said, we have four kids, four adult kids,
but he is a business owner. I'm a business owner.
So I know firsthand when things happen in St. Paul and decisions are made,
we can either make it easier for families and businesses, or we can make it harder.
And what I'll tell you is we have made it harder.
The decisions that have been made in the legislature and by the governor,
we have made it much harder for people to afford their lives.
And I'm talking about things such as paid family leave, excessive taxes,
and those things that make it just a little bit harder to afford things.
I also ate Pringles on the way here for dinner.
You'll get the true Lisa Daymuth here.
I always have a peanut butter sandwich in my backpack because I never want to go hungry.
And I found Pringles in the car from the weekend and it was awesome.
But anyway, so...
But when I think about those things as a small business owner and how we can provide jobs,
our businesses are the backbone of our communities,
whether they are very small or a little bit larger business.
They are the ones that are providing both the jobs
and the taxes and the infrastructure that we need for the state.
So in 2007, I was, you know, we were raising a family, working really hard.
And I saw in the newspaper that the Rakori School Board
had an election for three members and only one incumbent had filed.
Now, this was after the filing deadline.
And so we still got the same cloud times in, you know, the actual paper.
I did what made sense to me. I tore the article out and I left it at my husband's place for dinner.
And he came home and we sat down and said, hey, you know what, I read this article.
You're going to need to run for the school board.
And he just looked horrified. I mean, he's in manufacturing, design.
He's like, I would never do that.
Now, his dad was in education.
His dad was a superintendent and he had a brother that's a teacher.
And he said, I would never do that. And he said, you do that.
I immediately said, I can't do that. And he asked the best question, which was, why not?
And I said, I don't know. I had never been told.
I told you that a little bit about my background growing up.
Nobody had ever said, hey, Lisa, you can never run for the school board.
I just never thought of it. So it was past the filing date,
which meant my name was not going to be on the ballot.
People needed to remember my name. And I'll give you a little hint on my name.
Damoth is how it's pronounced, my last name.
If you remember Joe Namath, it rhymes, okay?
Now remember him as the big strong football player, not the infomercial dude right now.
But so I knew people had to remember my name.
I talked to teachers. I talked to the superintendent.
I talked to other people and said, I don't really know what it means.
But I believe my community needs me to serve in this role.
I'm going to run for the school board without any marketing background.
I'm thinking, what could I use that would help?
I had pencils printed with www.electlisadamoth.com and handed those out.
I needed people to remember that I needed to be written in.
Well, four people ended up running for the three spots and I ended up being elected.
I went on to serve three complete terms, finishing at the end of 2018
because I felt like I had served well and it was time for that next person,
whoever that was to come in in that role.
Our graduation rates were good. Our student test scores were good.
We had finished a needed building project and it's an expansion.
And so I was going to be done.
And in the end of May of 18, my representative was going to be running for an open senate seat.
Now I had met him, but we didn't know each other well.
And he called me on Memorial Day of 2018.
And he said, hey, and he gave me his name.
And he said, have you ever thought of running for the House of Representatives?
I said, nope, it's never crossed my mind.
And I kind of laughed, too.
And he said, well, I've got the, and so we talked about it.
And this was my response. Now granted, always conservative, always voted,
didn't pay attention enough to what was happening in St. Paul during the process, only the after effects.
And I said, you guys fight too much and you don't get anything done.
And he said, no, no, no, stop watching all the news. And so we talked about it.
I laughed, went downstairs. It was Memorial Day.
So our adult kids were there. We had one out of town.
My mom was there. I said, you're never going to believe this.
And I told them what I had been asked. And we did laugh about it.
But it was my daughter who said, what could you actually bring to that role?
Business experience, elected official experience, involved in your community, involved in your church.
What could you bring to that role?
So I didn't know. We talked about it, laughed about it, you know, thought about it through the night.
And then, and I love being able to tell this to a group of people in a church.
This is my favorite part because in our forums and the governor candidate things,
we never have enough time to get into the weeds here.
So I'm going to take an extra minute if I can.
Okay. I had been involved in Bible study fellowship for a number of years.
And I remember the beginning of May, I had found a verse in Romans that Paul was thanking the people along his journey.
And that stuck out to me.
He was thanking Arastus, the director of Public Works.
And I remember going to my group, the Bible study ladies, and I was excited.
I show them, I'm like, and in this verse, and they all kind of blank faced and they nodded a little bit.
And I'm thinking, that was the coolest verse in the world to me.
Because God cared about our involvement in the community is what that stuck out to me as.
And so I had marked it in my Bible and I wished I would have brought my Bible with for tonight, but it's home.
I was in St. Paul.
But I have it marked in there, the date that I found it, because it stuck out to me.
Right before we went to bed that night, I told my husband, hold on, there's a verse.
This is before I told my representative that I would run.
I got my Bible, I found it, I read it to him.
I said, this is the verse, it mattered.
You know, God had Paul put this in Romans because it mattered.
You know, he was thanking people and my husband said, there's your answer.
I didn't have to think or pray about it any further.
I knew it was supposed to run for the legislature.
And I did and I won and I have served now in my fourth term.
It has been one of the best opportunities that I've ever had to serve my community.
So if you look at that serving as a...
Well, actually, I was a worship leader at my church for 16 years.
Our church started in Cold Spring 33 years ago, served and started a mom's group,
served and taught the girls program there, served as a worship leader.
I did those things. Then I served as a school board member
and this was going to be the next opportunity to serve my community in the legislature.
We attend River of Life in Cold Spring.
So, we've been there from the very start when it started.
We saw it from the ground up when we met in the Alino building
and then the high school and then finally built
and our kids got to rollerblade during construction
because we'd go do construction cleanup and we'd put the rollerblades on the littles
and they could just kind of have fun while we were working.
But really that involvement really mattered very much to me.
Ran for the legislature. The areas that I focused on when I was first in the legislature,
early childhood, because to me, if a community has strong child care
and you're supporting families, you have a stronger community.
Because of my school board experience, I served on education, finance,
and then greater Minnesota jobs and then one of the next terms, health finance.
And all I want is for Minnesota to be stronger and better.
It seemed very simple.
Now, my party was in the minority the entire time, which meant
we could have really good ideas and they didn't need the votes and it didn't matter.
Well, when we took the minority again, my third term, so with the 22 election,
that night, you know, we were expected to take part of the majority someplace in state government.
And I remember my husband knew that I won my legislative seat again.
He went to Betty on an early flight and then the next morning I said,
hey, we lost everything.
We're in the like deep minority here, full Democrat control in the state of Minnesota.
And he said, well, what are you going to do?
I said, I'm going to quit.
And he said, you would never quit.
I said, I know I'm kidding.
I ended up running for leadership within my caucus.
Because to me, if you think things need to change
and you see that they're not necessarily changing,
step up, quit complaining.
And just step in and start doing something,
not because you may have all the answers,
because something needed change, ran for leadership within my caucus.
And I won as minority leader,
serving the entire time that the Democrats had full control of state government.
I will give a lot of credit to former speaker Melissa Hortman.
She's the only speaker that I had ever served under.
When I became the leader, she called me and she said, congratulations,
we should start meeting weekly.
And I said, you don't even need my votes.
And she said, we're going to be working together.
We need to get to know each other.
And even though we were on opposite political sides,
I really learned a lot from that,
because things can seem so divided in the legislature,
even though she and I did not agree politically.
At least we got to know each other about our kids and her love of baking
and gardening both of us and what mattered.
Now I couldn't change the votes and the things that were done in 23 and 24
damaged our state for potentially generations.
So I'm not saying that was okay,
but what I am saying is when you can respect people
and have civil conversations,
even when you disagree,
we are all going to be better because of that.
And that absolutely, absolutely.
And I think that is what I wanted to bring to the role.
So then, 2024, all of a sudden that night of the election,
we got all the results in by about 2.30 in the morning,
we were in a tie.
I get a text from Melissa that says,
looks like we're blessed to work in a tie.
I'm like, I'll see you in a couple of hours.
We had to navigate our way through.
Now, Tad talked about the overreach of the Secretary of State.
He wouldn't recognize, he swore us in,
but he wouldn't recognize us on the floor.
I got sued at the Supreme Court level
and had to tell my mom, don't respond on Facebook, I'm fine.
I'm not going to jail. It's all okay, you know.
But, you know, it was really frustrating
because the Democrats stayed out of power,
they stayed out of office,
still collecting their checks
because it's constitutionally guaranteed
and we couldn't stop it.
23 days we fought that.
Let me tell you why prayer matters so much to me.
I was in that room and negotiating because that was my job.
I was going to be either a co-speaker
if we were truly in a tie,
ended up being full speaker
because they supported a guy that didn't live in the district.
And so that's why they stayed out.
I remember, you know, having,
I have a small group that'll pray for me and my husband.
But, you know, we'd go back and forth with these negotiations
just figuring out how we start this out.
Back in 1979, there was a tie in the House of Representatives.
It did not go well.
So Melissa and I decided we could get this done a little bit better.
And we worked toward that until they stayed out
and then it was complicated.
Still negotiating that organizational agreement,
trying to be fair with it, trying to get it done.
And finally we hit an impasse that we could not get past.
And it was math to me.
Republicans had 67 members, Democrats had 66.
That is not a tie.
That is a one-seat advantage,
even if it wasn't a functional majority.
And I wouldn't give up on those things
such as a co-speaker and all of those things
because the math proved that there wasn't a tie.
And I remember the night before we finally settled
after hours and hours and days of these negotiations,
I called my husband late that night and I said,
I have prayed about this.
I know we're doing the right thing.
I'm not reaching for power or anything like that.
This is the right thing for Minnesota.
I don't know what to do.
And he said, I'll pray.
And I remember not being able to sleep most of that night.
We walked in the next morning with other people from each side,
so it was very equal in this meeting.
And the offer that came across the table
is exactly what we had been asking for days.
And the question was what changed?
I remember walking out with my team.
I'm like, what am I missing in there?
Like, that's our offer.
It was the right thing to do for Minnesota.
Which is why right now,
the things that 67 members with a Republican speaker
are able to prevent is happening.
Without that, we would have basically no power.
So the things that I was able to do
as Speaker of the House last year,
negotiating one half of one third of state government,
the only Republican in that room,
ending the taxpayer funding of illegal immigrant health care.
That means if people are here illegally,
they absolutely can get the health care.
It just means that they're going to have to pay for it,
that the taxpayers can't pay for that.
It had exploded by over 15,000 people,
more than they expected total, in four short months.
We were also able to cut the budget by $5 billion,
the spending, and we protected our non-public education
from cuts that Governor Walz was insistent on.
To me, it wasn't about the dollar amount
for non-public education.
It was a tack on religious freedom
and the freedom of families to be able to make those choices.
So I'm going to quick tell you what I have looking forward
that I'll turn it over to you,
because I could talk to you all night.
But what I want to do, though, as Governor,
my running mate is Ryan Wilson.
He had run for state auditor back in 2022.
Fantastic person, lives in the Maple Grove area,
married, dad of five kids, former business owner,
he's an attorney, he's absolutely a fantastic person.
He lost by 8,000 votes in the midterm.
We had 200,000 Republicans that didn't show up to vote.
This is how we can defeat whoever the Senator Klobuchar
is their person that will be running
their candidate for governor right now.
I didn't think it was going to be Tim Walz anyway,
but here we are, and this is how we do it.
We unify together as Republicans.
And we get on the same page early on,
and we work toward that.
It doesn't mean fighting and being disrespectful to people
and being crazy angry about things.
It doesn't mean that.
It means unifying in a message that makes sense.
Lowering taxes, protecting our religious freedoms,
protecting our kids so that they have the education
that they deserve, public, private, charter,
homeschool, keeping boys out of girls' locker rooms
and bathrooms, because that is an issue of safety.
That is just an issue of safety.
Those are common sense things.
Protecting our taxpayer dollars from the fraud
that has gone rampant.
Making sure that we are using taxpayer dollars
in the best way and not overtaxing Minnesota.
Also creating Minnesota to be business friendly
so people can grow and thrive here.
I am a pro-life person.
I have always supported life from conception to natural death
and I won't back down on that.
That is incredibly important.
That is our future and it is biblical.
It is, yeah.
We have gone so far from that,
but there are opportunities to care about people.
All of the funding for our pregnancy resource centers
was taken away in 2023.
Now that gives the opportunity for a church to step up
absolutely.
But there is no reason why we shouldn't restore that funding.
And that is something that I would like to do.
I have agreed to abide by the endorsement.
I have always received that endorsement
when I have run for my legislative races.
And so I am both seeking and will abide by that endorsement.
I do support our Second Amendment rights.
That is our constitutional right.
And we can have safe gun ownership in a responsible way.
But people's hearts that think they need to use
a weapon of choice to kill or hurt other people
is where the original problem is.
And we have to look at that.
So with that being said, I know that I'm going to turn it back to you.
There will be questions.
Thank you so very much for listening and for staying engaged.
It is my honor to be with you tonight.