Around 100 area residents gathered at Two Harbors High School last week to hear Natalie Zeleznikar and Mark Munger talk about their candidacies for the Minnesota House of Representatives, District 3B. Both Zeleznikar and Munger are lifelong Northeastern Minnasotans and both have impressive records, working in service to the public.The forum was moderated by Kitty Mayo of the Lake County Press and over the course of the event, the public got to hear each candidate respond to a number of questions on topics including:
- Willingness to work across the aisle to pass policies that benefit all the people of Northeast Minnesota.
- Support for or against the $8 million funding bill for our public school system.
- Support for or against the bill allocating $11 million for the Highway 61 project.
- Insuring controls on spending and taxation.
- Opinions on the 1400 page bill that the Democrats pushed through in the last 20 minutes of this past session.
- Voting to help constituents, even if doing so means voting against your party’s wishes.
- Opinion on the proposal to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the State Constitution.
- Opinion on the language that should be in such an amendment.
We clearly live in contentious, even dangerous times politically and though the forum affords a great opportunity to hear from each candidate, the basic fact is that ultimately, we are our government and we get the quality of governance that we choose to put into office. Thus, we each must make the effort to be educated about the issues and about those who seek to represent us. The character and temperament of political candidates must be paramount in the minds of the electorate and should come before personality and likely, even before political party. Perhaps, we should each ask ourselves the questions that were put before the candidates last week. How would we vote if we were in the office they are seeking and why would we vote that way? Minnesotans want to live in a functioning, equatable, civil society and most of us understand that to keep and maintain such a society, we must expend time, money and thought, not only toward our own interests, but toward the interests of all of our citizens. The expenditure of these things, the collective effort that we must exert, is not “socialism”. It’s called Democracy. Zeleznikar and Munger both have strengths that they could bring to the House of Representatives. They have similar perspectives on some issues and have differences when it comes to others. If you were not able to be present at the forum, you can catch it on Two Harbors Public Access TV and on KTWH (ktwh.org), 99.5.
