Watching the changes in my native Minnesota has been difficult, but it also makes me thankful to now call Iowa home. I grew up in the Iron Range, a region in northeastern Minnesota that flourished for decades due to its timber and mining industries.
My family has long been supporters of organized labor and the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). Today, however, most of them feel abandoned by the DFL and Gov. Tim Walz and have shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party.
Minnesota has always had a streak of progressive populism, but under Walz, it has moved to the extreme. Today’s DFL combines the economic theories of the early-20th-century Farmer-Labor Party with cultural Marxism. Walz has even shown sympathy towards socialism, as evidenced by his comment, “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” My grandparents, who were staunch DFL supporters, would be shocked by what’s happening in Minnesota today.
Critics argue that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is too conservative. Recently, Walz even called Sen. J.D. Vance “weird” on the campaign trail. The truth is, both Reynolds and Vance reflect the values of my DFL-supporting grandparents far more than Walz.