Tuesday’s primary results have set up a November contest for Minnesota governor between Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Minnesota Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring.
MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke to Klobuchar Wednesday about her plans if she wins the election.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above.
‘Fresh ideas’ for the governor’s office
The first is going to be a top-to-bottom audit of state government, and that means everything from changing the way that we vet contracts and not having any more of these Zoom audits; instead, you know, actually inspect places in person.
I also am just excited to be able to make government work better for Minnesotans. It should match their drive and ambition. If you apply for a permit, you should get an answer, and if you don't get an answer within a certain amount of time, you should get your money back.
And so it is taking our government, cutting through the red tape, especially with the budget deficit that we're going to be facing, and then making sure it works, lowering costs for Minnesotans, getting 100,000 new homes built with the private sector, doubling the number of apprenticeships in the jobs of the future, not the past.
Fixing fraud in public aid programs
The governor has said himself that he should have caught this earlier. Minnesotans have a right to be so angry about this rip-off of taxpayer money. So it is the first thing that I'm going to be doing. That's why on Day 1 I'm going to launch that audit.
But there are other things that we also have to do to make life better for the people of our state. Our state is a state that brought the world everything from the Post-it note to the pacemaker. But we can't rest on our laurels. So this is, to me, what's going to be fun — a growth agenda, bringing in more business, expanding the businesses that we have.
Decision-making on data centers
The first thing is local control to allow the local residents to make decisions and not take that away from them. That's what you see happening. That's on the front line. That everything is different in each place, and they have to be able to make a decision and maintain that.
The second thing is state laws that make sure that if a data center is going to be built, you have to have full disclosures of what negotiations are going on. That is not in law right now, and that's something I would change. But also the existing law that was just put in place — it's more progressive than some states — and making sure that ratepayers are not on the hook.
And in fact, they benefit from this with the way the numbers are. And those are things you can build into a contract if someone, if a local community is interested in going forward with a data center; you also can do more when it comes to environmental protections.
A lot more needs to be done. The reason people are so angry is there have been some really bad situations around the country with data centers.
Job approach if elected
Putting Minnesotans first, getting things done. I have done that throughout my career. I get results. I hate excuses.
I like to get things done, and to me, that means looking at all of state government and figuring out for the people how can we get this done, standing up to Donald Trump when necessary and working with their administration when there's common ground.
One of the things that really bothers me about my opponent now that I know who it is, Lisa Demuth, is she is someone that's going to be a rubber stamp of Donald Trump.
She has not spoken out on the tariffs that have raised costs across the board. She won't speak out against the Medicaid cuts that hurt our rural hospitals. She won't speak out against the war in Iran, which has cost Americans deeply.
