What Common-Sense Leadership Actually Looks Like for Anyone in District 54B
"Common sense" is the most overused phrase in politics, mine included. Everybody claims it. Nobody defines it. It has become a way of saying "I am reasonable and my opponent is not" without committing to anything.
So let me do the harder version and make it specific.
First, the test itself
Before any bill gets my vote, it goes through three questions. Not a party check. Three questions.
Does this solve a problem that actually exists? There is a genre of legislation written to answer a press release rather than a problem. I am not interested in it.
Who pays, and can they? Every proposal has someone carrying the cost -- a taxpayer, an employer, a school district, a city, a family. If the author cannot tell you who, they do not understand their own bill.
Would I still support this if the other party had written it? This is the one that matters, and the one most often failed. If my answer changes based on the name at the top of the page, I have stopped representing you and started representing a caucus.
That third question is why I keep saying I will not be anyone's puppet. It is not a slogan about being a maverick. It is a commitment to a specific, testable behavior: I will vote against my own party when its bill fails questions one and two, and I will vote for a Republican bill when it passes them. You can hold me to that, publicly, with receipts.
Five kinds of proposals I would support
Anything that makes state government legible. Plain-language forms, published timelines, and a single point of contact. This is unglamorous, costs almost nothing, and improves more lives per dollar than most of what gets announced with a podium.
Investment in water quality and the lakes. Our lakes are our economy and our identity in this district. Protecting them is not an ideological position here; it is asset maintenance. I would rather spend on prevention now than remediation later, because remediation always costs more.
Career pathways that already work. The Academies of Shakopee and the CAPS program are doing something real. The state's role is to fund and scale proven local models, not to replace them with a new statewide initiative.
Housing supply that local communities actually shape. Our employers cannot hire people who cannot afford to live here. I will support removing state-level obstacles to building workforce housing while leaving genuine design and density decisions with the cities and townships that live with them.
Real oversight of public money -- including when it is uncomfortable. Fraud in state programs is not a partisan talking point; it is theft from the people the program was meant to serve. I will vote for audits, inspector general authority, and clawback power regardless of which administration it embarrasses.
Five kinds of proposals I would question
Any bill whose fiscal note is missing, vague or suspiciously optimistic. "We will find the money" is not a plan. If it cannot survive an honest cost estimate, it is not ready.
Mandates on schools with no funding attached. Districts in Prior Lake, Jordan, and Shakopee are already absorbing obligations the state assigned and did not pay for. Adding another is not reform; it is cost-shifting to your property tax bill.
Anything that solves a metro problem by writing a rule for the whole state. Our four townships are not small suburbs. Statewide uniformity is often just the metro's preference applied to people who were not asked.
Sweeping preemption of local decisions, from either direction. I am suspicious of St. Paul overriding Prior Lake, and I am equally suspicious when my own side wants to do it for a cause I like. The principle has to hold when it is inconvenient.
Bills that exist to force a difficult vote rather than to become law. Everyone in politics knows what these are. They generate a mailer and change nothing. They waste a session that our district is paying for.
What "common sense" costs you
Here is the part candidates leave out: this approach will occasionally disappoint you.
If you are a DFL voter, there will be a bill you care about that I vote against because the money is not real or the mandate is unfunded. If you are a Republican voter, there will be a vote where I side with my party because their bill passed all three questions, and the alternative did not.
I would rather tell you now than have you discover it in a voting record and conclude that I was dishonest. A legislator who never disappoints anyone is not independent. They are just telling each audience what it wants.
Why is this the whole campaign?
I am a father, a small business owner, and a volunteer in this community. I am not a career politician, and I am not running because I have a big idea I need the state to adopt.
I am running because I think most of the people in District 54B — Prior Lake, Jordan, the Shakopee neighborhoods in our district, and Jackson, Louisville, Sand Creek, and Spring Lake Townships — are moderate, practical people who want the state to work and are tired of being handed a team jersey instead of an answer.
You should not have to enlist in a movement to get your roads maintained, your lake protected, and your kid prepared for a career.
Three questions.
Every bill.
Whoever wrote it.
That is what I mean by common sense, and it is what I am asking you to hold me to.
