In The Freshman Class, profiles of Minnesota's freshman U.S. Representatives, Mn Law & Politics covers Southern Minnesota's first-term congressman in Walz at Attention (scroll down to the final section).
Our favorite passages in the Walz portrait:
. . .On the Veterans Affairs Committee, he says, "I think I went [to Congress] with a very strong voice" on behalf of the 52,514 veterans in his 1st District. Walz, a retired, 24-year member of the National Guard and Command Sergeant Major, is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress. He had a hand in securing nearly $12 billion in increases in health care and benefits for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and other related costs. "It's one of the areas where I think we did show people that we can get things done," he says.
On the House Agriculture Committee, he worked with Doug Peterson, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, and Kevin Paap, president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, on what Paap says was a good House-passed farm bill. Walz, a former Mankato West High School geography teacher and football coach, "knows how to talk to people," Paap says, "not in the inside-D.C. lingo, but from his experience in teaching." . . .
This is a huge district, stretching 280 miles across southern Minnesota; it includes all or parts of 22 of Minnesota's 87 counties, Rochester, Winona, Albert Lea, Mankato and Worthington. Walz holds veterans forums, Saturday stops at grocery stores, economic and education summits where he brings together community and business leaders, similar to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone's grass-roots politics style. His chief of staff, Josh Syrjamaki, was veterans issues aide to Wellstone. Once a month he's on former congressman Tim Penny's KOWZ-AM radio show, "It's Your Call."
Walz lists as mentors Penny, Republican Jim Ramstad and Democrat Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Democrats Chet Edwards of Texas and David Obey of Wisconsin, and former Republican governor Al Quie. "He seems to me to be an ‘old shoe' [comfortable] kind of guy," Quie says. . . .
The piece concludes with Republican attempts to paint him as a second Nancy Pelosi. On the latter, the article concludes:
The National Journal, in contrast, lists Walz as a centrist with a conservative-voting score of 35.7 and a liberal-voting score of 64.3.
It's been a tumultuous, hard-working first term for Walz, who remains sunny about the future. "We have made a difference. People are starting once again to believe in their government."
The most special moment in the article, though comes in the Bachmann portrait. Her BFFs in Congress?
She calls Democrat Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, and fellow freshman Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, very good friends.
Dennis Kucinich and Michele Bachmann? Our late (and very conservative) father would call that a pair to draw to.
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