Minnesota First Congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn, a Republican from Blue Earth, is notorious for provocative statements. Tim Murphy's 2014 article in Mother Jones, House Candidate Called Female Senators "Undeserving Bimbos in Tennis Shoes, cemented many voters' post-primary first impression of the candidate.
Now another writer responds to a more recent Hagedornism.
In Column: Encouraging diversity vs. angry rhetoric, Ryan McGaughey writes:
First of all, I want to point out that this is not a Daily Globe editorial; it’s a personal column.
The difference, I’d like to believe, is simple, Opinions expressed in our editorials represent the newspaper, while columns such as this are my own thoughts. And I definitely had a number of thoughts upon receiving a press release last week from Jim Hagedorn, who once again is challenging five-term incumbent Tim Walz for his 1st Congressional District seat.
In the press release — headlined “Hagedorn: Failure to call out radical Islam & protect the United States from terrorists is un-American” — the Republican candidate assails Walz for a full-page advertisement published in the Feb. 1 Star Tribune. Hagedorn included a copy of the ad, “It’d be Un-Minnesotan,” with his press release, and the difference in tone between the two is pretty remarkable, to say the least.
The editor examines the differences--read the whole column to see the contrasts--before concluding:
Yet, even though Democrats were the primary individuals sponsoring the Star Tribune ad, it seems mean-spirited to so sharply criticize a message of inclusion and tolerance. Taft, for one, told the Star Tribune that the ad “isn’t a political ad in any way. … It was a collaboration between a corporate Republican and a political Democrat that would start everyone off on a bipartisan note.”
Hagedorn, though, wasn’t biting on any intended bipartisanship: “Minnesota already has an Islamic terrorist recruiting problem stemming from east African refugees, many of whom Walz voted to bring to the U.S. Yet, when refugees living in Minnesota were arrested and convicted for conspiring to help ISIS, Tim Walz remained silent and did nothing. The ad, it should be noted, does not include any references to the above.
Perhaps Hagedorn is simply trying to fire up the sorts of people he hopes will lend him support in the coming election season. Hopefully, though, there’s a place in him for what should be an apolitical notion: “a diverse and vibrant community.” That sounds, incidentally, like Worthington — not to mention very Minnesotan.
The editor correctly identifies Worthington as a "diverse and vibrant community." In Minnesota's racial geography shifting, David Peterson reported in the Star Tribune:
Worthington is singled out in the Census Bureau report for experiencing -- after decades of gradual change -- the largest single drop in its white population, from 83 percent of its total to 67 percent. That's a drop in raw numbers of nearly 3,000 people in a decade, at a time when the overall micropolitan population grew slightly.
At the same time, the number of Hispanics more than doubled, to more than 4,800, the fifth-fastest increase by share of population among the nation's micropolitan areas and the fastest in the Upper Midwest.
Nor is it just Hispanics. Worthington has immigrants from all over the globe, said Lakeyta Potter, integration and youth development coordinator for the local school district.
Although Hispanics are most numerous, she said, "it's Ethiopian, Oromo, Eritrean, Sudanese, folks from Ghana, from Uganda, from Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand," with a Swift meatpacking plant as the main draw.
That's remarkable--and it's no mystery why the editor is draw to a very Minnesotan idea about a vibrant community.
Image: The ad, via It Would Be Un-Minnesotan (and Un-Mayo) Not to Join This Cause, a post at Rochester's Mayo Clinic's In The Loop blog, which notes:
We could go on about the kind of folks Minnesotans are, but there's a full-page ad in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper that does it better. The ad, signed by John Noseworthy, M.D., Mayo Clinic's president and CEO, and many other business and civic leaders from throughout the state, is all about Minnesota values, tolerance and understanding, and supporting diversity to create a vibrant community. You might say it's about being Minnesotan.
Worthington is in the western part of the district; Rochester in the eastern part of Minnesota's First. McGaughey and Noseworthy have a point about the peaceable community.
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