At the end of July, we posted Unforced error with homefield advantage? Game Fair candidate debate in 2022 hinges on Walz, an article that included Outdoor News Minnesota editor Rob Drieslein's editorial, Game Fair candidate debate in 2022 hinges on Walz.
It's not just a poor country blogger or Drieslein fretting about this.
In Sunday's Star Tribune Outdoors section, columnist Dennis Anderson writes in Whether born or made, conservation leaders are sorely lacking in Minnesota:
All of which is preamble to the news of the day, that Gov. Tim Walz has declined to appear at Game Fair (due to scheduling conflicts, he says) to debate his primary gubernatorial opponent, Scott Jensen, about conservation and related issues.
Granted, if the past is prologue, the debate wouldn't make or break anyone's political career. In 2018, Walz faced off against his then-opponent for the state house, Jeff Johnson, in a Game Fair debate, and conservationists who attended were 1) unimpressed by Johnson, who seemed largely clueless about subjects discussed, and 2) hopeful that Walz's better performance would bear fruit if he were elected.
Walz was elected. But his first term has born little, if any, conservation bounty.
It's true that the land- and water-stewardship record of his predecessor, Gov. Mark Dayton, has been a tough act to follow. But even by the low conservation bar set by some previous Minnesota governors — see Ventura, Jesse — Walz has been a letdown. Not least because, most recently, he failed to line-item-veto the handful of projects that Republicans schemed into the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund appropriation, absent consent or even review by the fund's overseer, the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.
It should be obvious to Minnesota politicians, as it is to most everyone else, that the state's lands, waters and wildlife continue to be assaulted by us — everyone — as manifested most often by the grinding machinery of agriculture, development and an ever-increasing human population.
Now, we're ones for naming names, and wish Anderson had helped voters out and told readers which Republicans schemed projects into the ENTRF appropriation--and the DFLers who objected to that.
Related posts:
- Unforced error with homefield advantage? Game Fair candidate debate in 2022 hinges on Walz
- Session Daily: Environment committee approves changes to distribution of lottery sales funds, LCCMR composition
- Minnesota House passes ENRTF appropriations
- Session Daily: ENRTF appropriations OK’d despite no LCCMR recommendation
Photo: The then-candidates for governor Tim Walz (DFL) and Jeff Johnson (GOP) drew a healthy crowd to Game Fair during election season 2018, and state conservation leaders would like to hold a similar discussion with candidates for the office again in 2022.
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