(KNSI) – East Gull Lake Sen. Paul Gazelka visited St. Cloud Wednesday afternoon after announcing that he’s running for governor earlier that day in St. Paul.
Gazelka made an appearance at a barbeque and open house for Coil’s Flags and Flagpoles’ new location at 2803 Clearwater Road.
“We always knew we wanted to do it at the State Capitol,” Gazelka said of his campaign announcement. “We just really wanted to make the case there that if you’re going to change the state, let’s start right in the middle there. But, our plan was then to go to St. Cloud and then up to Brainerd. We changed the final route, but we thought we’ll just keep going here at St. Cloud — we do have a lot of friends and people that came out early and encouraged us to run.”
Gazelka joins eight other Republican candidates, plus independent James McCaskel, vying to unseat DFL Gov. Tim Walz, who hasn’t yet formally announced a re-electon bid.
“I don’t know that he did as well as he would have liked,” Gazelka said of Walz. When Gazelka announced his candidacy at the Minnesota Capitol, he criticized Walz’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on in-person schooling and business operations and the governor’s actions following George Floyd’s death and the following unrest in Minneapolis.
“As a result of those decisions, I believe he’s vulnerable,” Gazelka continued. “I believe people want a leader that makes better decisions and heads us in the right direction.”
Others bidding for the governorship include Sen. Michelle Benson of Ham Lake and former state senator Dr. Scott Jensen. Gazelka pointed to his five-year tenure as Senate Majority Leader (a post he resigned from last week) as one thing that sets him apart from other candidates.
“I’ve been the person going head-to-head against two Democrat governors, and then look at what were the results of that,” he said. “Each of the three two-year budgets, they wanted massive tax increases. … All three of those budgets instead we had tax decreases, and so I’ve already proven that I know how to lead and that I can move the Republican agenda.”
Issues like police reform, public health and education have been at the forefront of Minnesota’s political conversations over the past year and a half, and those topics are poised to be big talking points for 2022’s statewide elections. However, environmental issues have made news across the state this year, with multiple wildfires burning in northern Minnesota, a harsh summer drought and protests against the construction of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 replacement oil pipeline.
“It’s more clean energy as our agenda,” Gazelka said when asked about his climate change priorities. “What we’re focused on is clean energy that’s reliable and affordable, and it has to be those three; it’s not just clean energy. People who wanted to stop the Line 3 pipeline, frankly that was not a very smart thing to do if you’re trying to take care of the climate. There was a 60-year-old pipe that we had and we wanted to replace it with a new one. … But why would you not, for the sake of the environment, have the clean, brand new pipe [with] more new technology to make sure that we don’t have any problems.
“We’re going to look at things through that lens: clean, but also reliable and affordable,” Gazelka continued.
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