(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Welcome to Meet the Candidates, the local election forum from Pioneer PBS.

This season, we ask every candidate the same list of questions to learn more about what type of legislator they will be, if elected.

In this episode, we will meet candidates from Minnesota House District 16B.

District lines have changed since the 2020 census.

District 16B is made up of most of Kandiyohi County.

Major cities include Willmar, Spicer and New London.

To find out which district you live in, visit MNVotes.org.

And now, let's meet the candidates.

We will start with the DFL candidate, Josiah Ampian.

- Hi, my name's Josiah Ampian.

I'm running for House of Reps here in 16B in Minnesota.

I was born, raised in Willmar, and then after that I did a year of college over there at Ridgewater.

Did some PSEO in high school as well.

And then, after that I went out to experience bigger and better things in the United States.

Worked for the Air Force for six years.

And then, I came back here in 2022.

So I just wanna say it's personally really, really a pleasure of mine and really a good ask to be a representative and represent the people that helped me grow in the way that I could.

And I think that 16B is a really good district in that we have a lot of ways that we can help each other and keep the great community that we have going.

- [Announcer] Why do you want to be the representative for your district?

- Yeah, so I wanna be a representative because I believe that I can represent you properly.

I believe in a two-way communication for representing people, even if there's something that I don't necessarily personally believe in.

It's about you, my constituents, and talking to you, and getting your ideas and your thoughts and your pain points of what's happening in the community.

So really big emphasis for me is that kind of duty, the same duty that I had for the United States while I was in the Air Force is the same duty that I would put towards my constituents of what do you need from me?

And then, how can I help you get there?

Is it something that is in my jurisdiction in representing you or is it something locally, community even, or other resources?

So that's kind of where I bear that in mind is I feel like I can do a good job for my constituents and it would be my pleasure to do that.

- [Announcer] What are your priorities for the next legislative session?

- Yeah, so the biggest thing that I have seen a lot is housing, housing is a really big issue for both our young up and comer generation and our elderly population as they're growing older.

So we have a lot of problems with that.

I think that would be my key, main point.

My second point that I have been kind of talking about a lot is farming.

We have a lot of agriculture around 16B, and, you know, we have a lot of food manufacturing plants are a lot of our biggest businesses around the area.

And even a lot of our smaller businesses, we can't forget that farmers are small businesses themselves.

And we have a lot of small businesses like bakeries and stuff around 16B that really help the community.

I think small businesses in 16B really strengthen the community for us so...

So those would be kind of my overarching priorities.

But I do wanna draw back as well that my main goal is to be representing for my constituents.

So if I hear people saying that they need things, if I hear them saying, "Hey, this just isn't working right "in my community, what can we do about this?

"We have this problem, how can we do something about this?"

I'd love to be in the conversations for that and provide resources and solutions and ideas so... Or just a listening ear if people need it so... - [Announcer] What unique perspective do you bring to the Minnesota House?

- Yeah, so I think, you know, I think my unique perspective comes from a conglomeration of what I've done in my past.

So I was born and raised in Willmar, as I said, but I was raised by a single mother of four.

We had a lot of struggles, a lot of moving around, but we also had a lot of grace given to us by the community and a lot of conversations and people around us, and family, friends that kind of really broadened my knowledge of, hey, it's not just, you know, these people or those people, you know.

I feel like the community was very diverse and very involved with each other.

And I think that that kind of understanding and that kind of diversification really helped build my knowledge.

And then going into the Air Force, even then it was, hey, how can you take that diversity of opinion?

How can you take these communities or these people together and build that?

My last two years of in the Air Force, were managing people.

And I would say that that kind of experience in that leadership position really helped me look at, hey, how do you look at a community?

How do you look at strategic goals going forward?

And not just be thinking about what we can do, but thinking about what we should do?

What's the future and how does that look getting here to there and how do we strategize the best way for that to happen to make sure that we're doing the right things in places that we need to be?

And I will say the other piece to that is, I would say that a lot of my background is more in a lot of faith communities has built kind of more of a little bit of grace to give people.

I'm not going to just, you know, shut people out or not talk to them just 'cause they have a different opinion.

I feel like I can bring to the table a lot of understanding and a lot of willingness to be there just to listen to people if they need it or to hear other ideas that I don't necessarily like so... - [Announcer] What is your vision for the future of Minnesota?

- Ah, I would love for the future of Minnesota to be one where people can work and thrive.

Go home and own their own place, or have enough money in their bank account to not have to worry about the next day.

I would like it to be a place where everyone feels involved and empowered to do things that they're passionate about and to reach for those things and for them to have those things be something that's driven and good for your community, you know?

I think, you know, not everybody always does the job that they're passionate about.

Not everyone always does the thing that gives them most passion, but I would like for a community and a Minnesota where we're doing the right things in the right places to get where we need to go, but still having the passion and still having those kind of side hobbies and things that we do to enjoy life.

We shouldn't just be working, and working, and working and working.

We should be striving for things that we're passionate about.

We should be involved in things that we're passionate about and we should be able to provide back to our communities and be happy about that.

I think that we should build communities that are willing, and able and love to help each other.

That would be the best case scenario, in my opinion.

- [Announcer] And now, a closing statement.

- Yep, I don't have too much to say on a closing statement.

I like to leave a lot for talking to people.

I think that's the main point about my campaign is, hey, I want to be someone who listens.

I've said it many times in a lot of these questions.

So my main thing would be to say, if you heard something that you didn't like, then tell me about it.

If you heard something that you did like, then contact me about it because I'm here for you and I wanna know what you want me to know, and I wanna know where your opinions lie.

I think that's the biggest takeaway of anything from my campaign or if I'm elected, is communication and having that two-way conversation, having that community feedback and being able to represent that properly and provide good solutions so thank you.

- [Announcer] You can find more information online about Josiah at his website, ampian4mnhouse.com.

Next, the Republican candidate, Dave Baker.

(gentle music) - Well, hello everybody, my name is Dave Baker.

I am a proud husband and father and now grandpa and live in the beautiful area of Kandiyohi County.

Been married to my wife, Mary, for 39 years.

Had our first grandson here almost two years ago.

And just love what the area has given to me and my family.

We've lived in the area for over 30 years and have really enjoyed this area and I've been so honored to be a state representative here in most of Kandiyohi County for the last 10 years, running for my sixth term.

I hope I can go back and earn your trust to be able to try to bring some common sense to Minnesota, which I think has been neglected here in the last few years.

I've been a hard worker on the workforce area.

I'm a small business guy with my wife.

We run a couple businesses in the Willmar, Spicer, New London area and I'm really proud to be an employer that has worked hard to work alongside my employees and respect them and know that they are so important to me and my success.

So part of that workforce, I've been the lead, the ranking GOP member in the House workforce the last couple of years.

I'm also on health and human services committees and also the last several years I've been the assistant minority leader along with our executive committee to kind of give ourselves some help, leadership, controlling and kind of communicating our messaging and stuff to our other folks.

But honored to be there, hope I can go back and I look forward to sharing more stories and more connections with our local voters here, as this election nears.

- [Announcer] Why do you want to be the representative for your district?

- You know, again, living and bringing up my children in the Kandiyohi County area has been a real blessing, we are rich with industry.

We have commercial and agricultural businesses, we have retail, we have hospitality, areas with lots of beautiful lakes and fishing, and recreational things going on.

And again, our education system is second to none.

I'm really proud of the area that we're in.

For me to get to go to St. Paul again and to represent Kandiyohi County in that seat on the Minnesota House floor is a big deal to me.

I've been there for 10 years, as I mentioned earlier.

I still have a tremendous amount of desire to go back and keep working hard.

I feel like I've got a mission.

My health allows me to do this.

My businesses are letting me allow this, and my wife has said, "Let's do this again."

And so I'm grateful for all of that.

I think the one thing that again makes me feel like I'm the best one today is I've got a lot of experience and I know how to get to the right people quicker so that when we pass bills, when we pass bonding bills, those are important things to bring to our area.

And that's why I think Kandiyohi County would be better if I were to be their representative again, to continue this work in this stretch here.

So again, we brought a lot of things to our area and I'm happy to continue to work that way in St. Paul coming up so looking forward to another years, if you'll have me.

- [Announcer] What are your priorities for the next legislative session?

- You know, my priorities for the next session is to get back in the majority.

If I'm lucky enough to win, I certainly hope that a few more of my members that represent common sense and better balance and more fiscal constraint are gonna be part of our team so that we can actually have the majority in the Minnesota House.

We work better in Minnesota when we work bipartisanlly.

In the last two years, that did not happen under the Governor Walz's runaway train.

They brought everything through, they signed everything, all the DFL members got right in line.

And that is not healthy and that's not good for business.

It's not good for seniors, it's not good for anybody when one party is in complete control.

So my priorities are bringing back what I consider common sense.

When you have to agree and you compromise and you find the best way to spend the dollars that are needed to be getting into our education system.

Our K12 education in the last two years was given a lot of money, but it was also given a ton of mandates, forced and unfunded mandates, you know in ongoing years, they don't know how they're gonna pay for in the next four years or more.

So we've got to make sure that the spending that we do is gonna be controlled, it's gonna be monitored, but we've got to find ways of getting our bonding bills done, I'm a bonding bill fan.

We've gotta do these infrastructure projects around Minnesota, but when they spent all of the money last year, $17 billion in the last session, they raised taxes and fees for the next three, four years, another $10 billion.

Folks, we can't sustain that kind of spending when you'll increase spending by 40% over one budget cycle, that's not doable.

So I wanna make sure that we get back to the basics and the core functions of government: public safety, education, roads and bridges, healthcare.

Those are the things we need to focus on.

Not expanding adult recreational marijuana, not having all these other things.

So we gotta get to the core business of this stuff.

- [Announcer] What unique perspective do you bring to the Minnesota House?

- Again, I think my perspective is I'm a small business guy.

I know what it's like to sign the front of a paycheck.

And I also know how important it's to take care of my employees when they need me, I pay them well.

And that's the theme I think that the State of Minnesota needs to do better as well.

What I can bring there is a balance to how do we get the bad players, in either businesses or areas where people are cutting corners and cheating the government out of what they should be paying.

And making sure that we get the rules that we have in place enforced.

There's been a lot of fraud and abuse in the last couple of years with the Department of Education, with their Feed Our Future fraud.

There's been dollars lately with mental health and substance use disorder when it comes to independent contractors and the work that our substance use peer recovery specialists are being paid and how they're getting paid.

We've got some companies out there that are not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

We've gotta find those, get 'em under control and explore and execute the rules that are in place so those don't happen to other people.

We can't afford to waste a single dollar of Minnesota taxpayers' money.

It's too hard to get right now.

So the other thing I want to do is the uniqueness of working here in St. Paul for the last 10 years is government has a big part of why inflation is where it is at.

When you add mandates and rules on things like energy and your electric bills, that adds fees onto your bills.

If we don't start looking at those things and what the responsibility has been for the government, that's what's causing so many people to be hurting financially.

So we need to do a better job in getting that back down under control, we will do a better job.

And again, I hope that that's my unique perspective is that we can do it better when we do it together and we compromise, but we just can't have one side running it all.

- [Announcer] What is your vision for the future of Minnesota?

- You know, my vision is to just, as I've been been saying, let's get focused, let's get serious about running Minnesota the way it knows how to run.

There are some really extreme things that happened the last couple of years.

Abortion in the late term stages of a term is out of hand.

I don't understand that, I don't why it was done that way.

I don't agree with that.

I don't agree with adult use marijuana and even if it's now here, why are cities forced to have dispensaries in their communities, even if they don't want them?

I don't understand...

I understand why they did it, why they're trying to do it.

But it's the wrong thing to do when communities in greater Minnesota don't wanna do that.

So what I wanna do is make sure that we get back to the core of what Minnesota needs to do.

Next Friday, we've got the Highway 23 four lane opening up between... kind of the final gaps are all finished between Willmar and St.

Cloud, that's a big deal.

I'm proud to be part of what we did there.

The state-of-the-art poultry lab that we did a couple years ago.

The children's mental hospital that I fought toe to toe with Governor Dayton back in the day to say, we cannot shut this down, we fought and we won that.

So my focus this coming year is to make sure we do it better, we do it right and we start this balancing back in Minnesota.

So we're not pushing people out the door because of all the business mandates that are being now forced on so many small businesses.

They don't have the ability to have a big HR department.

They don't have the ability to do what the big Targets and the Walmarts want to do.

They just want work on a engine motor.

They wanna farm in a small farm.

They don't have these HR things.

We're pushing people out business.

And this is what is our core economic engine.

So I'm gonna work hard on to make sure that we bring Minnesota back as a purple, back as a balanced state so we can do things in the Upper Midwest like people expect us to do and not be this runaway California state in the Upper Midwest.

- [Announcer] And now, a closing statement.

- Well, again, I want to thank Pioneer Public TV for doing this event so that we can tell you why we wanna do what we want to do, who we are.

Why do I want to go back?

I will tell you, I still have a lot of fire in my belly to want to keep doing this job.

I am all in right now, in this next election cycle here that we're in right now, to win the majority.

I'm helping others that want to join my vision and our vision to get this thing on a much better track.

We can do better here in Minnesota.

I am not pleased with how so much money was spent, the whole savings account, $17 billion was spent and they still raised taxes, we didn't need to do that.

And we could have put some real dollars in areas like nursing homes and the reimbursements for workers that are trying to keep the nursing homes open that have still been struggling to get that reimbursements where they should be.

We still have more to do with bonding.

We still have more to do with K12 and just healthcare generally, should be a real heads up for us in rural Minnesota, we've got a lot more to do.

But I stand ready to help and I think that the folks with the DFL totally changed my opinion about how they run things when they had the whole trifecta.

They got their members in line, you're gonna spend money, the taxes are gonna go up if the DFL is still in charge.

We need to be able to balance this thing out.

My name is Dave Baker, I'm a state rep for the last few years, I'd love to go back again and represent most of Kandiyohi County, an area that I am so proud to work in, live in.

And while I got this burning desire to do this and my family allows me to do this and my businesses are doing okay, so that I can step away for a little bit, I'd love to ask for your vote again to allow me to go back and serve you on January 14th in 2025 and work my tail off again, like I've always done.

So thank you again for listening.

I look forward to your vote.

- [Announcer] You can find more information online about Dave Baker at his website, davebaker.gop.

(gentle music) Learn more about voting, how to register and what district you live in by visiting the Minnesota Secretary of State website at MNVotes.org.

Remember, election day is Tuesday, November 5th.

Thank you for watching Meet the Candidates on Pioneer PBS.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)