Kobey's Story

Finding and Re-Finding Myself

Being the change you want to see

I was raised in Walker, Minnesota, in a fiscally conservative, socially liberal family and a rural community where many people distrusted government. I grew up believing in local control, personal freedom, responsible spending, and taking care of your neighbors. For a long time, I thought those values belonged in Republican politics.

Before I thought about running for office, I wanted to study mushrooms. In high school, I dreamed of becoming a mycologist and being the first person to commercialize morel mushrooms. But in the summer of 2017, the City of Walker planned road construction that would have cut off access to the business and farmers market where I worked, right during the summer season our town depended on. We organized a petition, fought back, and won. That experience set my soul on fire. I saw what happens when everyday people stand together and demand to be heard.

That is what pushed me toward public service. I studied politics and policy at Hamline University, then earned my master’s degree in public policy. I learned how to analyze problems with discipline, evidence, and humility. I also learned how much I had not been taught. I did not learn about redlining, racial covenants, or many of the systems that shape people’s lives until college. Since then, I have tried to keep listening, especially to people whose lived experiences are not my own.

I own that I used to work with and vote for Republicans. I also know why many working people still do. Many of us were taught that conservative politics meant community, freedom, and fairness. But over time, I had to be honest about what the party had become, and what it had long been at the state and national level.

After college, while working at the Minnesota Senate for Senator Jim Abeler, then chair of the Human Services Reform Committee, I saw how complex state government is and how deeply people depend on it. I learned more about disability services, DHS, group homes, nursing homes, and the real consequences of underfunded systems. I also learned that sometimes responsible government means spending the money needed to keep people safe, housed, cared for, and alive.

My own gender journey deepened that understanding. As I transitioned into the woman I am today, I saw more clearly how society is often organized to benefit powerful people and punish everyone else for not fitting the mold. Too often, people in positions of power cause harm to regular folks, especially people targeted because of their skin color, income, disability, gender, immigration status, or where they come from. Marginalized communities, including the trans community I became part of, helped me understand that people being harmed by the way society is organized do not have the luxury of pretending the system is neutral.

In my journey to becoming a Democrat, I did not leave my values behind. I followed them somewhere more honest. When federal enforcement swept through our communities, I watched neighbors miss paychecks and families live in fear, and I came to believe a responsible state should never lend its hands to that harm. I entered this race because the urgency called for it. Now is not the time to be silent while our neighbors are afraid.

Why I'm Running

That fight in Walker taught me something I have never forgotten. When everyday people stand together and demand to be heard, they can win. I am running for governor because too many Minnesotans have stopped believing that is true, and I do not blame them. As a working person, I understand that rent climbs faster than your paycheck. Groceries cost more every month. Care for a child, a parent, or yourself is hard to find and harder to afford. None of that is just how things are. It does not have to be this way. It is a set of choices, and a governor makes choices.

I lead with three fights.

Lower what you pay. We build more homes and put a speed limit on rent increases so it stops outrunning your paycheck. We bring child care down near seven percent of what a family earns, the level the federal government calls affordable. And we keep every rural hospital and ambulance running, because a town without an emergency room is not a town for long.

Make this office answer to you. On day one I sign an ethics order. No insider stock trading by me or the people I appoint, every conflict of interest posted in public, government open by default. I put a public dashboard online where every wait time has a name attached and a deadline to fix it. And I point the fraud watchdog up at the powerful who steal wages and rig contracts, never down at a family that needs help.

Protect your land, water, and freedom. I guard the rights we already won, from abortion to the Trans Refuge law that protects transgender Minnesotans and their families. Minnesota's hands do Minnesota's work, so I keep our state troopers on Minnesota's job, not Washington's deportation work, and I stand up for due process for everyone here, to the full extent state law allows. And I get clean, safe water to every tap, from the nitrates in farm-country wells to the mining that threatens the Boundary Waters.

I learned what underfunded care does to real people when I worked on human services at the Capitol, and I learned that sometimes the responsible thing is to spend what it takes to keep people safe, housed, and alive. So I will not make you a promise I cannot keep, and I will not take credit for work already done. Every promise I make comes with the power that delivers it and the math that pays for it, written down in my First 100 Days for anyone to check. A law no one enforces is just a press release.

I do not care who gets the credit. I care whether your life gets better. One of us will carry this party into November, and whoever it is, I will work to elect them, because beating the people making your life harder matters more than my name on the ballot. Minnesota should work for ordinary people, not just those with wealth and connections. That is the whole reason I am in this race.