Why This Race Matters

Minnesota is being tested.

Families are paying more for rent, groceries, child care, utilities, health care, and the basic costs of staying alive. Rural communities are fighting to keep hospitals, ambulances, nursing homes, and child care providers open. Families in farm country are testing their wells because clean water is not guaranteed. Too many people wait too long for help from state systems that are supposed to serve them.

At the same time, the federal government is becoming more dangerous to the people Minnesota is supposed to protect.

Operation Metro Surge showed what happens when federal power comes into our communities without accountability. Workers missed paychecks. Families missed appointments. Small businesses lost customers. Immigrant communities were forced to live with fear. Child care centers saw families disappear from classrooms because parents were afraid to leave home. That is not public safety. That is disruption, fear, and harm.

And it is not over.

Federal fights over Medicaid and SNAP show that food, health care, and basic support can be threatened from Washington. The Trump administration has put billions more behind immigration enforcement. Minnesota cannot assume that federal power will be fair, lawful, or humane. We need a governor who knows how to draw a clear line: Minnesota’s hands do Minnesota’s work.

This race also matters because trust in state government has been damaged.

**Fraud is real. Waste is real. Corruption is real. **But the answer cannot be using fraud as an excuse to punish poor families, immigrants, disabled people, or anyone who needs supports and services. The answer is clean government with real enforcement: publicly posted conflicts of interest, protected whistleblowers, strong oversight of contracts and grants, and a fraud watchdog pointed up at the powerful who steal wages, rig contracts, and abuse public dollars.

Minnesotans deserve accountability without scapegoating.

This race matters because the next governor will decide whether government keeps managing decline politely or starts using the power it already has.

A governor can set enforcement priorities. A governor can appoint the regulators who help decide your utility bills. A governor can publish wait times, backlogs, vacancies, and deadlines. A governor can defend existing rights with the veto pen. A governor can send a budget to the Legislature that says clearly who pays, who benefits, and what gets done.

Kobey Layne is running because vague promises are not enough anymore.

A promise with no deadline is just a slogan. A law no one enforces is just a press release. A plan with no public way to check it asks voters to trust people who have already asked them to wait too long.

Kobey leads with three fights.

First, lower what you pay. Minnesota needs more homes, rent that stops outrunning paychecks, child care families can afford, lower prescription drug costs, rural hospitals and ambulances that stay open, and utility regulators who answer to ratepayers instead of shareholders.

Second, make this office answer to you. Kobey will sign a Day One ethics order, ban insider stock trading by herself and the people she appoints, post conflicts of interest in public, protect whistleblowers, and put wait times and backlogs on a public dashboard with names, deadlines, and reasons when work falls behind.

**Third, protect your land, water, and freedom. **Kobey will defend the Boundary Waters and clean drinking water because no family should be afraid of the water from their own tap.

She will also defend abortion rights, the Trans Refuge law, and our immigrant communities- because our neighbors should be safe.

This is an open race. Minnesota is choosing what comes next.

We can choose a governor who asks voters to trust another set of speeches. Or we can choose a governor who tells the truth about what the office can do, uses that power openly, and lets the public check the work.

Kobey will not promise what she cannot deliver. She will say what can be done on Day One, what can be done in the first month, what needs the Legislature, and how the public can measure whether it happened.

That is why this race matters.

Minnesota needs a governor who can protect people from federal overreach, clean up government without cruelty, lower the costs families feel every month, and put power back where it belongs: with the people.

Be the change- Lower costs. Clean government. Land, water, freedom. Check my work.