8 minute read
INTERVIEWS WITH MINNESOTA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES
EDITOR’S NOTE: MetroDoctors extended an invitation to all three Gubernatorial candidates to participate in a brief questionnaire relating to their positions on six health-related topics. Dr. Scott Jensen did not respond to the invitation. The responses from Hugh McTavish, PhD, and Governor Tim Walz are printed verbatim below.
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Gubernatorial Candidate Hugh McTavish, PhD
Aside from mental health strategies or adding more policing interventions, what is at least one other proposal for reducing gun violence? I have a simple proposal. Allow police chiefs to fire bad cops. Currently, state law requires that all discipline or firing of police officers must go through arbitration, and both of my opponents support keeping it that way. Arbitrators usually decrease any discipline and usually reverse dismissals. My position is to simply make police officers at-will employees and give police chiefs absolute authority to fire and discipline officers as they see fit. I would also give mayors and city councils authority to fire officers. This will get rid of the bad cops. The culture of silence about misconduct will change. Pretty soon you have very few bad cops. Police killings and abuse of civilians will decrease drastically, and the remaining good cops will be better at fighting crime, so crime will decrease. Also, community relations will be improved, so the public cooperates with the police and crime is reduced.
How will you address the racial inequities that exist in health care, education, and housing that are affecting the overall health of too many Minnesotans? Frankly, I do not have any brilliant ideas. But the core proposal of my campaign is Jury Democracy, where we would have large, statistically valid juries of 500+ randomly selected voters come to the capitol, hear arguments for and against a particular bill or proposal, deliberate on it, and then vote on that one bill or proposal. I would allow every legislator as well as interest groups and the public to introduce bills to the juries. So we would have some very innovative ideas to address these and other problems and actually give those ideas a hearing where the public would be the judge of them. What strategies will you use to promote opioid harm reduction? First, I would never have instated COVID lockdowns, because we should have known, and I did know and wrote about it, that this would result in an explosion of clinical depression (went from 8% to 27% of the population in depression) and corresponding explosion in drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and drug
and alcohol deaths, which has also happened. Beyond that, I would welcome proposals to the Jury Democracy juries.
What will you do to mitigate the burden of COVID-19 in a post-pandemic Minnesota? I am a PhD biochemist. I have extensively researched COVID and all aspects of the lockdowns. The current strains of COVID are 36-fold less deadly than the original strains, which were themselves only 1.7 times deadlier than the flu (if you did not have a vaccine against either disease). So the response to COVID at this point should be the same as the response to the common cold. Ignore it. Tell people this is over. Stop being worried or afraid of it. Go back to your lives. The lockdown response to COVID was one of the worst public policy disasters in history. All data indicates it had no effect at all on COVID cases or deaths but threw one in five of us into major clinical depression and killed far more people than it saved due to increased suicides, murders, drug and alcohol deaths, cancer, and other medical deaths.
What steps will you take to promote environmental health? I want to rewild Minnesota. I will propose to convert half our land back to nature over a 50-year period and have abundant prairies, abundant wildlife of all sorts, and have buffalo and wolves running wild across most of the state. I also will enforce pollution laws and expand parks and green spaces in inner cities as well as suburbs.
If Roe v Wade is overturned, Minnesota will become an island. How will you address abortion access and decision-making between a physician and patient? And what is your plan for interaction with bordering state agencies and the citizens of those states? By Jury Democracy we can enact abortion rights into statute and be done with abortion as an issue in Minnesota. I would amend the state constitution to require that every bill to become law must pass a citizen jury, and I would introduce bills to citizen juries and after they pass the jury demand that the legislature hold a vote on that bill. A bill that codified abortion rights at least in the first trimester would easily pass a jury and once it was enacted into law, it would never be repealed because the repeal could never pass a jury. We would be done with abortion as a contentious issue and have abortion rights guaranteed by statute.
Gubernatorial Candidate Governor Tim Walz
Aside from mental health strategies or adding more policing interventions, what is at least one other proposal for reducing gun violence? We must do more to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them by requiring background checks on every gun sale, passing Extreme Risk Protection Orders (“red flag” laws), bar domestic abusers from having guns while subject to short-term emergency orders, and prohibit guns in bars in Minnesota.
How will you address the racial inequities that exist in health care, education, and housing that are affecting the overall health of too many Minnesotans? As a former teacher, I believe every student deserves a quality education no matter their zip code. We’ve invested millions to hire more teachers of color; expanded college readiness programs for BIPOC students; and created Direct Admissions Minnesota to boost access to students of color. But we can do more. I’m fighting to fully fund our schools and better equip our teachers so every student has the opportunity to succeed. I’m also fighting to put homeownership within reach for more Minnesotans
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Gubernatorial Candidate Gov. Tim Walz (Continued from page 11)
of color through enhanced funding for our down payment and closing cost assistance programs. And in an effort to combat environmental racism, we’ve added Medical Assistance coverage for enhanced asthma services for children and my Administration has made free lead test kits available to schools and childcare programs. We’ve also instituted new trainings to reduce racial disparities in maternity care for obstetric care and birth centers. What strategies will you use to promote opioid harm reduction? While campaigning for governor in 2018, I promised to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for its role in the opioid crisis. I kept my promise, signing into law a landmark, bipartisan bill that increased fees on drug companies to fund the first ever separate state fund dedicated to the treatment of opioid addiction. My latest budget also improved access to care, providing additional funding for mobile mental health crisis response teams throughout the state and established a Medical Assistance benefit to pay for assessments to help individuals access substance use disorder treatment more quickly. Earlier this year, I appointed a new addiction and recovery director to lead our recently launched interagency subcabinet and advisory council on opioids, substance use, and addiction. These efforts help build on the work we’re already doing to craft innovative solutions aimed at fighting addiction and saving lives in Minnesota. What will you do to mitigate the burden of COVID-19 in a post-pandemic Minnesota? The best thing Minnesotans can do to protect themselves and their families is to get vaccinated and boosted. I am proud we are one of the first states to partner with the federal government to offer
more test-to-treat sites, where high-risk patients who test positive can receive a prescription for the antiviral medication Paxlovid at the same time for no cost. We’ve also exceeded our goal of recruiting 1,000 certified nursing students, Fall 2022 making the state better prepared for future strains on the healthcare system. What steps will you take to promote environmental health? Climate change is an urgent and existential threat to the things we love about MetroMetroDoctorsDoctors living in Minnesota. That’s why I have taken urgent action to tackle climate THE JOURNAL OF THE TWIN CITIES MEDICAL SOCIET Y change and move Minnesota into the clean energy economy. I’m pushing for 100% of Minnesota’s electricity to come from renewable energy by the year 2040. My new environmental initiative will bring more fuel-efficient cars to Minnesota and require Minnesota car dealers to offer consumers more choices of electric vehicles. These measures will help Minnesota combat climate change while increasing options and retaining consumers’ ability to choose what they drive.
If Roe v Wade is overturned, Minnesota will become an island. How will you address abortion access and decision-making between a physician and patient? And what is your plan for interaction with bordering state agencies and the citizens of those states? Minnesotans deserve to decide for themselves when to make the most important decision of their lives—whether or not to become a parent. Reproductive freedom is a right under Minnesota law and I am wholly committed to protecting that. I recently signed an Executive Order stating I will use all legal authority of this office to decline to extradite people Your VOTE who are charged under other states’ laws that criminalize providing, seeking, or obtaining reproductive healthcare services. And of course, if an abortion ban Impacts is sent to my desk, I will veto it. our Health
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