I grew up in a family with lots of love, but also plenty of hardship. Raised by a single mother in a mobile home park, I watched her strive to complete her teaching degree and raise three kids. My grandmother helped at home and worked in a union shoe factory to contribute. At times, our family didn’t have health insurance, and I watched as my mom struggled to pay the bills that piled up on our kitchen table after my little sister needed hospital care.
Like my mom, I worked two jobs to put myself through state college, with help from student loans. After graduation, I became a newspaper reporter, and then rose over 15 years to eventually lead a workforce of 16,000 employees as head of Global Human Resources for a major Minnesota manufacturer. Today, I’m a mom to four amazing young men – three in college and one in high school.
I was lucky. It’s clear to me that most Americans’ hard work isn’t paying off like it used to. College is no longer affordable and skills training is not a high enough priority. Healthcare costs too much. Incomes aren’t growing fast enough to keep up with the cost of groceries and prescription drug costs.
That’s why I’m running for Congress. Because the opportunities that I was lucky enough to have are disappearing for too many families. And most politicians seem content to sit back and do nothing but continue to help the rich get richer and fight among themselves. It’s a broken political system that works for the special interests, not us. I’m not seeking a career in politics. I’m asking to serve my community by fighting for good public policy – that actually puts people first, for a change.
I’m running for Congress to build a Minnesota for all of us – where every member of every family gets a fair shot at an outstanding education, the career training or retraining for a good job, and a better life. I’m running because I’ve spent over 20 years working in healthcare and have the experience to contribute meaningfully to immediately fixing what’s wrong with healthcare today, lower the cost, and work to expand healthcare to every family.
I will fight for the education, healthcare, job training, and infrastructure investments that will support thousands of new jobs. I’ll support businesses that hire Americans; and work to close loopholes for those that do not. I’ll support policies that reward people for their hard work, including and especially family farmers and small business owners. I will fight for campaign finance reform, the right to organize and collectively bargain, reproductive rights, equal pay and a living wage. I’ll fight to address climate change, immigration reform and work to bring bipartisan solutions back. I’ll work with anyone to make things better for Minnesotans and stand against anyone who’s trying to hurt us.
You’ll find more about what I believe in on the issues page.
I’m proud of my family. My wife Cheryl and I have four boys. I’ve been a soccer mom, a baseball mom, a football mom, a band mom, and more. I’ve also been a working mother and had to fight to be a mother.
We chose Minnesota as our home because as Minnesotans we uniquely understand the importance of family, community, and caring for each other. I live in Eagan, attend church in Apple Valley, and our youngest is in high school in Rosemount. I’m a Rotarian and serve on the Inver Hills Community College Foundation Board.
This is my community.
I will never give up on the Minnesota that together we can create. I humbly ask for your vote this November to represent you in Congress in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District.
Issues
I’m running for Congress to build a Minnesota for all of us – where every member of every family is rewarded for their hard work with an outstanding education, the training or retraining for a good job, and a fair shot at a better life. I’ll never give up on the Minnesota and the America that we can create together.
Growing our Economy and Creating Jobs for Today and the Future
The economic recovery has not touched all families. For many, paychecks aren’t going up, while the cost of groceries, prescription drugs, education, and other household expenses continue to rise. We need leaders in Washington that will invest in and do more to create the right jobs, with better pay and make sure Americans have the tools to succeed in a 21st Century economy.
I’m ready to do just that. Over the past decade, I have worked to create good-paying jobs in Minnesota, with responsibility for a workforce of 16,000 employees at a major Minnesota manufacturing company.
It’s a mix of 21st century manufacturing and technical jobs, and small business entrepreneurship that we must continue to work to create in Minnesota. That means prioritizing investments in education and career skills, and reforming a system that too often benefits special interests, big corporations, and the wealthy.
To help the economy grow and families prosper, we must focus on supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship, invest in America, and invest in Americans.
Supporting small business growth and entrepreneurship
Washington should be in the business of rewarding entrepreneurship by making it easier for people to start and grow small businesses. In fact, I’m now an investor in a St. Paul start-up company called Structural.
Here’s what we can do from a policy point of view to help small businesses grow:
- Make it easier to access capital and loans
- Increase small businesses’ access to technical resources and technology
- Simplify regulations and taxes for companies with 20 or fewer employees
- Increase tax deductions for start-up and healthcare costs
All of these measures will make it easier for America’s innovators to start and grow their small businesses while continuing to grow our economy.
Investing in America
Congress must invest in infrastructure revitalization by rebuilding our roads, highways, and bridges and increasing access to high-speed Internet – especially in rural areas. Not only will this create good-paying construction jobs in the short-term, experience has shown that public infrastructure investment stimulates private sector jobs growth.
In order to help stimulate private sector investment in infrastructure – like machinery, buildings, and factories – we must incentivize companies to bring their cash outside the United States back home. Billions of dollars in foreign earnings and capital are overseas – let’s make sure that money is invested in America.
We’ve got a lot of work to do in this country to upgrade our infrastructure, and I’ll be a strong advocate for funding these projects. When it comes to approving projects, such as Enbridge, I’ve got a heck of a lot more trust in scientists who have spent their career studying these projects than I do in an approval process based on partisan politics.
Investing in Americans
American workers need to have the right skills for the high-paying, high-growth technical jobs of the 21stcentury. We can make sure of this by investing in workforce development initiatives and encouraging public-private partnerships in higher education as well as making vocational education a priority again in our public schools. When schools work with local employers to link training and education to the needs of the regional economy, students and employers win.
Our goal should to be for each student to receive the training necessary either through college, a technical degree, or apprenticeship program to be ready for a good-paying job. And we must be committed to continuous learning and job re-training as industries and technologies change. This requires a commitment to investing and encouraging partnerships between Minnesota companies and technical colleges.
Higher education and job training is only part of the equation. We must encourage companies to invest in their workforce by closing tax loopholes that encourage them to move American jobs overseas, and replacing them with tax credits for companies that hire American. Let’s reward those employers who create jobs in America.
Protecting America’s Workers
Creating a good paying job for every American is only half the solution. We need to make sure that everyone can join the workforce and feel secure in their job. I’ll fight to protect the rights of every worker to organize and collectively bargain. My wife and I have four sons and I saw how hard my mother worked to raise children on her own. We need a national paid family leave and earned sick and safe time policy. A lack of paid family leave disproportionately impacts women that have to care for family members and those with employers that don’t provide maternity leave. We also have a child care availability and affordability crisis looming in many areas of this country and need to consider all possible solutions to addressing it. We need to continue our investment in an all of the above regional transportation strategy to make sure workers can get to their workplaces quickly and efficiently so they’re more productive and can spend more time with their families.
Healthcare
If healthcare is not affordable, it is not accessible. I know that firsthand. I grew up for a portion of my childhood without health insurance. I still remember the box of bills that sat on our kitchen table when my little sister had a medical issue. I also spent more than 20 years working in two healthcare manufacturing companies, and at one I oversaw our employer-sponsored health plans in many countries.
We must work to repair our healthcare system, starting with immediate fixes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and work toward universal health coverage with a focus on prevention and reducing costs, especially for prescription drugs.
Many families, particularly those who are self-employed as small business owners and family farmers, cannot afford the healthcare available in the individual marketplace, but Washington has done nothing to help. One way to address the lack of choice and competition in the insurance marketplace is to open up Medicare for a buy-in to compete with large insurance companies. Congress needs to work across the aisle immediately to stabilize healthcare costs for these families who have little choice in their regions.
We can do all of this without giving up the good things that have come from the ACA. Current law has eliminated the penalty for pre-existing conditions, ended lifetime limits, allowed young adults to remain on their parent’s insurance, and given tens of millions of Americans access to healthcare who didn’t have it before.
To stabilize the market place, it’s critical that we reauthorize and make permanent a federal reinsurance program that does not shortchange other current programs. We must provide a long-term outlook for cost reduction subsidies. We also must rein in out-of-control costs in the pharmaceutical industry. We can start by making pharma compete by negotiating with Medicare and ensure that generic drugs are important part of the healthcare mix. We must make medical pricing more transparent, incentivize preventative care, and move away from a fee-for-service healthcare system if we are serious about reducing the cost of healthcare.
There are many specific policy ideas emerging to accomplish the goal of moving to universal healthcare and we should consider each as to whether it brings us closer to making sure every family has healthcare they can afford. It’s time to stop playing politics with people’s lives and work on a bipartisan basis.
The Opioid Epidemic
Our country is confronting one of the largest public health threats since the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The opioid epidemic now claims more lives every year than car accidents or gun violence – nationwide, over 33,000 people died from opioid or heroin overdoses in 2015 alone.
The Second Congressional District is home to some exceptional local leaders in the fight against this epidemic. The Shakopee Police Department and the Scott County Board have rolled out programs that focus on rehabilitation and recovery rather than punishment and incarceration. Whether it’s a new drug court program, treatment center, lifesaving medication for first responders, or critical new research, all these efforts have something in common: they require resources and funding. That’s how our leaders in Washington can and should help.
This epidemic has not escaped our own family. One of our sons is adopted and his birth mother died over a decade ago of an overdose. I have promised him and many other families in the district to fight like hell to address these issues.
When I’m elected to Congress, I will work to expand the funding allocated in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA). This bipartisan bill allows the federal government to provide states with grants to fund a variety of programs aimed at curbing prescription opioid and heroin abuse. I also will support the Addiction Recovery for Rural Communities (ARRC) Act, a bill to help rural communities fight the opioid epidemic. I’ll also work to take on the issues directly that have helped enable this national emergency, such as prescribing patterns and the marketing of drugs in this nation.
High-Quality Public Education, Career Training and Affordable College
Education and career training are the keys to securing a strong economic future for families in Minnesota. And as the proud wife of a former teacher and mother of four sons – three in college or trade school and one at Rosemount High School – I understand the importance of a great education for all children.
When I’m elected to Congress, I’ll prioritize funding for public education and ensure that our teachers have access to the resources they need to be successful.
We must ensure that early childhood education is a priority, including high-quality child care and pre-K for kids from birth to age 5, to ensure our children start kindergarten ready to succeed. This is essential to our kids’ futures and to the strengthening our state’s economy.
We must also stabilize funding for K-12 education and ensure that career training and vocational education is a priority again in this country. College is not right for every child, and students need to be supported to understand that there are other career options.
It’s critical that we fully fund special education so that every child has the resources they need to learn and grow. One of our sons has learning challenges, and I’ve seen firsthand the heroes in our education system who help him be successful. I’ve also seen what not funding special education at the 40% level the federal government promised has on school district budgets. We must do better.
We also must give our teachers the respect they deserve by protecting their right to organize and collectively bargain, and giving tax credits to those who spend their own money on classroom supplies.
Giving Teachers A Raise
Part of giving teachers the tools they need to succeed is making sure that teachers are paid fairly. We owe it to all of our children to make sure that we’re attracting the best and the brightest to education today to help build and shape the best and the brightest of tomorrow. When we raise teacher pay, we can recruit, and keep, the best possible teachers for our children.
It’s not enough, though, to just tell cash-strapped schools and districts that they need to pay their teachers more. We need to make sure that they have the resources to do so. When I go to Congress, I’ll work to end the carried interest loophole, a tax policy that allows hedge fund and private equity managers to misrepresent earned income as capital gains, letting them pay a lower tax rate. We can send that nearly $16 billion back to the states to help them raise wages for all of our teachers.
Cost of college and career training
One of the biggest issues facing families is the nearly prohibitive cost of higher education. 70% of Minnesota’s college graduates have taken on some form of debt in order to complete their education, with the average price tag amounting to $31,579. That kind of debt causes our young people to delay major milestones, like buying a home or starting a family. Not only is it bad for our graduates – it’s bad for the economy.
In order to stay globally competitive, we must make higher education affordable and re-emphasize the range of career options available to young people, from colleges to technical degrees to apprenticeships. As a member of Congress, I would support legislation to make the first two years of post-secondary education free – whether it is technical education, earning an associate’s degree, or the first two-years of a bachelor’s degree. That’s how we build the workforce of the future and attract the industries of the future.
Caring for Our Veterans
We owe so much to the brave men and women who volunteer to serve our country in the armed forces. As a leader at a major Minnesota company, I set strategy for a program that put veterans to work in our company, and across the medical technology industry. Our nation needs to do all we can to encourage private industry to recruit, hire, mentor, and train veterans.
Many veterans face serious health problems related to their service. My family has not escaped this burden. My uncle died of cancer in his early 50s following his service in Vietnam – believed to be due to Agent Orange exposure. Younger veterans face similar heath challenges related to their work near toxic “burn pits.” When our soldiers return home, they deserve access to the best healthcare, treatment, and compensation that our nation can provide for their physical and mental health needs. But that isn’t what they’re getting right now.
An audit of the VA found that more than 120,000 veterans waited at least 90 days for healthcare appointments or never received appointments at all. More than 82,000 veterans were still waiting for the VA to evaluate their claims for service-connected disability compensation more than 125 days after filing. The VA in Minneapolis provides important services to those who have served our nation, but we need to upgrade the entire system to improve the care our veterans receive and especially alleviate the long wait times for evaluation of benefits and services.
We must be there for our veterans for life. They’ve been there for us.
Protecting the Environment & Slowing the Pace of Climate Change
There’s no denying it – climate change is happening and we have to address it now. In Minnesota, we’ve already seen milder winters, heat waves, droughts, and floods.
Climate change is a threat to our environment and the health and safety of all Americans. But it also presents us with a great opportunity to create economic growth through smart public policies. We must continue to encourage growth in the renewable energy sector, and become a world leader in innovation. America led the world in creating and adapting new technologies in the 20th century – let’s make sure we continue that trend by leading the global green economy.
Our approach to addressing climate change doesn’t need to be onerous. We can lower our carbon emissions, build an energy infrastructure that relies less on fossil fuels, and attract and advance the industries of the future by looking for innovative solutions on climate change. If we invest in emerging energy industries we can create good jobs and get back on track as a global leader in our new energy economy. I look forward to working on a bipartisan basis to pass common sense initiatives, like instituting a carbon fee and dividend program to reduce our nation’s reliance on fossil fuels through market-based solutions.
National Security
We need a smart and tough foreign policy agenda that protects the United States and at the same time preserves the shared American values of privacy, liberty, and diversity.
We should equip our military personnel with the 21st century tools they need to defend our nation as well as eliminate terrorist threats as efficiently and safely as possible. We must support the use of innovative technologies, update and improve our cybersecurity infrastructure, and ensure that our military and intelligence officials have access to every tool they need to protect our nation.
We also must return to a diplomacy first mindset and work to restore the strong relationships with our allies. We’re at our safest and strongest when we’re leading a coalition of countries committed to peace and freedom.
Immigration and Border Security
Washington’s failure to pass bipartisan immigration reform is slowing our economy and weakening our nation. I support bipartisan immigration reform that invests in smart border security, provides a path to citizenship for DREAMERS and law-abiding immigrants, and keeps families together.
As long as our immigration system is broken, people will continue to work around it. It’s clear that too many members of Congress are more interested in scoring points with their base than doing the sensible and common sense thing for our economy and our country. Industries such as agriculture and technology are starved for workers, and we must support smart immigration policies that help.
It’s critical that Congress takes action to pass an immediate fix to Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA). These are hardworking Minnesotans who serve in our military, graduate from our schools and contribute to our economy. In addition, the development of a path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants would allow everyone to contribute and pay taxes, as well as pay into Medicare and Social Security.
We should immediately reunite any families who remain separated at the border without requiring children to remain in federal detention. Also, the U.S. should rejoin the international community and comply with international law by again allowing properly filed asylum claims to proceed in a timely and orderly fashion.
I support investing in smart border security. That includes technology such as drones, sonar and radar. I do not believe the answer to fixing our immigration system is abolishing ICE. They play an important role in stopping drugs and human trafficking. Let me also be clear that all people who commit crimes, regardless of their immigration status, should go to jail. No one wants criminals to go free, no matter what kind of outlandish attacks get lobbed at me.
Many of us are descended from immigrants, and we need immigrants for continued economic growth. The history of and promise of this country is that it will always be open to those who seek a better life, and are willing to work hard and help America grow in the process. In Congress, I will support policies that will continue to make this a reality.
Protecting Minnesota’s Seniors
When Medicare and Social Security were enacted, they lifted a generation of seniors out of poverty. Since then they’ve been a promise we’ve kept to each succeeding generation, allowing Americans to retire with dignity. That’s why I oppose any changes that would cut, privatize, or jeopardize these programs.
We should look for ways to strengthen both programs, instead of using the retirement of millions of Americans as a political football. This includes allowing Medicare to negotiate for the best prices on prescription drugs, eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of both programs, and shoring up their funding – even if it requires asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.
In addition, we must also do more to prevent elder abuse. Altogether, the Minnesota Department of Human Services receives nearly 1,000 reports of elder abuse every week. Too often, those closest to vulnerable adults are the ones taking advantage of them, causing victims to hesitate before taking action. As leaders, we must do what we can to empower social workers, caretakers, and seniors themselves to identify, prevent, report, and end this abuse.
Finally, we must combat the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. In order to start to combat the high cost of prescription drugs, we must allow Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies just as we already do in the VA. In addition, we must work to end anti-competitive “pay-for-delay” deals, and allow individuals to reimport individual supplies of medication from approved pharmacies in Canada.
Fighting for Our Agricultural Economy and Greater Minnesota
I grew up in rural America for much of my childhood. My grandfather farmed beans – until the 1980s farm crisis forced him out. My 91-year-old grandmother still lives near that same land where he spent so much of his life, and she tills and plants her own garden each year.
I know how unique each community in Greater Minnesota is and how important farming is to the Greater Minnesota economy. We are the fifth largest agricultural state in the country, and Minnesota’s 75,000 farms contribute $19 billion to our economy each year. Agriculture is a critical component of and opportunity for economic growth in Minnesota’s second congressional district. To keep that agricultural economy growing, we must help farmers export their products to new markets such as Cuba. Agricultural exports totaled over $8 billion in 2012 and continue to grow.
As a member of Congress, I will work across party lines to pass a new farm bill that ensures a stable and strong crop insurance program as a safety net for our farmers, and at the same time provides adequate funding for SNAP and other nutrition programs that help bridge gaps for families in Minnesota. If we make sure that fresh food is covered under SNAP that is a win-win. Farmers can sell more to people here at home and SNAP recipients have healthier food.
I also understand that healthcare affordability and access to quality medical care in Greater Minnesota are serious issues for Minnesota farmers and have specific solutions to address these concerns.
We should prioritize infrastructure investments in the United States, particularly ensuring that Greater Minnesota has access to high-speed Internet to help communities meet their needs. It is not fair that our rural communities cannot build small businesses and utilize educational resources from the Internet in the same way that suburban communities can. We also must address rail issues to ensure producers have reliable access to markets.
Minnesota has taken a leading role in producing homegrown energy, providing clean, renewable energy, and reducing our reliance on foreign oil. I will fight to maintain a strong Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and lead the effort to make Minnesota a leader in homegrown energy.
Money in Politics
The Supreme Court in its 2010 decision in Citizens United completely changed elections in the United States, by allowing unlimited and dark money spending. Money in politics was always a problem but now it is worse than ever before. Now special interest groups can spend unlimited amounts of untraceable money to elect people who will tip the rules in their favor once in office. The voices of the people are lost in favor of the voices of the few and the powerful. It is a big part of what is wrong in Washington.
I am committed to pass laws to end Citizens United and get big money out of politics. Corporations and special interests are not people and their oversized influence on the way our government works needs to end now. Total transparency starts with requiring everyone who spends money in a campaign to say where that money came from. Toward that end, I have proposed an entire package of reforms.
Empowering Strong Women and Strong Families
As a working mom who is raising four amazing young men, I understand that strengthening opportunities for women creates stronger families.
I grew up surrounded by two strong women – my mother and my grandmother. My mom raised the three of us with the help of my grandmother. My grandmother lived a few homes down, and was on her feet for eight hours a day at a nearby shoe factory into her 70’s. Mom completed her college degree after almost 10 years and is still a teacher today.
As a leader at a Minnesota company, I started a Women In Business program to support and mentor women in their career choices and help them achieve that next level of success. Women have made great strides, but we still face challenges.
Our work is not done until women have equal opportunity and an equal voice in this country. Women should receive equal pay for doing the same job, and today, that is sadly not the case. Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act would be a great step in the right direction. We also must make sure that young women are being exposed to and encouraged to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields, which currently count only 23% women among their workforce.
I support full reproductive rights for women and access to contraception and family planning services. No one should ever come between a woman and her doctor when making these decisions. The dangerous proposals that seek to eliminate contraceptive and family planning services coverage from the ACA guarantee must be stopped, and I will stand against them. I support Planned Parenthood and will continue to fight to protect their funding so that all women – especially those in rural areas – have access to the healthcare services they need.
Gun Violence Prevention
Our family has always been comfortable around firearms and strong supporters of the Second Amendment. Two of our four sons are avid deer and duck hunters and a third competed in trap shooting in high school. I’ve been known to join them from time to time on the gun range.
Support for the Second Amendment goes hand-in-hand with doing everything we can to keep guns away from criminals and other dangerous people. Every day, 93 Americans are killed by gun violence and there is no reason we can’t work to address this issue while protecting our Second Amendment rights. That’s why I support commonsense measures to address gun violence.
First, I believe we should fund Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research into gun violence. We need the facts in order to decide how to improve gun safety.
Second, I support universal background checks for every gun purchase, including those sold online and through private sales. The facts are compelling: In states where background checks are law there are 52 percent fewer mass shootings, 48 percent fewer law enforcement officials are shot to death, and 48 percent fewer people commit suicide by firearm. We should not allow criminals or domestic abusers to have such easy access to a firearm.
Third, we need to stop suspected terrorists on the no-fly list from purchasing firearms and reinstate a rule recently repealed by Congress that stopped some people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.
Finally, I believe we should immediately ban the sale of military style, semi-automatic weapons, and make high-capacity clips, “bump stocks,” and other attachments that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire faster illegal.
These measures by themselves won’t eliminate gun violence in this country. But if they reduce the incidence of gun violence and help law enforcement stay safer, they’re worth fighting for.
This content was originally published at https://www.angiecraig.com/