candidates?

You know, what we're hearing about mostly from voters are really two top of mind issues.

Fraud, accountability for that fraud and affordability, especially as it relates to how the burden and cost of Minnesota state government has risen over the last decade plus of DFL dominance in the state.

And that we need to take it and go in a new direction, that we need to really finally hold people accountable for fraud, including folks in state government who looked the other way and didn't stop it.

And we need to do much more to rein in the cost of state government, the budget of state government, which has exploded when the DFL had control, especially when they had a trifecta and increased it by 40 percent in one budget cycle, doubling it in the course of a decade.

And the burden of state government, how it's slowing down growth and opportunities for our state.

Terry Niske, you want to weigh in on that?

Yeah, emotions are definitely high, and not just because of that.

And it, it wasn't just a Minnesota thing, 'cause this, a lot of this was federal money that was laundered through Minnesota to all of these crooked groups, correct?

Yeah.

A lot of these programs are Medicaid-funded programs that the state, uh, administers, uh, that, i- and, and the Feeding Our Future, you know, that was, uh, education dollars that was supposed to go out to paying hungry kids.

The Walz administration didn't even go check these sites where supposedly thousands of kids were being fed, uh, during COVID, and nobody was there.

So, uh, you know, it was, it's a combination of incompetence, of, uh, sort of woke ideology, people being afraid of being called racist if they ask the questions of, uh, you know, predominantly Somali Americans, and then, uh, you know, these folks being seen by the Democrats as part of their, uh, political coalition that they didn't want to make angry.

And so that's why you had Keith Ellison sitting down with fraudsters, getting political donations, uh, from them, you know, at, at the same time, but in those conversations saying things like, "Let's go fight them," when he's talking about the people in state government who might be asking questions.

But too many people here in Minnesota think spending money is the sign of success of a program.

Do you think that her rise may be indicative that, that Minnesota, Minnesotans are tired of being synonymous with fraud?

That's gotta be frustrating as all get out because if you are shouted down, and again, the tag of racist, when all you're doing is asking a question about what happened to the money, um, I mean, i- is there a tipping point now where Minnesotans are saying, "Okay, we get what you were saying, and we want you to do something about it"?

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's why we're seeing a very different environment here in Minnesota than we're seeing in a lot of other, uh, places around the country.

Uh, Minnesotans are furious about it.

We, uh, you know, like to think of ourselves as generous people, but we like to think of, or have thought of, uh, our government as being, um, uh, clean, and, and we learned otherwise very brutally over the last, uh, few years.

The federal government, uh, the federal, you know, the US Attorney's office has been prosecuting, uh, these cases for, uh, the last few years.

And then we finally, you know, the, the cover has kind of really been blown off of it, um, in these last couple years.

I mean, are, are the good rural citizens of Minnesota figuring it out, and that's why, uh, the legislature is so close and perhaps will tip in 32 days?