And you're running for auditor because why?

Because I have a direct impact.

My family member was directly – in fact, all of us Minnesotans.

I mean when we have this problem in the state of Minnesota, we have a lot of fraud going on.

My family member was directly involved in some of this as a person that was at a facility that was found to be fraudulently billing the state of Minnesota.

has a recovery program, and then he was kicked out on the street.

And then that now becomes a societal problem.

Is there a thing or two that you think the office does well right now?

But what when it what happens when it goes awry, whether that's what would that even be?

So in the event that there are some issues, concerns, something that might flag, so the auditor isn't doing the audits.

They're a manager of the office, right? So they're not responsible for it.

There's different departments within the auditor's office, somewhere around 80 staff members that do various different jobs and positions.

Many of them are accountants, many of them do other things, some of them do specifically data, many different roles within the office.

So the state auditor themselves has to be a manager of the people.

So let me be very clear about that.

Do you have something you could share with us?

So Jay, can you tell us a little bit specifically about your background and what qualifies you to be state auditor?

Sure.

I spent 17 years in the military.

I was a data analyst towards the end of my career.

In the last parts of my career in 2022, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

And in 2023, I was medically retired as a major.

because of my what branch were you in army i served in the army active duty thank you for your service thank you thank you so um i want to take that that education that i received while i was in the military and that leadership experience throughout all of my military career leading leading small teams leading um little organizations small uh clinics um I led larger clinics and over many states and eventually I rose through the ranks and led many worldwide operations for IT solutions and things like that at the Defense Health Agency.

Whatever you want to

get on Almanac? What was your experience there?

So to get on Almanac, I saw a post early on in the morning from Scott Jensen, actually.

He said that he was going to be on Almanac later on in the day, like 7 p.m. And I said, hey, I didn't even get an invite.

And then we had a whole bunch of people blast out emails and comments to the internet, like posts on Facebook and other places, and we flooded down with, hey, Jay Reeves, the third independent, he's made a point there, he's the third person on the ballot, you guys aren't even considering him in this, so, and Phil, one of the co-chairs, contacted Almanac, they went back and forth in a conversation, and eventually, a couple

So what is the message that you want to get out? The

message is that remember that we have our own minds.

We have our own thoughts.

We have to get away from this partisan thinking BS that has come in Minnesota.

But what's your background and why did you decide to join the auditor's race in the first place, Jay?

So a little bit about me.

I was born and raised on the east side of St. Paul.

I was a teamster for a short while, drove trucks, owned a small business.

After 9-11, when the economy crashed and the business kind of went down, lost everything, I realized the dream as a child that I really wanted to join the military.

to serve and give back.

So I joined the military at 31 as a private, married four kids, went through the ranks, retired as a major.

So in terms of being more proactive, is there more beyond beyond that? Or do you think that alone would be enough to begin to tackle the issue of the rampant fraud that we've had to face here as taxpayers?