Another letter defending Tim Walz

(NOTE BY LP: My sons traveled to China with Tim Walz during the summer of 2005. It was a trip of a lifetime for them, rewarding and educational. Five-star it was not, unless you consider riding 14 hours on a crowded Chinese train a luxury experience.)

Published in the Mankato Free Press, Sunday, 7/30:

New Ulm would be cheaper than Boca Raton

A recent letter to the editor entitled “Letter misleading, incomplete” defended Republican Gil Gutknecht for taking free trips to luxury resorts and attacked his opponent Tim Walz for taking high school students to China.

The author wants us to believe Gutknecht’s trips to 5-star resorts in Boca Raton, Florida are comparable to Walz’s experiences taking young scholars to study abroad.

Sorry. I don’t buy it. I do agree with the author that the 1st Congressional District’s representative should be meeting with the people who make this such a great place to live; the sugar beet farmers and renewable fuel leaders to name a couple. But why does our representative have to go to Florida to do that? If they’re all in the 1st Congressional District, why not just meet here?

Gas is very expensive and it seems like meeting in New Ulm would be much cheaper than a weekend stay in Boca Raton.

Noah Palmer
St. Peter