Best Quote: "What I really interested, what I am really excited and energized about in this campaign and the chance to be the next governor of Minnesota is that I think the state has so much potential and so much promise. I grew up here. My folks were both public school teachers. They taught me how great the state is, how important it is to the United States, how we have been leaders for so long. They also taught me because of the sacrifices that they made to give me all the opportunities and my sister all the opportunities we would want to succeed. They taught the basic Minnesota values: thinking about the future, that we all in this together and that none of us succeed on our own. My folks took a second mortgage on the house in order to send me to college. I think that it in itself demonstrates what Minnesota values is all about. We value hard word; we value innovation and inventiveness. At the end of the day, we value doing things the right way and making sure that the future is going to be better than the past. "
Surprise Question
Surprise Question: What stories have heard before the health care committee that really touched you?
Best Quote: "She was facing the choice really of selling her house and selling her car, which got her to work, to be able to afford the costs of health care for her husband."
Summary: Paul Thissen shares two stories about tough health choices. It has been tough to hear these stories in these economic times. Using a scalpel instead of an ax on the budget is a better way to cut costs.
Governor Pawlenty's Fatal Flaw
Question: What would you consider Governor Tim Pawlenty's fatal flaw to be?
Best Quote: "He [Governor Pawlenty] really doesn't have a willingness to dig in and stick with issues over the long term. His governing style has largely been issuing a press release on particular issue, sometimes good idea,s sometimes bad ideas, that lasting about three weeks. Then his attention goes elsewhere."
Summary: Paul Thissen will organize his campaign around what Democrats are going to do. Minnesota needs a governor that will stick with an issue through completion. Tim Pawlenty is obviously focused on ambitions beyond Minnesota.
Tax Fairness
Question: Are the richest paying the same overall Minnesota tax rate as the poorest? How could taxes be made more fair?
Best Quote: "That the cuts that we are talking for people about the other end. Cuts on if the governor is going to remove people from healthcare for instance Or if he is going to diminish child care subsidies. Those are really in a sense raising taxes or raising cost of living for people at the end of scale which is even less fair because they are already paying more than their fair share. We think of taxes of what we send into the government, In a sense, we ought to think of taxes as what you left to live on."
Summary: If you want to look at fairness, not only does Minnesota need to look at overall tax rate but also what people have left to live on. The more affluent could afford more taxes in these tough times than the people who have to take on the impact that the budget cuts can afford taking on that burden.
Value Differences between Democrats and Republicans
Question: Without citing any issues, can you describe the value differences between Democrats and Republicans?
Best Quote: "Are in this on our own as individuals or even as individual families? Or we part of a larger community? Do we owe each other obligations to each other as part of a community? I think that Democrats stand for the principles that no one really makes it on their own and we are part of this as community and there are both rights and responsibilities that flow from that. I think that is a real fundamental difference that we've seen over the last ten years, if not the last thirty years. The results of a trend in this country towards saying that we are all in this on our own; that we should take as much as we can for our own, I think we have to shift back to what the founding fathers and the founding mothers said which is 'We are all in this together!' "
Summary: Democrats believe in working together as a community whereas Republicans focus more on the perspective as individuals or as individual families.
Science
Follow up: Discussion about Science
Best Quote: "The willingness to look at evidence of what works... the Democratic party is more willing to at least consider that and look at that"
Summary: Another difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats are more willing to look at science and scientific evidence.
Healthcare
Question: What role will health care insurance companies play in your health care plan?
Best Quote: "The employer based system is under tremendous stress and we are going have to move to a different model."
Summary: We should move from procedure-based medical payments to paying to take care of people.
Negative Campaigns
Question: How will you handle negative ads in campaigns?
Best Quote: "What negative ads trade on are a lack of trust, a lack of understanding and a lack of relationship with the candidate being attacked. They don't work when people know that candidate and the attack kind doesn't make sense with who they know the candidate is.... When people's friends are attacked they don't believe it."
Summary: Laying out a positive vision now will inoculate against the negative campaign ads at the end of the campaign.
Campaign Trends
Question: Every year has brought new trends to campaigning, facebook, youtube, blogging, twitter. How do you plan to adapt your campaign to take advantage of the new trends?
Best Quote: "The possibility of getting small bits of information that interest people out to them quickly is something that campaigns have to grab onto."
Summary: Paul Thissen is proud of his campaign website and his idea board. Social media is a good tool to transmit information, however normal campaigning still has to take center stage.
Financing
Question: State wide campaigns have been getting expensive. How do you plan to do fundraising to support that?
Best Quote: "Fundraising is the result of running a strong campaign."
Summary: Paul Thissen is going to take advantage of doing non-traditional media and non-traditional sources, as well as running a basic strong campaign.
Endorsement
Summary: Paul Thissen is running an endorsement race. He is planning on honoring the endorsement
Veterans
Question: What could we do for returning veterans that we are currently not doing? What could we do better?
Best Quotes: "The current war is having a different impact on veterans than previous wars just because the nature of weaponry. So the traumatic head injuries and some of post traumatic stress disorder which has always been there, we understand it more than we used to twenty - twenty five years ago. We need to better job of getting those services out to veterans."
"These really are our heroes"
Summary: We can build on medical services used our improved understanding of trauma and injury. We could give our veterans shortened transition courses to all veterans to use the skills that they learned in the military here, for example - medics.
Note: The video extends into the next question on environment.
Goals
Question: What are the three most important goals that you hope to accomplish as governor?
Best Quote: "We need to rebuild trust. I think government can be a great force for good but until people trust until government is going do the right stuff. I think there is a gap of trust between state government and people. We need to rebuild that. That's about communicating. It's about going out and actually talking and listening and valuing people's opinions. That's the kind of governor that I want to be."
Summary: Paul Thissen is for affordable health care, closing the achievement gap in education, and a renewable distributed energy. Politically, Paul Thissen needs to rebuild trust.
Differences
Question: What makes you stand out in a crowd of candidates for governor?
Best Quote: "A blogger up North, Aaron Brown did an interview with me. One of his takeaways was to say that Paul is so very reasonable, but reasonable people make good governors."
Summary: Paul Thissen says his approach to problem solving is practical and reasonable, not ideological. He can compromise and yet still stick to principles. He is a candidate that is a fresh new face with fresh new ideas.
Energy
Question: Does clean coal exist? Would you consider nuclear energy? What types of renewable sustainable energy would you support?
Best Quote: "But at the end of day, are we going to do these small plants or these big plants?"
Summary: Minnesota should be exploring a smaller renewable energy plant solution plan that would make us more independent and reduce our need for large transmission lines.
Motivation
Question: What motivates you to run for governor?
Best Quote: "I have watched this state move in a direction that is radically wrong."
Summary: Paul Thissen would like to move the state in a better direction.
Economy
Question: How would you bring more jobs to Minnesota? How would you improve the economy?
Best Quote: "There is not a silver bullet, we are going to have to work at it."
Summary: Minnesota is doing worse than the national average which means we have a Minnesota problem : solve our health problem, build our education system, invest in research and ensure that everyone has access to jobs.
Note that while the videos come from the Uptake, all of the opinions are just from Grace Kelly. |
