Ready for the radical leftism of Gov. Walz?

Under Gov. and now vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, Minnesota has become the California of the Midwest. I don’t write those words lightly or out of personal malice, but as a local pastor and as someone who has spent the majority of my life in Minnesota. I love my home state, but not what Minnesota has become under the increasingly radical leftism of Gov. Walz.

As Kamala Harris’ running mate, I am sure Walz will be presented as a Midwestern moderate, but nothing could be further from the truth. Under Walz’s leadership, Minnesota has not become a destination for people to flock to but rather to flee from.

According to the most recent data, over the last two years Minnesota has seen the largest exodus in decades. Minnesota, like California, is now a state to leave in pursuit of greener pastures. While some may wonder if this exodus is driven by retirees seeking warmer climates, it’s not. According to IRS data, 77.5 percent of the people escaping our formerly great state are of working age (ages 18 to 64). Just as California’s economic and social progressivism has driven people to bolt to other states, Minnesota suffers from the same reality.

What policies would prompt those with deep roots in the culture of Minnesota nice to uproot their families? We could look at how Walz let Minneapolis burn for days in 2020, his apparent lack of support for law enforcement, or how crime in the Twin Cities appears out of control. As bad as the numbers are for those exiting our state, the numbers are worse for those leaving our largest metropolitan area. Couple this with a heavy tax burden and a massive COVID Relief scandal, and it is clear that the Walz administration’s incompetence makes Minnesota an unappealing state. People don’t want to live with the consequences of Walz’s leadership—high taxes, high crime, governmental incompetence—and they’re voting with their feet.

Yet, all of these issues pale in comparison to Walz’s radical social agenda. As a Christian in this state, the horrors of his evil agenda are nearly unspeakable. Consider three recent examples of Walz’s social extremism.

First, Walz signed into law a bill that allows abortion up to the moment of birth. His crowning achievement is to allow doctors to crush the skulls of children even while they are being born. If such barbarism was not bad enough, he also used his power to allow children who were born alive after a failed abortion to be left to die. Imagine a helpless child, just born into the world, left utterly alone to die in a hospital room. This is the measure of Walz’s “moderate” political positions. There is no moral justification for such patent cruelty. While the GOP’s mixed language on abortion should be concerning to Christians, it is not in the same vicinity as the evils Walz used his executive power to enact.

Second, children and families are not safe even after birth in Minnesota. While some European countries are coming to terms with the evident dangers of transgenderism, Walz has plowed ahead undeterred. In 2023, Walz signed into law the Trans Refuge Act, which turned Minnesota into a refuge for children to flee from other states to be chemically or physically mutilated. In this bill, Walz undermined one of our most fundamental rights—the right of parents, not politicians, to decide what is best for their children. This legislation enables the courts to take custody away from parents who refuse to provide “gender-affirming” care for their children. For Walz, “gender-affirming” care means encouraging children to deny their God-given sex. It means separating vulnerable youth from their loving parents to chemically or physically mutilate them. In Walz’s Minnesota, politicians have more rights over the lives of children than parents do.

Third, these last couple of years, Walz and Democrats in Minnesota sought to coerce religious institutions to hire against their sincerely held beliefs. Democrats enacted a change to employment law that would have forced religious institutions, including churches, to hire against their beliefs about sexuality and gender. Thanks to a groundswell of opposition from local churches, this was eventually reversed. Sadly, under a new proposed amendment, Walz’s party is trying again to undermine religious liberty. In Walz’s Minnesota, only those who bend the knee to gender theory are truly free to live out their beliefs.

Walz has more in common with a West Coast leftist than he does with a Midwestern moderate. His leadership has transformed my home state into a laboratory for radicalism. This shouldn’t surprise us when he compares socialism, the deadliest political movement of the last century, to being a good neighbor. If that is Walz’s idea of neighborliness, is it any wonder that many people don’t want to live under his governorship anymore? With all the damage he has done to my home state, I pray that voters prevent Walz from doing the same damage to our nation.