Pro-Business Democrat Shelley Madore racking up endorsements

You may not spend much time thinking about the connection between a vibrant small-business climate and how that benefits your community, but Shelley Madore brings real pro-business sensibility to the Congressional race in the 2nd District: she connects the dots between building roads and infrastructure to attract business to locate and expand in the district and what that means for working families, because investing in our business community means we have jobs and the crucial benefits they provide heading into the future. Shelley Madore gets it.

During her time in the state legislature, Madore authored dozens of bills, and left her imprint on dozens more with ideas such as the Madore amendment that corrected a long-standing imbalance in road transportation funding. She understands that potholes are more than an annoyance during your daily commute, they send a message to business owners that we aren't investing as carefully in our community as they would in their parking lots.

Shelley Madore brought common sense ideas to the table, and then built the necessary consensus to keep bills moving forward so voters saw real results instead of partisan gridlock. Now she's bringing her razor sharp pencil to the campaign process, running a tight, fiscally responsible campaign that's picking up steam as she picks up endorsements such as the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and Education Minnesota. She'll bring that same common-sense leadership to Washington.

Maybe it's because she's had to deal with the enormous burden of medical costs as a special needs mom, but her understanding of how the complexities of interconnected budgets work also impressed the President of South Central College, Keith Stover.

 

President Stover had seen his plans to expand the Faribault campus, remodel the lab nursing students use and facilities to train for manufacturing jobs skipped over in favor of funding projects elsewhere in the state. Stover's impressed. "You really did your homework," he told Madore and her staff at a recent meeting as she explained what the one missing piece was when the state considered allocating precious MNCSU funds.

Stover knows Shelley Madore sees more than just the big picture; she gets the way the system works, and can make it work better on behalf of the working people who live and raise their families in the district. Madore understands that we've got to provide the training our employers need and deserve right here in the district - that we've all got to work together to get Minnesota back to being the great place to live and work that we remember it from 10 or 20 years ago when people were moving here for the great schools, great jobs, and unparalleled quality of life.

Shelley Madore touring South Central College's carpentry training facility

with President Keith Stover

What's John Kline been doing about job losses?

According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing Minnesota's Second Congressional District is ranked 22nd of the 435 Districts nationwide in terms of net job losses to China due to growing trade losses from 2001-2008. That's the worst in the state, either raw net loss of as a percent of total jobs within the district.

They calculated the following losses:

Total Employment 389,200
Net Jobs Lost 10,900
Share of Total Employment 2.8%

Here's how that stacks up against the other seven Congressional Districts statewide:

CD 1 lost 9,000 net jobs (2.7%)
CD 3 lost 9,100 (2.6%)
CD 4 lost 5,700 (1.9%)
CD 5 lost 5,800 (1.8%)
CD 6 lost 8,300 (2.1%)
CD 7 lost 6,100 (1.9%)
CD 8 lost 3,800 (1.2%)

For a discussion of data sources (which include a new Economic Policy Institute report by Robert Scott,) methodology, and analysis, there's a downloadable PDF.

Unfair China Trade Costs Local Jobs

Now I don't fault Congressman Kline for his vote on the TARP bailouts of big banks and Wall Street, but I think we need to ask this Texas transplant why he's not doing more for the Minnesota workers he was elected to represent. We need to bring our share of the reinvestment/recovery stimulus money into the district, and I can't find any evidence that Mr. Kline's putting any energy into that.

What has Congressman Kline prioritized? In 2005 he introduced legislation to place former President Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill. In fact, Kline's only authored 8 bills since getting elected to Congress.

He's not too worried, perhaps, since he's served long enough to qualify for a lifetime pension. But the families in his district are struggling while he votes against bills that would make it easier for our kids to afford college and insure all of us can afford health care rather than go bankrupt. We're talking about the hardest hit district in one of the hardest hit states - we need a representative in Washington who'll do more.