Second District, Joe Teirab: We must keep fighting to protect the American dream

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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The opinion editors have invited candidates in Minnesota’s key congressional races to submit commentaries making their case to voters. We begin with the Second District, with this article by challenger Joe Teirab, a Republican, and another by incumbent Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat.

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I’m running for U.S. Congress in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District because the American dream is slipping away, and I can’t sit idly by while it happens. For far too long, career politicians have put party over people, partisanship over common sense.

When I deployed to Iraq as a Marine captain in support of our effort to destroy ISIS, politics didn’t matter. When I helped charge the Feeding Our Future fraudsters, convicted a cop killer or led the investigation into the Bloods gang in Minneapolis as a federal prosecutor, politics didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the job done.

Sadly, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig isn’t getting the job done. I talk to voters every day, and I know the economy is the No. 1 issue this election. Inflation has made life unaffordable. Folks are tired of paying more at the grocery store, at the gas pump or in their energy bills. Minnesotans have to make $13,000 more per year just to keep up with the same standard of living they had back at the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration.

You won’t see Craig touting any of her results on the economy, because she has none. It’s quite the opposite — she made the economic situation worse. She voted in lockstep with her party on the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan. These reckless spending bills led to skyrocketing inflation. And don’t take it from me — Lawrence Summers, economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, called the legislation the “least responsible macroeconomic policy” in 40 years. That’s what Craig voted for.

The same is true on the border: no results. Craig is quick to brag about being an independent voice and standing up to her party. But when the rubber meets the road, that’s just simply not the case. In May 2023, there was a commonsense border security bill, the Secure the Border Act, that would have given border patrol more resources, resumed the construction of the border wall, and reformed the asylum process. But Craig sided with her party over the American people and voted against the bill.

And then there is the issue of public safety. After the 2020 riots, Craig once again put party over principles and voted for the Justice in Policing Act that would have kneecapped law enforcement and eliminated qualified immunity. Then, once she realized that Minnesotans are proud to support law enforcement and that her re-election chances might be in jeopardy, she changed her tune. She backtracked on qualified immunity and now goes out of her way to appear sufficiently pro-law-enforcement. Is there anything she wouldn’t change her tune on in the name of political expediency?

In my time as a federal prosecutor, I’d frequently interview witnesses and defendants who would lie or mislead about facts they knew to be true. They lie to protect something valuable to them. Sadly, because Craig has no results to run on, she has taken to lying about my position on Social Security — I will not cut any Social Security benefits — and, most egregiously, on abortion. WCCO and KSTP both fact-checked Craig and said her attack ads were misleading. Craig is lying to protect her power. But the power does not belong to her, it belongs to us.

I’m a proud Minnesotan. The best days are ahead of us, both as a state and as a country. But that’s only the case if we keep fighting to protect the American dream, generation after generation. My grandpa helped protect it as a POW in World War II. My father realized the American dream when he immigrated here from Sudan. And now I’m living the American dream. I helped protect it as a federal prosecutor and as a Marine, and it would be my honor to carry that forward as your congressman.

Joe Teirab, of Burnsville, is the Republican candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s Second District. See joeformn2.com.