Duluth News Tribune

No Hermantown data center. I graduated from Duluth East, the University of Minnesota Duluth, and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. I retired from Delta Air Lines after 17 years with a small union pension. Recently, I have been fighting to stop the proposed Hermantown data center, testifying to Duluth legislators and the Hermantown City Council about how its infrasound could radiate two and a half miles out. I submitted 10 comments to the Alternative Urban Areawide Review (AUAR) study of the proposed development. This is why it isn’t left versus right but people against the elites. MAGA was backstabbed by President Donald Trump and Rep. Pete Stauber on the pledge for no foreign wars, the Epstein blackmail, and inflationary gas prices and tariffs. And both parties support U.S. military-Israel fusion, which is treasonous. The working class wants jobs, housing, and healthcare — 80% of people are only hanging on. We can’t afford the Empire anymore, nor endless wars. If elected, I pledge no aid to Israel; “no” votes for supposedly “must pass” defense budgets that include “fusion” with Israel; and to offer up a congressional resolution to request the Department of Justice in a new administration initiate an investigation into whether officials in the Trump administration violated the War Crimes Act of 1996 regarding bombing Venezuelan fishing boats, the Iran war-of-choice, or complicity in Gaza genocide. No amount of campaign money will defeat Stauber and his million-dollar war chest, but I propose weekly town-hall Zoom calls to discuss issues of the day: affordable housing, single-payer health insurance, pharmaceutical discounts, jobs, defense cuts, the Iran war, ICE issues, labor issues, the Hermantown data center, and copper-nickel mining. I have had published in the News Tribune over the past six years many opinion pieces on these issues, and I look forward to some intelligent conversation. I look for solutions. When the Line 3 hearings were being held, I was there to oppose the pipeline. My biggest success was getting the state and Enbridge to agree to remove old and defunct pipelines from property owners’ lands, where they degraded property values. The project’s environmental impact statement had the state agreeing with Enbridge that the pipelines were too close together to remove. I proved all by myself with a yardstick study from Swan River to Grand Rapids that there was plenty of space between them to remove them. We should focus on Mesabi Metallics and Pulsar Helium, not copper-nickel mining and the data center, which threaten more jobs than they promise. We should ban private equity in housing, where 21 corporations own 10 or more homes in Duluth. We should fund single-payer healthcare by taxing oil companies’ windfall profits, with AI taxes on chips and tokens, and with a 30% cut in the U.S. Department of Defense budget. In Congress, I will follow the lead of Rep. Ro Khanna, who has a plan to cut the budget by $12 trillion while still enacting a progressive agenda. John Munter of Warba is one of three Democratic candidates for Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District. The top vote-getter in the Aug. 11 primary will advance to the Nov. 3 election to face the winner of the Republican primary between Anthony Hamilton and incumbent Rep. Pete Stauber. All the candidates were invited by the News Tribune Opinion page to submit commentaries ahead of the primary.