The two candidates running for the Senate District 50A Minnesota House seat are Republican Owen Michaelson and Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party candidate Julie Greene. Greene received the DFL endorsement at the Senate District 50 DFL Convention on April 20. Consequently, candidate Alicia Gibson dropped out.
“The race has changed [after the convention] because I’m moving into the general election,” Greene said. “I just filed with the Secretary of State, and the race is now focusing on, ‘How do we get to November?’ and ‘How do we win the seat for the general election?’ The fundraising looks a lot different.”
Greene is an 18-year resident of Edina with four children, all of whom went through the Edina Public Schools system. She has 25 years of experience in marketing and business and was on the Edina School Board for four years as vice chair. She chaired the Policy Committee, chaired the Legislative Action Committee, and was on the Association of Metropolitan School Districts Board, where she trained other School Board members across the state on how to do legislative advocacy work.
Republican Owen Michaelson recently joined the race. Michaelson also has four children who went through Edina Public Schools and has resided in Edina for 25 years. He was a member of the Edina School Board for four years and served as an Assistant Scoutmaster for the Eagle Scouts for 12 years and Cubmaster for eight.
He decided to run for office in 2017 because he wanted to see an increased focus on education in the school district. “My slogan was ‘Education First,’” he said. “Test results were going down. Edina was losing its stature and rankings.”
Michaelson’s main goals for the Minnesota House are fiscal integrity and environmental justice. “We’ve been spending way too much and taxing way too much,” he said. “It’s important to return to the focus of what the government is for. It’s a referee. More important than that, it’s there to protect citizens and to provide for orderly, harmonious living.”
Similarly, Greene thinks of fiscal integrity as accountability to voters. “What I’ve learned over the past five years is that there isn’t a policy decision that doesn’t have some kind of fiscal impact,” she said. “I always consider how to be conservative in our savings and spending, looking ahead to make sure we’re planning and accounting for our decisions. If we don’t have the funding, we have to make hard choices and say no.”
Each candidate also has an agenda for environmental concerns. As a backpacking guide in the Rocky Mountains for five years at a large Boy Scout camp, Michaelson wanted to make sure the Scouts were comfortable with nature and connected to the outdoors. “Scouting was green long before it was popular,” Michaelson said. “The more comfortable you are with nature, the more regard, respect, and affection you have, and that translates into public policy.” Michaelson added that his lifestyle demonstrates his commitment to the environment as he always biked or took a bus to work, not getting a car until he was 26. In the House, he said that he would work to push a transition into carbonless energy forms and reduce laws with unintentionally harmful effects to the environment.
The environment is also a priority of Greene’s. “Protecting our environment and making sure we have funding to cover those protections is an issue that needs to be at the forefront of our decision-making,” she said. “It doesn’t get talked about enough.”
Other issues she wanted to highlight were election misinformation and mental health. “Mental health is a public health crisis that we’re seeing in schools and elders,” she said. “It exacerbates problems on so many levels. We need people to know that they have affordable housing they can live in, where the food shelter is, and that they have financial security.”
Both Michaelson and Greene connect with constituents in their own ways. Michaelson said he keeps an open mind and fairly represents his constituents’ desires. “I read constituents’ emails closely when I was on the board and I changed my opinions on a number of issues,” Michaelson said. “Six years ago, on the issue of the school’s start time, the school board was in favor of what the administration wanted, but constituent emails were coming in against it. I heard their case and changed my mind. I’ve advocated for all sorts of groups that had nothing to do with my running or getting elected.”
On the other hand, Greene said that in order to gain a holistic view of her constituents’ opinions, she pulls in every voice necessary to ensure that she isn’t leaving any critical opinion out. “I ensure I’m listening to my constituents by listening to the perspectives of different groups and having one-on-one conversations,” she said. “You always have to have the right stakeholders at the table. For example, if you’re making decisions on healthcare and whether insurance companies should cover infertility costs, you need to have representation of all different types of parents: single mothers, gay couples, couples that can’t afford insurance.”
Greene also explained her connection to her constituents with an anecdote. “There was a gentleman who came to my office hours when I was running for the [Edina] School Board; not a supporter of mine. I worked on him hard but he walked away, not going to vote for me. I did tell him, ‘Even if you don’t vote for me, if I get elected I will work my tail off for your kids, and you can call me anytime.’ He called me several times over the years. I called him too, to get a temperature check on different things. When I announced I was running for state House, I got a text from him that said, ‘State House, really?’ but also: ‘How can I help?’”
Greene said that anecdote shows her character. “I don’t assume that people will trust me because I tell them to,” she said. “Instead, I show them. Through my actions, people know that they can trust me.”
She also encouraged voters to know that they can advocate for their opinions and have their voices heard. “Sometimes it can feel like there’s a big distance between you and decision-making, but it is not a far distance at all,” Greene said. “Decisions that officials make can impact you in terms of taxes, schools, or healthcare. I would empower every voter to vote and work on issues that they care about.”
According to Michaelson, making government more easily understood is another way to honor constituents and be transparent. “My strategy for transparency and accountability is keeping my opinions open, keeping my decisions transparent, and making the government as easily comprehended as possible,” he said. “That is one of the reasons why I don’t support TIF [tax increment funding] or ranked choice voting, because I think they make the process of governing opaque. They’re so complex. Most elected officials don’t understand TIF, and so it’s being misused.”
In contrast, Greene supports ranked choice voting because she believes it leads to more democracy and less tension. “The person who gets the majority of the votes should win,” she said. “Ranked choice voting could lower political polarization because if you don’t get your first choice, you might get your second. If everyone got their second, maybe there wouldn’t be as much tension.”
Greene said that what makes her unique is her inclusivity and listening to everybody, especially the underserved. “It’s our responsibility as elected leaders to look out for everybody,” she said. “I will always be someone who believes the more people we bring to the table, the more perspectives we bring in, the better outcomes we’re going to have.”
Greene also uses ground-up problem-solving to fix issues from their roots. She used the example of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would guarantee legal gender equality for women and men. “The Equal Rights Amendment means changing the language in our Constitution, which changes our foundation and then allows us to rely on that language to fix other problems within the system,” Greene said. “In the Policy Committee, we brought in a framework to see how policies impacted everybody: students with disabilities, students in the LGBTQ+ community, all different perspectives. I’m not afraid to have those conversations and bring those people to the table.”
While inclusivity is Greene’s focus, literacy and literature are Michaelson’s key issues. He has both personal interests and experience: he and two of his children are dyslexic, his wife teaches remedial reading, and he has successfully advocated for higher literacy rates during his time on the Edina School Board. “My goal was to get reading rates high for everybody, especially minority students with lower reading rates,” he said. “I struggle with reading, so I very much identify with this problem. I made an impassioned case for getting this right.”
Michaelson believes that if kids aren’t reading by third grade, they are much more likely to experience issues with the criminal justice system, chemical dependency problems, and employment. If in office, one of his goals would be to get the funding and support to amend errors in the Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act.
Michaelson also hopes to modify future English curriculums. “10th grade language arts, starting in about 2012, started excluding a lot of voices that were not postmodern,” he said. “Literature is one of the best ways to enter the human experience. What I was hoping was that we could return the curriculum to a broader swath of literature that would encompass more than postmodernism.”
His view on equity is through education. “I was the strongest voice against excessive lockdowns,” he said. “The lockdowns had extremely damaging results, especially on minority populations. School being out for that long was devastating. I advocated for getting the kids back to school. It gave our minority and underserved populations a fair shake, and a leg up.”
While Michaelson is most proud of his literacy work on the Edina School Board, Greene is proudest of advocating for and passing the Strategic Plan because of how strongly it reflected community values and desires. “The Strategic Plan, based on thousands of community members’ input, has been in place for nearly five years and will carry us through the next five years,” Greene said. “There were yearly planning meetings in which they checked in on it and it needed no changes.”
Lastly, Greene shared what she thought the three informal qualifications for a House representative were. “They need to know how to be responsive, which they can do by listening to information from a wide variety of places so they can make the best decision,” she said. “Secondly, they need to know what they believe in, so they can have a strong voice and an open mind. Thirdly, they have to be a team player. They have to know how to collaborate, how to build relationships, and how to cross the aisle and work with people who don’t agree with them.” Greene hopes to embody these values if elected.
This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on November 4, 2024
