Are there racists & bigots in this country? Of course. Are there 67 million and counting? No. An idea on where the focus should be going forward... 1/

And on representing Middle America. Rural America has been left behind, and it might not be comfortable to admit...but they’re looking desperately for representation. Just how far behind are they? I’ll share our story, and while anecdotal - it provides context. 2/

My wife and I grew up in the same town of 5,000 in central, MN. Dad was an electrician & volunteer firefighter for 20 years, then city employee...Street Crew > Park Dept. Foreman etc. 3/

Mom was a Teller Supervisor at the local Norwest Bank until the Wells Fargo merger in ‘98 changed the culture and she left for Real Estate Agent/Broker freedom a few years later. 4/

I was the stereotypical kid in a blue collar family. Help jack of all trades dad with everything at all hours of the day. Start working 20 hrs/week minimum at age 12, and by 15 mom & dad were writing notes for me to skip school & go to work. 5/

“Work” for me at age 15 was modular housing set onto poured foundations via crane. Far preferable to the boredom of public school in middle America to 15 year old physical/visual learning me. Unsurprisingly & related - also far preferable to 30+ year old me today, but anyway.. 6/

Add in endless dirt bike/snowmobile exploration of the multi county region & some hockey in the winter - and my fate was set. Escape largely meaningless HS virtually unscathed & shoot for trade school. 7/

Fortunately, MN devotes some resources to Post Secondary Enrollment - so I was able to hammer out 15 credits of Gen Ed’s my senior year of HS. The 30 min one way drive to the local community college made the 3 day/week commitment just tolerable enough to keep my interest. 8/

The Gen Ed’s (& a few more) allowed me to turn my post HS 10 month Electrical Linework program at the reputable @dctc from a Diploma Certificate into an AAS Degree, I was off and running. 9/

More accolades should be given to my instructor & @MNRuralElectric who at the time allowed students to throw $100 and their best attempt at the first year Apprenticeship test. Take it & pass and you’d bypass the 1st year of bookwork in your impending 4 year Apprenticeship 10/

...that’s assuming you were hired at a Rural Elect Coop who partook in the MREA Career Development for Lineman Apprenticeship course. Fortunately for me I was, & 3 years into my 8 years at the REC one county to the west of where we grew up - I became a Journeyman Lineman. 11/

For my wife, similar parental story minus the school pain. Mom worked a few local jobs while fighting breast cancer for 14 years. Dad worked for the phone company, fixed PC’s, & later poured tons upon tons of concrete into early 2000’s IA & SD wind turbine foundations. 12/

Fortunately for both of us, my wife is both brilliant & a superior verbal/aural learner - so 4 more years at one of MN’s best private schools didn’t put her in jail or worse, as it likely would’ve me. 13/

She graduates, moves in with me (into the rural 1,400 sf house central MN house that I bought at age 19) & gets a local job in HR just as she wanted. She stays at it until an HR opportunity at Bobcat company opens up, where she’d interned during college... 14/

She happily accepts & stays until 2019, gaining an MBA along the way - on their dime, of course. By 2014 we’re both ready for more, so we move from central MN to Fargo ND. Bobcat corporate HQ in West Fargo was a logical career progression for her.. 15/

and a Distribution Control Center > Meter Tech > AMI DBA move was a logical career progression for me. Corp relocation was helpful on the move, although still only broke even on the $160K house. No prob, we had the best jobs in the county (& region) and were moving to a metro 16/

with what we’d later learn to be significant underemployment.
We buy half of a Twin Home ($160K) in Fargo, sell it two years later and build what turned out to be far too much house for the low paying jobs in this all too common metro scenario. 17/

I’m talking a middle of the road quality, $350K < 2,000 sf two-story. By far too much - I mean priced at what we built it for 2 years prior, this thing sits on the market for 16+ months. In the meantime, we head to the west coast - once again, fortunate for a corp relo. 18/

At this point our incomes are now sufficient to support our vacant ND home (that’s out of reach for most in the region, we learned) and our CA living expenses that are equal to or more than the house that we have sitting vacant. 19/

Somehow, the ND liability sells (to a former professional athlete turned Director at a local corp, for context) on 2-24-20. Whew. Look at the DJIA folks, 4 weeks later it’d dropped to 18,500...from 28,000 at time of sale. So... Why am I writing this? 20/

Because this is the reality, and we got out. We = a middle aged white couple with every possible advantage. Me, a 15 year utility employee (10 of those union) and my wife, an HR professional routinely progressing in her career with longevity yet career changes. 21/

I don’t say “we got out” to imply that everyone should, or that it’s a horrible place to live. The exact opposite is true, rural America is a great place to live and an even better place to raise a family. I want our children to have the agency that I had, 22/

the freedom to explore/create/think/build/do that’s critical to entrepreneurial pursuits is inherent to rural life. Certainly possible in my current metro scenario, but admittedly requires a far more focused effort. 23/

So what are the needs? A reasonable amount of financial freedom, transferable skills, economic certainty. We can’t have large swaths of people priced out of mobility. Ask my recently retired to AZ parents or Midwestern friends - there’s a ton of priced out going on. 24/

Where do midwesterners go when they do move/retire? Take a look, while understanding how much less their savings/retirement has been built on. My friends & family can’t fathom our living costs, and that’s not an exaggeration. They need representation & opportunity, terribly. /end