Our guest contributor this week is DFL-endorsed candidate Trina Swanson. For her, running for Congress has never been about what she can gain from the position. Rather, it has encompassed her experience, integrity and desire to fulfill its responsibilities and put its power back to work for the people of Minnesota’s Eighth District.
And that distinction matters.
A seat in Congress is not a prize for mastering the right talking points. It isn’t a vehicle for personal ambition, or a career change to try on for size when other pursuits have not worked out. Elected office is a public trust, solemnized by an oath to faithfully discharge its duties and remain worthy of the people’s confidence.
Those seeking that trust must bring more than simply a desire to hold office. They need the experience to govern, the courage to make difficult decisions, a nuanced understanding of the district’s people and their unique needs and aspirations, concrete solutions to the challenges they face, and the willingness to fight for the people they represent, even when doing so is difficult or comes at a great personal cost.
Trina has spent her entire career demonstrating that exact kind of commitment. During her 25 years of federal service, including senior responsibilities with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, she worked nonpartisanly under four presidents, confronting complex humanitarian, immigration, and national security challenges at home and abroad. She also understands that public service is demanding, frequently unrecognized, and sometimes deeply personal.
When Trina was asked to compromise the ethical principles that had guided her career, she refused. She chose to uphold her oath and accepted a significant reduction to her retirement benefits rather than participate willingly and transactionally in a system that appeared to grant special treatment to the well-connected while imposing harsh consequences on everyone else.
At a single, consequential moment, she chose integrity over personal advantage.
That is why we are proud to endorse Trina Swanson to represent Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, and we find ourselves in good company: Trina has earned the union endorsement of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, whose approximately 18,000 members understand the rigor genuine public service requires. And just this week, U.S. Representative Betty McCollum and U.S. Senator Tina Smith have endorsed Trina, as well. These highly respected public servants recognize in Trina what we do: that she possesses the experience, integrity, and commitment required to place service and the people she represents ahead of personal ambition.
Here, in her own words, Trina offers more than a collection of campaign themes. She presents concrete, actionable proposals addressing health care, affordability, rural communities, tariffs, government accountability, and the concentration of political and economic power. Perhaps most importantly, her ideas are grounded in her working-class upbringing in Hermantown, her parents’ union membership, decades spent learning how government works and how to make it work better for everyone.
Trina is the most experienced and demonstrably qualified candidate in this primary. She is not asking voters to send her to Washington for the title of Congresswoman. She is asking for the opportunity to put her experience, judgment, integrity, and grit to work for Central and Northern Minnesota.
Her record shows that she is prepared to do the work, willing to bear its costs, and ready to serve the people of Minnesota’s Eighth District from her first day in office.
I grew up in Hermantown, Minnesota. My mother was a member of the United Steelworkers and worked 42 years as a nurse. My father was a union carpenter and later worked at the paper mill. They taught me that hard work in the United States wasn’t supposed to be just a way to scrape by. In the 80’s and 90’s, their hard work supplied our family dignity, health care, security, and enabled them to raise a daughter who could graduate law school and seek to give back to her country by serving it. Today, the crushing costs of basic necessities like housing, health care, childcare, education, groceries, and gas are transforming our country into one with noticeably less opportunity for most people, while the tiny population of the ultra-rich Epstein Billionaire class exploit our economic system and use their money to control the political system.
For 25 years, I served my country, outside the political spotlight, frequently in difficult situations and sometimes dangerous ones. I began my public service at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to support myself during college and law school, and later joined U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I served at home and overseas, led international operations, worked under four presidents, and helped manage humanitarian, immigration, and national security challenges.
I am proud of my record of public service. I suspected after Trump’s second term began that I would not be able to uphold my oath of office to protect the Constitution and stay within the bounds of the law and ethics. I was proven right within a matter of weeks when I was asked to “check on” a visa for an immigrant connected to a DOGE staffer. This was during the same time the Administration was hurtling towards a reckless and dangerous immigration enforcement push to deport immigrants. It’s just one more example of Billionaires like Trump and Musk exploiting the system to help their enablers while other people are made to suffer. Rather than violate my ethical principles, I accepted the opportunity to retire early despite a substantial reduction to my pension.
I was lucky to have this opportunity, because at least I kept my healthcare benefits. I am well aware that my ability to have even a small pension and healthcare benefits are a direct result of union struggles generations ago. To all of them, and all of the union members reading this: Thank you. Public servants aren’t pampered because they have these securities. Every worker in America who doesn’t is not getting a fair share of the economy they have made the wealthiest in the world.
This disparity was made painfully clear to me in 2018. My parents had planned carefully. When my father retired from the paper mill due to his body struggling with shiftwork, they were still ok, because my mom had a good job with good benefits; and she would continue working until they reached 65 and could receive Medicare. This was a solid plan. But after 42 years of nursing my mother suffered a stroke, and a lifetime of hard work and playing by the rules came undone.
When my mother was still recovering in the same hospital where she worked, her employment was terminated and her health insurance along with it, because she had run out of leave. As I’ve traveled the 21 counties of MN-8 and spoken with hundreds of voters, I’ve heard similar and worse stories.
I am running because a healthcare system that abandons people when they need healthcare is not a system that should be defended. It doesn’t just need a few tweaks or adjustments. It needs a massive overhaul. My goal in Congress will be to create a system that prioritizes a healthy populace over corporate profits and provides coverage to all Americans.
Lack of universal health insurance coverage is not the only problem. Health care is basic community infrastructure, but some communities, like many in the rural areas of MN-8, simply don’t have enough population to make healthcare a profitable enterprise. This is especially true for specialty care like obstetricians, oncologists, and geriatric specialists. Even our citizens who are fortunate enough to have good health insurance are driving hours for care, and after the effects of Stauber and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill kick in over the next two years, the Medicaid funding many of our existing facilities rely upon will be reduced, threatening their ability to stay open. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Send me to Congress, and I will fight to protect Medicare and Medicaid, lower prescription drug costs, strengthen support for rural hospitals and clinics, expand the health care workforce, and make coverage more affordable and dependable. These are practical goals with direct consequences for families. I will fight for universal health care. I will not cease in these efforts until every American has accessible, quality healthcare regardless of their employer, age, or zip code.
Healthcare isn’t the only problem our country is facing. Prices for basic necessities are out of control. After COVID the entire world saw a spike in prices. There were lots of reasons, one being pent-up demand from two years of restricted activities, another being the monetary policies put into place by nations around the world to keep the global economy afloat in an unprecedented crisis. In the US the situation was bad, but after a few rough years, inflation had declined over 67% from its peak by the time Biden left office. All signs indicated the inflation rate would keep declining to the 2% target if we just maintained our course. Biden’s economic policy was delivering the “soft landing” Republicans told us would be impossible. Almost immediately upon taking office Trump enacted a series of reckless, nonsensical, and inflationary economic policies, and as a direct result, today we are seeing a resurgence in inflation. Allowing AI data centers to explode unregulated across the country has led to massive increases in utility bills. Unnecessary military adventurism is leading to increased gas and fertilizer prices, resulting in increased costs for just about everything. Chaotic tariff regimes are running up our bills even higher to the tune of $1700 per family over their first year.
These policies are not a hard but necessary response to a global crisis. They are the result of the crisis in Washington, D.C. caused by a Republican Congress utterly unwilling to stand up to Trump. We must not ignore that Republicans in Congress like Pete Stauber enable and support these policies, because pleasing their boss in the White House is more important than doing what they know is right for their constituents. At Farmfest this week, sitting right next to me, Pete Stauber had the gall to talk about needing to get rid of tariffs and the importance of agricultural markets in Canada despite refusing to use his vote in Congress to support these policies. He says the right thing on the campaign trail, but he wasn’t elected to tell people at Farmfest what they WANT to hear. He was elected to tell Congress, his party bosses, and the President what they NEED to hear.
The people of MN-8 will hold him accountable in November.
As a member of Congress, I will fight to enact a series of politically attainable policies that will provide immediate economic relief to families in Minnesota.
Reinstate the ACA subsidies cut by Stauber to prevent premiums from increasing almost $200 per month next year.
Create large tax incentives for homebuilders who build homes and sell them directly to homebuyers for less than the local median price.
Create a national partnership between the federal government and each state to implement one year of free preschool for every American child.
End the war in Iran to reduce the price of fuel and fertilizer.
End Trump’s chaotic tariff policy and replace it with a fair system that benefits American industries vital to national security such as metal ore mining and production without destroying global supply chains and foreign markets for our farm products.
Require Medicare to negotiate ALL drug prices directly with producers and make those prices available to all Americans.
I will be only 1 of 435 representatives. Getting legislation enacted requires more than reciting talking points. It takes deep expertise and requires working to build and lead new coalitions with people with 435 different agendas. I am the only candidate in this race that has the experience and proven capability to lead large organizations of diverse people. I am the only candidate with any experience determining the practical effects of legislation and enacting it. I am the only candidate with a deep understanding of how the federal government operates and how it must be changed. It took decades for me to acquire this experience, and I am ready to deploy it on behalf of Central and Northern Minnesota.
The economy is important but there are other issues Minnesotans care about:
Protecting the Boundary Waters and supporting our vital mining industry.
I support mining and miners when a thorough regulatory process informed by expert scientists say it can be done safely.
At the same time, I will not back down from my belief that the unique nature of the BWCA makes it too vulnerable and too irreparable to risk mining in its immediate watershed.
Department of Homeland Security oversight, reform, and bringing accountability to any government employee who has violated the law or policy.
Oversight and accountability for the Trump Administration. Congress should be a check on the President, not a blank check.
Campaign finance reform. Our political system is broken. Corporations are not people and Epstein Billionaires spending hundreds of millions of dollars is not free speech. We need hard caps across total spending in each election cycle regardless of where the money is coming from.
Term limits and mandatory retirement ages of all federally elected officials and federal judges.
I am running because I believe Congress should be a place where serious people do the serious work of governing, solving problems, conducting real oversight, and holding power accountable, rather than a stage for partisan performance. My career in federal service taught me how government functions, how it fails, and how it can be made to work better for the people it is meant to serve. I will work for a Congress that does its job, writing laws, conducting oversight, and holding any president accountable, regardless of party. I still believe in what this country stands for, and what this country can be, and I ask for your vote so we can work to build an economy and a government that works for everyone.
YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE. USE IT.
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