By Dan Linehan

Ask the three candidates looking to represent District 21 about the state of Minnesota’s Legislature, and you’ll likely get two answers.

Incumbent state Sen. Dennis Frederickson says the Legislature learned its lesson in 2005 after a lengthy special session.

“I think that left a rather bad taste for everybody,” said the New Ulm Republican.

And he doesn’t think the body wastes time with petty squabbles over issues that people don’t care about.

“What might be considered a waste of time and effort (to some) might be a vital concern for another group of people,” he said.

But his two challengers, political newcomers Brian Bretzman, an Independent, and Democrat Margie Hoyt, would probably sound a different note.

In response to a question about the political tone in St. Paul, Bretzman, of Redwood Falls, drew a comparison to a feud in the late 19th century, which left more than a dozen dead in the Appalachian Mountains.

“Hatfield and McCoy party line voting has to stop,” he wrote in response to a Free Press questionnaire.

For Hoyt, a Madelia resident, the answer to government shutdowns and special sessions, she wrote, would be to “remove ideology from governance, restore sanity, exercise reasonableness and start fulfilling the duties in the Preamble of the Constitution.”

District 21 includes the cities of Marshall, Redwood Falls and New Ulm and parts of Watonwan, Brown, Redwood and Lyon counties.

All three candidates agree on some of the issues, including the method of funding transportation, a hesitance to raise statewide taxes to provide local property-tax relief and the need to hold down tuition increases.

Transportation upgrades ought to be funded now, they agreed, not by taking out loans and paying debt later.

“I find it disingenuous for anyone to speak of fiscal responsibility and then advocate for borrowing money that requires an additional tax burden to pay the interest,” Hoyt wrote.

Frederickson said he’d prefer the Legislature pays for transportation as it completes the upgrades but said it’s sometimes necessary to resort to borrowing money.

None of the candidates were too keen on raising taxes for one unit of government — the state — to cut down on taxes at another — the local level.

Bretzman, though, did write that local government aid from the state to cities ought to be restored, but not by raising taxes.

Finally, tuition increases are a sore topic for the candidates.

Hoyt said the hikes could be “mortgaging students’ futures” and Frederickson acknowledges “we are putting higher education out of the reach of some students.”

“With the high-priced good education in this state, you would think there would be someone educated enough to find a solution,” Bretzman wrote.

In terms of the candidates’ top issues, Bretzman and Frederickson aligned almost perfectly.

They both listed health care and education in the top three, while Frederickson rounded out the list with a concern about enforcing the federal Clean Water Act and Bretzman wrote about the protection of natural resources in general.

Hoyt’s biggest concern is the “lack of a moral compass and true representation for the people.”