Ag secretary says farmers need Gutknecht

Mark Fischenich

MANKATO — Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns made a campaign stop in Mankato on behalf of Congressman Gil Gutknecht Tuesday, asking farm country voters to remember on Nov. 7 that times are good for farmers.

Pointing to high commodity prices, a growing renewable energy industry and expanded foreign trade opportunities, Johanns said the Republican-controlled federal government deserves some credit from farm-state voters.

“That doesn’t happen accidentally,” the former Nebraska governor said. “It doesn’t happen because someone wishes it would happen. ... We’re starting to see the benefits of that very, very good farm policy.”

Gutknecht, a Rochester Republican seeking his seventh term in Congress, noted that he has rising seniority on the House Agriculture Committee and is chairman of a subcommittee that has influence on renewable energy and other rural issues. That’s important in south-central Minnesota.

“If you draw a 200-mile radius around Mankato, Minnesota, it really is the center of what is happening with renewable energy in the whole United States,” Gutknecht said.

With Congress set to begin writing a new multi-year farm bill next year, Johanns suggested farmers should vote pragmatically in two weeks and elect a tenured congressman such as Gutknecht.

“You desperately need somebody who can make the case in the committee (for southern Minnesota’s interests),” Johanns said. “You also need the person who can make the case on the House floor.”

Democratic challenger Tim Walz, whose aggressive campaign has made the 1st District race close enough to attract national Republican campaigners such as Johanns, agrees that the current farm policy is basically a good one. Walz, a Mankato school teacher, also agrees that farmers should vote strategically on Nov. 7.

Electing the 15 additional Democrats needed to make the Democrats the majority party in the House will put Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson in the chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee, Walz said. He would replace Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte as chairman.

“To move the agriculture committee chair out of the south and into the heartland, there’s no doubt” that would be good news for Midwestern farmers and the subsidy programs that help them, he said.

Walz, along with many political analysts, is predicting that Democrats will take control of the House in this year’s mid-term election. That would put Gutknecht in the minority, a position where his seniority will bring less influence — less influence than Walz said he would have as a member of the majority Democrats on the committee.

And Walz said he will be on the committee.

“Collin Peterson has guaranteed me a spot on the agriculture committee, and he’ll announce that in the next few days in Mankato,” Walz said.

But Johanns and Gutknecht said farmers should think about more than who runs the ag committee when considering whether to elect Democrats. Both said that Democratic control of the House would bring chairmen and chairwomen that would push to raise taxes.

“There’s the whole package there that, quite honestly, just worries the living daylights out of me,” Johanns said.

Walz said Americans, including farmers, are ready for change in Washington — change in the Iraq war strategy, health care policy and deficit spending.

Republicans are reduced to using scare tactics on voters such as false suggestions of middle-class tax increases, he said.

Under his tax proposals, farmers and other Minnesotans making less than $330,000 a year would benefit, Walz said.