OHS student heads to Girls Nation in D.C.

Quick: Who is Liz Cheney?

You have 45 seconds to think about it – no cheating with Google – and your answer should include all you know about her in a 2-minute limit.

Can you do it? Is your response thorough and, most importantly, accurate?

Many adults with an eye on current affairs might be familiar with the name … doesn’t she do something with the Jan. 6 committee? Is she related to Dick Cheney?

But if you’re Kinzie Carlson, on stage at a statewide competition, your answer would go something like this:

“I mentioned how she is a Republican Congresswoman who is more liberal than her conservative father, who is also in politics. I described her involvement in the January 6 Congressional hearings. I said that I admired her commitment to political accountability and how she is a model for working with those who disagree with you. Then, I was stumped. I still had some time left of my two minutes, and I had run out of things to say.”

It was enough – more than enough – to put her in the top five of the Girls State competition; her interview with the Girls State Board sealed the deal.

Carlson is now heading to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C., as Minnesota’s Senior Senator.

That means she took the top spot.

Courtney Graves, of Anoka, is the Junior Senator. She will also travel to Washington, D.C.

Girls State is an American Legion Auxiliary program designed to empower and educate young women in local and state government. It’s non-political, non-partisan and non-religious, with a focus on leadership.

Participants must have just finished their junior year in high school.

Carlson, who will be a senior at Owatonna High School, fits the bill.

“I’ve been interested in public policy, news and government from a very young age,” she said.

So much so, she wrote to President Barack Obama, asking him to solve homelessness in Duluth after her family donated to a food shelf there. She is the daughter of Aaron and Shannon Carlson.

“Obviously, 8-year-old Kinzie didn’t quite understand how politics worked yet,” Carlson said, “but since then, I’ve learned a lot.”

She took an AP political science class as a junior; is captain and an attorney on the Owatonna mock trial team; a captain of the Owatonna speech team; a member of National Honor Society, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Student Council; and is on the robotics team, girls’ swim and dive team and yearbook staff, among much more.

So back to the Liz Cheney question.

It was the third of four steps in the application to Girls Nation; the first was to write a federal bill. Carlson’s was about raising the purchase age of semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21.

Next was a written test, and “thankfully, most of the test questions were all topics I was familiar with” from her AP poli-sci class, she said.

The committee selected the top 12 from the first two steps; Carlson was one of them. Each girl then had to answer a single question – the same one for each girl. They pulled numbers from a bowl, dictating the order.

Carlson chose 12, so was the last to go. She couldn’t hear the others’ answers but knew it would be about current events.

“I was expecting a question like, ‘where did monkeypox originate and explain its history,’ or ‘what is the state of Brexit?’ or ‘what is happening in Ukraine today?’, so I was shocked” when it turned out to be about Cheney, Carlson said.

She took the entire 45 seconds allowed to think about the answer, “not to think of my answer, but instead, to think about how funny it was that I had spent all my free time preparing for if I made it to this stage – to be asked a question none of my research helped me know,” Carlson said.

“I already knew who Liz Cheney was.”

She left the stage after answering – nearly forgetting to give her name – but as the only one who had gotten the answer fully correct.

Carlson credits her Legion councilor and her Girls State assistant, as well as her “passion for what Girls State is established to educate.”

Cheryl Bulver, the Girls State chairwoman for the Owatonna American Legion Auxiliary, believes Carlson is the first national attendee from Owatonna – and it’s Carlson’s first trip to Washington, D.C.

“I look forward to all of the learning opportunities, tours and speakers we’ll hear from,” Carlson said. “I hope to have the opportunity to sit down with Congresspeople and discuss what life looks like as an elected official and the bills that are currently being worked on – and discuss my ideas, if possible.”

She knows changes need to be made.

“Girls State grew my view on how to work with people who might not agree with you,” she said. “In reality, we are, as Americans, more similar than we are different. We need to remember … we should be on the same side, the side of helping our country, and all of the people within, no matter race, sexuality, gender, religion or otherwise. We are part of something bigger.”

While Carlson is the first Owatonnan to go to Girls Nation, she wasn’t the first in her family to go to Girls State.

“My great-grandmother went the summer after her junior year,” and stayed friends with many of the young women she met there, Carlson said.

“She was ecstatic when I told her I would be following in her footsteps.”

Girls Nation will run from July 23-30.