Walz shines spotlight on Owatonna, OHS
Owatonna Mayor Tom Kuntz said it best:
“You can’t buy this kind of publicity.”
He was speaking of the bright light – and cameras and reporters – that accompanied Minnesota Governor Tim Walz when he delivered his annual State of the State address last week at Owatonna High School.
The school and the community were highlighted early and often in Walz’s speech.
A former teacher and coach at Mankato West High School, Walz said he and his wife, also a teacher, celebrated New Year’s Day not on Jan. 1, but when classes started each fall.
It meant hope, he said, and “that’s never been more true than it was here in Owatonna last fall, when the doors opened on this beautiful new building, a … symbol of this community’s commitment to its children.”
After touching on the wood, metal and engine shops, the nursing lab, and full commercial kitchen, Walz told the audience of about 300 that “this building is a factory, and what it manufactures are futures … But this building was designed not with the first day of school in mind, but rather, the last.
“Think about how many young people will walk out those doors each spring, full of passion and purpose, ready to make a contribution to this community and to the world …,” he said.
Many of the 200 or so legislators who attended were likely unfamiliar with the path to the new high school, so Walz gave them the abbreviated version.
“The old high school, while beautiful, was 100 years old, and people in the community had been talking about replacing it for decades,” he said. “But it wasn’t until a few years ago that leaders in the public and private sectors came together and decided it was time to stop talking and start building.”
The investments of Federated Insurance, Life Fitness, Mayo Clinic Health System, Viracon, Wenger Corporation, Wenger Foundation, and Gopher Sport were “not just for the good of their community,” Walz said, “but for the good of their future workforce.”
He compared “that small window of opportunity, that brief moment when the stars aligned” to politics.
“Most of the time, it’s incremental, frustrating, sometimes gridlocked altogether,” Walz said. “But every once in a while, you get an opportunity to make a whole lot of progress in a short amount of time. It happened here in Owatonna in 2019, and, after half a century of waiting and working, it happened in St. Paul in 2023.”
As he listed DFL priorities that cleared the capitol last year – free school meals for all kids, record education funding, carbon-free energy standards and affordable housing funding – he was interrupted several times by applause from the lawmakers.
Republican members could be seen shaking their heads at several of the items, specifically gun control.
Last year, lawmakers expanded background checks and passed a “red flag” law. Walz urged the passage of other bills, including safe storage requirements and tougher penalties for straw purchasers.
The speech also made a pitch for a proposed $989 million bonding bill for water infrastructure projects and affordable housing.
“I know we won’t agree on everything,” Walz said. “Safe streets we can agree on. Clean water we can agree on. Affordable housing, we can agree on.”
Kuntz said something very similar before the speech began.
“I got to do a lot with him when he was out in D.C.,” Kuntz said of Walz and his time as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, “and my claim to fame is, I got invited to the State of the Union address out there – by him.
“You don’t have to agree with everything,” he said, “but you need everyone to get things done. You have to be able to discuss things.”
Minnesota Rep. John Petersburg, R-Waseca, and Sen. John Jasinski, R-Faribault, of Districts 19B and 19, respectively, both made the trip down from St. Paul.
“It’s kind of nice to have it here in Owatonna,” Petersburg said after the address.
He said he agreed with Walz’s opening remarks about the importance of education, “but when he started getting into the core values that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party disagree on …”
Walz was at his most intense when speaking about the fertility struggles he and his wife Gwen experienced, a time when their "anxiety and frustration blotted out the sun."
The recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos created through in vitro fertilization should be considered children prompted many fertility clinics there to close their doors--leaving couples still trying to conceive without a way to access care.
"What those judges did was a direct attack on my family," Walz said. "My children, Gwen and I will not forget it. We will not forgive it. And neither will thousands of other moms and das across the state."
Petersburg said while he understood Walz's passion about fertility and family, "the abortion issue seems like it should be the same issue, but it's not."
There certainly is room for argument, Petersburg said, “but that’s one of those challenges when you have such diverse people living in the communities. How do you come together with common sense that everyone can agree with?”