Minnesota Secretary of State Campaign Speech

Minnesota,

we're still here.

We never left.

We're still in the diners that open at 5:00 in the morning,

still in the churches that have stood since past generations

built them,

still on the docks,

still in the fields,

still on our favorite biking and walking paths,

still in the factories, still in our police precincts,

still in the courtrooms,

still on the ice,

still in the iron in the ground that built this country.

We know what you are, Minnesota.

We know the way the light comes across a frozen lake in January,

or the way the sunlight glistens a certain golden light through the leaves of

autumn.

We know what it sounds like when the ice shifts in the night.

We know the smell of a pine forest after the first snow.

We know you.

This is what we're still here for.

But something changed here,

and most of us felt it,

not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Minnesotans.

Like something that belonged to us

was decided for us,

like we came home one day and the house had been rearranged

while we were gone.

These lakes are still ours.

These schools are still ours.

These streets, the ones our children walk home on,

the one our parents drove before us,

still our.

But when the people trusted to protect all of this, to keep the

records on us, to keep the process clean,

to keep the decision in our hands,

when they stopped answering to us,

you felt it, Minnesota.

We all did.

We are the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the Bold North, the

North Star State,

home to people who have never once confused endurance with surrender,

who have weathered every winter this place has thrown at them and come back to the

ice the following year,

despite how much we've been taken advantage of without

even a say.

My name is Tad Jude, and I'm running for Minnesota Secretary of

State because this office belongs to you.

This state belongs to you.

We never left.

It's time to come home,

Minnesota.