My endorsement for Senator Lyle Koenen

Senator Lyle Koenen outside the Willmar DFL office last Friday.

Senator Lyle Koenen is a good friend of mine who I've known since 2000, when we both ran for state offices in western/west central Minnesota. I met up with him last Friday at the DFL office in Willmar while I was grabbing Collin Peterson and Amy Klobuchar highway signs to add to my family's farm property in rural Sunburg/Norway Lake.

Koenen was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, District 20B, in 2002 and served there until being elected to the Minnesota Senate in 2012 to fill the term of the late Gary Kubly (DFL-Granite Falls).

Koenen is now running for Senate District 17, which includes all of northern Kandiyohi County, as well as all of Swift, Chippewa and Renville counties. He is a former dairy farmer and a native of Clara City. While serving in the Minnesota House and now Senate, Koenen also works part-time as a milk truck relief driver. He is married to Sandy, who is a bus driver for the MACCRAY school district, and their children are recent MACCRAY graduates.

I am proud to endorse Koenen for senate. He's a plain-spoken, honest, down to earth guy with rural Minnesota's best interests at heart. He knows what it's like to get dirt under his fingernails, what it means to work a long, hard day doing labor that adds aches and pains in one's body all while trying to operate a business and provide a good lifestyle for your family. He is cut from the same cloth as my late father was, always willing to give the shirt off your own back to your neighbor in need without complaint.

His opponent is Senator Joe Gimse of Willmar.