Bringing Down Costs for Families
This day and age, families are struggling to maintain a middle-class life, like the one Kristy was raised in. Families are pressed from all sides, whether from the costs of housing, education, transportation, healthcare, or food. We have to do more to ensure life is affordable for Minnesotans.
Developing Economic Security
To live with dignity and self-reliance, Minnesotans need opportunities in the workplace to thrive economically and pursue their life purpose. As a former higher education leader, Kristy understands that not everyone is destined for a four-year degree. Minnesota is home to many high-quality two-year institutions where tuition is affordable and a degree results in gainful employment. Trades and apprenticeships are a smart way to jumpstart a lucrative career or make a mid-career change.
Our district is home to several Fortune 500 companies, and we need to continue to attract major employers in the med tech fields into our district and state. From big business to small farms to entrepreneurship, we need to make sure the environment is right for our residents to find fulfilling work to support their families.
Promoting Public Safety
Residents in this district want to feel safe, and that is made possible when neighbors know one another and the first responders who are protecting them. Kristy supports public engagement efforts to deepen these community ties.
Our public safety professionals, whether police, firefighters, 911 dispatchers, or paramedics, see and hear devastating things on a regular basis. That means we need to ensure our first responders have quality retirement benefits, health insurance, and mental health resources to cultivate resilience. Recruitment and retention of public safety professionals depends on our ability to provide them with competitive compensation packages, work-life balance, and a constant connection to the intrinsic motivation that led them to choose these careers.
As a service provider in the criminal justice system and a public safety volunteer, Kristy recognizes we need effective and efficient prosecution, probation, and corrections processes that reduce criminal recidivism in our communities. We must protect victims of domestic violence, hold perpetrators accountable, fund shelters, and provide programming to break the cycle of domestic abuse. We need to protect Minnesotans from drug overdose by ensuring the widespread availability of Narcan and funding for initiatives to get dangerous drugs off the streets and away from our youth.
Kristy has long followed technological innovations in law enforcement. She supports new technologies capable of protecting both the public and first responders. District 37 is home to the Northwest Regional Public Safety Training Facility, where law enforcement personnel learn to respond to situations enabled by adaptable virtual reality or life-like scenarios with actors. Geography should not determine which of our Minnesota law enforcement agencies receive the training they deserve. We should have these types of facilities across the state.
Standing Up for Minnesota Veterans
Despite widespread public support for our veterans, service members, and their families, there are many ways the government has continued to fail our heroes. Kristy worked hard on legislation in the 2025 session to stop veteran benefits fraud perpetuated by “claim sharks” or businesses willing to charge steep fees, make false guarantees of benefits, access veterans’ bank accounts or private data, and cheat veterans out of their earned benefits. With all members of the Minnesota Commander’s Task Force on board with the legislation, this was a top priority for those organizations both at the state and federal level and will continue to be until these protections are passed into law.
Kristy wants to see the state do more to provide justice-involved veterans a second chance. Despite the passage of the Veterans Restorative Justice Act and subsequent changes to state statute, obstacles to accessing Veterans Treatment Courts remain. Whether the barrier is a lack of information, unreliable transportation, or not enough funding in smaller counties to set up Veterans Treatment Courts, some justice involved veterans are not being connected to the services they deserve.
As a county veterans service officer, Kristy has taken many VA disability claims for mental health conditions caused by sexual assault or harassment in the military. We need to protect women veterans in the Minnesota Army and Air National Guard from sexual assault and harassment. Military sexual trauma is a risk to state and national security because it alters the health and wellness of those impacted and often leads to their early departure from service.
Kristy has been a relentless advocate of charitable gambling tax cuts because veterans service organizations such as The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars account for 10% of the state’s charitable gambling revenues. Taxes of charitable gambling operations in Minnesota funded the US Bank Stadium. Now that it is paid off, small, local charities deserve meaningful tax cuts so they can carry out their charitable missions and distribute the funding directly into their communities to care for needs unmet by the government.
Investing in Local Infrastructure
As a city council member, Kristy is keenly aware of the challenges cities face with public infrastructure. Kristy consistently hears concerns about transit connectivity, specifically from seniors in our community who have difficulty getting to medical appointments. Suburban bus and micro-transit services often have limited service areas and are siloed. Parts of district 37 do not have reliable broadband infrastructure. They have been overlooked in funding processes because they are part of a metro county, while in reality, they are rural communities. Several District 37 cities are also facing a tremendous amount of population growth. State aid is critical to ensure road and bridge projects, public buildings, and municipal water and sewer facilities can be built to meet the needs of communities as they develop. Cities soon must all deal with the threat of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances also known as “forever chemicals) in the drinking water supply to protect the health of its residents. As a state senator, Kristy will be a strong partner to the cities in the district because she knows what it takes for local governments to deliver essential public services.
Rebuilding Trust and Transparency
Many residents lack trust in their government because it is not accessible to them. Kristy’s work in public service has placed her face to face with residents on a daily basis. As a council member, she has worked hard to ensure residents know that she is a phone call or an email away and that their voices matter. She supports making government transparent with the use of plain language and publicly available data that residents can access to understand how their tax dollars are used. She also encourages residents to attend public meetings of their governmental bodies, whether at city hall, county government centers, or the state capitol.