CIVPAC endorses state Senator Matt Klein in the August 11 Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District.
Klein is seeking the open seat being vacated by Representative Angie Craig. His principal opponents are former state Senator Matt Little, who received the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsement, and state Representative Kaela Berg.
This is a comparative endorsement. Klein does not agree with CIVPAC on every issue, and we would not describe him as consistently market-oriented. We nevertheless believe he is the strongest candidate in the Democratic field and the one most likely to continue Craig’s tradition of pragmatic representation in a politically competitive district.
Klein is a physician who has served in the Minnesota Senate since 2017. His campaign emphasizes health care, reproductive freedom, agriculture, rural infrastructure, veterans and public education. He has represented communities in northern Dakota County and has experience addressing the mixture of suburban, exurban and rural concerns that defines the 2nd District.
His medical background would also bring useful expertise to Congress. Klein has worked at Mayo Clinic and Hennepin Healthcare and has made health policy a central part of his legislative career. His experience treating patients gives him a practical understanding of the costs, administrative complexity and access problems that affect American health care. It might help in oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, currently being mismanaged by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
CIVPAC has significant disagreements with Klein’s proposed solutions. He supported Minnesota’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board and its authority to impose payment limits. He favors allowing Medicare to negotiate all drug prices and has proposed a public health-insurance option, which he describes as a step toward health care for everyone. He also supported Minnesota’s requirement that electricity production become carbon-free by 2040. His objectives here may be noble but the methods fail to address trade-offs and incentives.
We are also uncomfortable with Klein’s promise to crack down on corporations allegedly “gouging consumers.” High prices and high profits do not establish wrongdoing. Government should act against fraud, collusion and the acquisition or exercise of monopoly power, but it should not ordinarily attempt to determine whether a price increase is warranted.
These disagreements are real. They do not, however, erase the substantial differences between Klein and his principal opponents.
Matt Little’s federal platform places him considerably farther from CIVPAC. He supports Medicare for All and expressly warns against incremental approaches to health-care reform. He proposes immediately reducing ICE funding and ultimately replacing the agency. Most troublingly, he calls for ending all United States military aid and weapons sales to Israel.
CIVPAC strongly supports appropriate restraints on immigration enforcement, constitutional protections for everyone within the United States and serious oversight of federal law-enforcement agencies. But those concerns do not justify hamstringing the government’s ability to enforce immigration law or treating the existence of ICE as the central problem.
We do not support ending all military assistance to Israel. The conduct of the Israeli government is properly subject to criticism, and American assistance should not be unconditional. But eliminating all military aid would endanger Israel’s ability to deter attacks by Iran and its proxies and would reduce rather than increase American influence over Israeli policy.
Kaela Berg represents an even more consistently left-wing alternative. Her platform includes Medicare for All, federal manufacture of generic drugs, especially restrictive treatment of private-equity investment in health care, breaking up pharmaceutical companies, banning large corporate landlords from purchasing single-family homes and using federal enforcement against companies accused of unnecessarily raising prices. She also opposes additional funding for ICE until the agency has been comprehensively rebuilt and supports halting weapons sales to Israel.
Berg’s economic program relies too heavily on government direction of prices, ownership and investment. Her rhetoric also too readily treats corporations, investors and profits as presumptively suspect.
Klein is not a perfect answer to those tendencies. He sometimes employs similar language and supports interventions that CIVPAC would oppose. But his overall record, professional experience and political approach suggest a greater willingness to deal pragmatically with competing interests and to represent voters outside the Democratic Party’s most committed left-wing constituencies.
That distinction matters in Minnesota’s 2nd District. The district extends from the southern Twin Cities suburbs into exurban and agricultural communities and contains large numbers of Democratic, Republican and independent voters. The Democratic nominee must be capable not merely of winning a primary but of representing a politically diverse constituency.
CIVPAC would prefer a candidate with a clearer commitment to competitive markets, more restrained federal spending and a less interventionist approach to prices and private enterprise. That candidate is not on this ballot.
Among the available choices, Matt Klein offers the best combination of experience, professional competence, pragmatism and general-election suitability.
CIVPAC endorses Matt Klein in the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District.