Wednesday night, the League of Women Voters’ St. Cloud Chapter hosted a candidate forum at the St. Cloud City Council Chambers. While a number of topics were discussed, this post will focus on the empty answers of Dan Wolgamott, the DFL-endorsed candidate running against Tama Theis.
First, it’s important to mention that all of the questions were from the audience. Now that that’s addressed, let’s get to one of the patterns that emerged from Wolgamott. A half hour into the debate, it became obvious that Wolgamott was pretending to be all things to all people. In responding to a person’s question, he’d thank them for the question before telling them that the issue was a priority for him that he felt personally attached to for one reason or another.
Apparently, everything is a priority with Wolgamott. Apparently, Mr. Wolgamott hasn’t figured it out that, if everything’s a priority, nothing is a priority.
Another facet of the Wolgamott be-all-things-to-everybody strategy was how government involvement was critical to the success of everything. He criticized Tama Theis for not voting for the K-12 Education bill, something that I’ll return to in a bit. He said that businesses were important before quickly returning to advocating for more government ‘investments.’
Wolgamott said that it was a shame they didn’t build Northstar all the way to St. Cloud. He declared that he’d vote to raise taxes to fund “a comprehensive transportation system.” He’s for more money for St. Cloud schools.
In short, Wolgamott’s agenda could be described as the ‘No-DFL-Special-Interest-Group-Left-Behind’ agenda.
Tama Theis’s response to Wolgamott’s criticism about not voting for the K-12 bill was that the bill stripped out the student accountability requirements and that it stripped out the basic skills test for teachers. Theis continued, saying that she serves on the House Higher Ed Committee. She said that one of the things they struggle with on that committee is the fact that many students are accepted into college that aren’t prepared for college.
She then said that the goal shouldn’t be to graduate more students from high school but to prepare them for college.
That answer shut down Mr. Wolgamott’s trip through Wonderland in a hurry.
My impression of Mr. Wolgamott is that he is a typical Democrat candidate who is a smooth talker and will agree with everybody about everything. Also government is the first answer to all problems. Even when asked to not promote more education as the answer to the lack of good private sector jobs, he went there anyway.