To the Editor:
Once again, voters in CD3 must choose a representative for Congress.
The representative should be responsive to constituents and accountable for his representation. Our current representative, Erik Paulsen is neither. Since his election in 2008, he has refused to hold open town halls where anyone can ask a question and everyone can hear the answer. His preferred methods of avoiding constituents are “Congress on the Corner” events where it’s one on one, “Drive By Town Halls” where your phone rings and you find yourself on a conference call and country club and corporate locations where you aren’t invited.
I’ve called the congressman’s office many times during his term. I have never once gotten a straight answer from anyone. The staff never knows his position on any issue. Occasionally I get a letter that doesn’t answer any of my questions and is written in such an ambiguous way as to completely obscure whatever position he might actually have.
He is harder to find and pin down than Where’s Waldo.
As a citizen, I have to ask why Paulsen is so contemptuous of his constituents? Why does he seem to feel we have no right to know what positions he takes on issues? Why does he feel that a staff that knows and says nothing about his positions is in any way responsive to the people he represents? I’d ask voters, why would anyone vote for this guy?
There is, however, a way to know his positions, though it’s necessarily after the fact: watch his votes. Time after time he votes against the middle class and small business-preferring legislation that benefits the wealthiest people and large companies. Erik Paulsen flies under the radar, hoping you will not notice that he is a hard right Trump Republican who prefers to keep his constituents in the dark while he does the bidding of the 1 percent.
I think voters are hip to his tricks. It’s time for him to call in his chits for that fat lobbying job, because working people and small business owners in CD3 are fed up and want him out.
George F. Greene, Brooklyn Park
Brooklyn Park Sun-Post, December 27, 2017