Winona

It was an emotional morning - Senator Sharon Erickson-Ropes took Al through some of the areas in south east Minnesota that were hit hardest by the floods late this summer. Al got a chance to talk with these families, hear their stories, and learn how the federal government could be doing more to help them (like a single point of contact at FEMA for each community).After the listening session, Al got to have homemade lefse and chili with Sen. Erickson-Ropes at her absolutely lovely home. Then we headed off to Winona State University, where Al could share some of what he learned that morning with the group assembled there. It was a concerned, informed crowd of over 100 from all over the area - frustrated with what they’d seen in their towns, and frustrated at the inadequate response to their tragedy. But they were resilient, even optimistic, and Al left with yet another reason to want to serve Minnesotans.

Albert Lea

We pulled into Albert Lea with enough minutes to spare that we grabbed dinner to go from the Green Mill (Al got the walleye. Again.) and parked ourselves in the friendliest Starbucks ever to get ready for the rally.

As Al was putting the finishing touches on his speech, a man walked over and said “I’m a Republican. And I’m voting for you.” When Al asked him why, he said “because that guy [we can only assume he meant Senator Coleman] has no integrity. I don’t agree with you all the time, but you’ve got integrity.”

And that was the beginning of Albert Lea.

The Ramada Inn held close to 100 DFLers who’d come out to hear Al speak. And he told them about his own roots in the community, how his dad had moved the family out to Albert Lea when Al was four - to open a quilting factory. The factory failed (as Al’s dad said, “the railroad ran through Albert Lea, but it wouldn’t stop.”) and they moved up to St. Louis Park.

After the speech, Al met with a few of the audience members who knew his family, and his old next door neighbor, Mr. Buzbee, the farmer who four-year-old Al talked to for hours on the porch on summer afternoons. The speech lasted probably 30 minutes. But it was over an hour before the room cleared out afterward, and Al stayed to shake every single hand, and then pulled up a chair to chat with the remaining guests.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 14:42 and is filed under From the Trail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.