To the editor:

Minnesota needs congresspersons who are straight thinking, living their commitment to public service, and pursuing the common good of Southern Minnesotans. Dan Feehan fulfills all of these requirements.

Dan Feehan will talk straight about climate change. You will not hear him mouthing inanities like “The climate has been changing since God created the world.” Sorry, Jim Hagedorn, but that statement of yours doesn’t give much comfort.Not to nearby farmers who have just seen hurricane-force winds flattening their crops. Not to Minnesotans, who have witnessed so many 100- 500- and 1000- year storms they no longer know what to call them.

Dan won’t play the armchair scientist, but he will listen to the concerns of farmers and develop responses to changing climate based on the best science available. For Dan, a former military man with two combat tours in Iraq to his credit, that includes scientific reports like “Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army.” General Mark Milley, Trumps’ chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commissioned the report, but it strays pretty far from the President’s and Hagedorn’s own views. Last October it warned of climate-triggered power, water, and food systems collapse by mid-century and predicted: “Climate change is introducing an increased risk of infectious disease to the US population. It is increasingly not a matter of if but of when there will be a large outbreak.” Before long that last prediction came true.

In Southern Minnesota, with tens of thousands of health care workers and COVID-19 hotspots in our food processing regions, we see two sides of this crisis. As with climate change Dan Feehan will listen to the experts. For the re-opening, but struggling economy, for students and teachers going back to school, especially in person, for the protection of young and old, good information is essential. Dan knows that includes some of the things that Congressman Hagedorn has dismissed to the point where Facebook had to take down one of his posts for misinformation.

In contrast to that, Dan showed real leadership in a July 16 Zoom meeting on the pandemic. Four medical professionals joined Dan in a question-and-answer teach-in. Dan impressed me as one who can deliver on what these experts said they need most from the country’s leaders. In that one-hour session Dan showed that he has the ability to “explain why we’re doing challenging things and why they are the right things to do.”

Dan Feehan is the right leader for Southern Minnesota in these tough times.

Jack Hartjes

Springfield