LETTER to the Editor

To The Cottage Grove Journal, I want to thank State Representative Rod Hamilton for responding to my piece. However, what I stated in the letter that he denounced as drivel is certainly not.

One year ago, I sent a massive amount of information and evidence to the Minnesota state redistricting panel against State representative Keith Franke and the Republican House Caucus on Gerrymandering. If it was drivel, then the panel would have just thrown my evidence out and given Franke the same district or even a safer Republican district. Instead, the courts made Franke’s even more Democratic before and even put him in the same district as an eighteen year veteran Democratic incumbent in Rick Hansen. If Hamilton got what he voted for in 2011, Saint Paul Park (where Franke lives) would be represented by current Democratic representative Jay Xiong and Franke would have never been elected to the state house given all the heavy Democratic precincts that would have been thrown in. But let’s say hypothetically that Franke was battling for Washington County Commissioner against former State Representative John Kriesel which was the reason for this gerrymandering in order to keep Kriesel in office. Given Hamilton’s 2011 votes, he would be telling people to vote for Kriesel and talk about all the great things Kriesel has done in the state house and not to vote for Franke. In fact, almost every Republican would be telling voters to vote for Kriesel instead of Franke. That is what my drivel was all about. William Cory Labovitch South Saint Paul, Mn