VERMILION RESERVATION— Two DFLers in hot contests for top political office attended a listening session here on Monday. Joe Radinovich, who is seeking to replace Eighth District Congressman Rick Nolan and Peggy Flanagan, who is running as lieutenant governor with Tim Walz, were at Fortune Bay Resort Casino as part of a push by the DFL to visit every Native American reservation in the state before Election Day.

Around 20 people attended the hour-long event.

“We’re very honored to have Joe and Peggy to be with us today,” Tribal Chair Cathy Chavers said. “I am really honored to have them at Bois Forte. We know where they are at, we don’t always know where the Republicans are at, which isn’t good for Bois Forte.”

Flanagan, who is herself a member of the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota, has used her roots to frame many of the campaign issues including the environment.

“Everything that I have done in the Legislature with the environment has been through treaty rights,” she said. “If you look at issues through that lens, we will get it right. We want to make the state 100-percent renewable.”

Flanagan, who is a supporter of mining, did not say whether she was in support of the proposed copper-nickel mining on the Range, but did say she believed environmental stability and healthy families were connected issues, citing the recent United Nations report on climate change, which she views as a dire warning for world.

“We need to build trust in the capacity for us to be a world leader when it comes to this issue,” Radinovich said. “The problem is that we (the United States) shared a vision with people around the world, and then we had an administration that reversed that.”

Radinovich said voters needed to stop looking at immediate issues and look at the bigger, long-term picture and understand that certain jobs in all mining sectors were not sustainable in the future because of corporate incentives to automate more of the operations.

“The dilemma here is that there are people who are in fear of Democrats getting control and eliminating jobs in non-renewable sectors,” he said. “The challenge is how do we move with our partners, people who are very concerned with immediate problems.” He noted that changes in the economy are inevitable but can be addressed by investing in retraining to help people qualify for jobs in growing sectors. “Changes in the economy wouldn’t be so bad if people knew they could go back and be educated to do something else,” he said.

Radinovich said negative long-term economic effects of mining job losses would go away if the government directed more money into education giving access to job skills. He said his idea wasn’t a DFL one and pointed to Republican plans in Tennessee that would do the same.

On the topic of education, Flanagan pointed to schools in the state’s southern half which already employ a variety of vocational/technical school opportunities, which give students a head start on vocational careers by completing much of their training while still in high school.

She added the state should encourage the expansion of apprenticeships and cooperative programs.

Radinovich said investments in education had to go beyond high school and post-secondary and should begin as soon as a child is ready for school.

He also criticized federal GOP tax cuts passed last year and said politicians who cut taxes shouldn’t complain there is no money for the government to spend.

Monday’s campaign stop was one of three stops of the Radinovich campaign. The candidate also stopped at Fond du Lac College in Cloquet and in Deer River.