After calling Minnesota home for more than 50 years, my husband, Bill, and I made the difficult decision to leave our beloved state and move to Florida in 2023. Our story is one of disillusionment with the changing political landscape and a search for freedom in a state that aligns with our values.
We've built our lives in Minnesota for decades — raising seven children, running a successful small business, running for state office — and weathering a gradual shift toward more liberal policies. But the events of 2020 marked a turning point.
Our state's destructive COVID-19 policies, response to the George Floyd riots, and aggressive promotion of transgenderism and an alternative lifestyle agenda in our public schools have left the Minnesota we once loved unrecognizable to us.
Gov. Tim Walz's (D) response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots has reminded us how dramatically Minnesota has changed. The unnecessary and scientifically unproven orders, fear-mongering, and waste of taxpayer money have been alarming.
A typical example of this waste is Spent $6.9 million Funds were pumped into a temporary morgue that was never used and later sold for a loss of $1.25 million – funds that would have been better spent providing vital medical resources to Minnesotans.
Walz's draconian school closures have had serious negative effects on children's education and mental health, and they have led to LGBTQ topics increasingly being pushed in public schools, often without parental consent or involvement.
for example, Minnesota Department of Education Toolkit The new guidelines, aimed at providing a safe and supportive school environment for transgender and gender non-conforming students, have raised concerns among many parents about age-inappropriate content and parental rights. It is clear that the toolkit and similar policies are being driven by a small ideological group, and those who disagree are increasingly being silenced.
In a final effort to change things, I am running for State Representative in 2022. With the defeat of nearly every Republican in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, I realize that Minnesota is no longer a place for conservative, freedom-loving, anti-abortion middle-class people like us. Our state, once the “Minnesota is the Good State,” has morphed into an ideologically driven bastion of left-wing, no-tax, government-control policies.
The tax burden on Minnesotans has been steadily increasing. The state currently ranks sixth highest. Our state and local tax collections per capita are among the highest in the nation. This heavy tax burden, combined with policies we don't agree with, made it increasingly difficult for us to justify staying.
We can no longer allow our tax dollars to serve the immoral whims of Walz's far-left Democratic Party. Wasteful Investments in various projects that provide little to no benefit to taxpayers only made us more frustrated. And we weren't the only ones. From mid-2021 to mid-2022, according to Census Bureau data, Minnesota has 19,400 residents The figure for the previous year was 13,500, meaning that a total of about 33,000 residents were displaced over the two-year period.
Leaving my adult children behind was difficult, but I knew we would prepare a better place for them if they too decided to leave a state that no longer put the well-being of all its citizens first.
Our move was bittersweet but necessary. With new leadership, we may be able to find our place again in the Minnesota we once called home, but for now we are comforted to be in a state that respects our values and individual freedoms.
It's a tragic day when longtime residents are forced to leave their home due to political differences, but to us, and likely many others, Minnesota today is a very different state than the one we once loved.
We hope that by sharing our story, we can shed light on the reasons behind the exodus of conservative Minnesotans and inspire change in this land of 10,000 lakes.
Jacqueline Schroeder was a candidate for State Representative in the Minnesota House of Representatives' 42B district.
