A former Minnesota bar owner who now commutes two hours each day to sell beer in neighboring Wisconsin said the state’s strict pandemic-era lockdowns have “devastated” local businesses and brought economic ruin to people who have stepped up to earn a living.
“I think he’s an evil man who has overstepped his role as governor. He’s taken away and destroyed small businesses. He’s ruined us,” Lisa Zaza, 52, told The Washington Post.
“I had to leave the state to be able to work legally and make a living.”
She opened Outpost Bar & Grill in Bay City, Wisconsin, in March 2022 after her business licenses for Alibi Drinkery in Lakeville and Froggy Bottoms River Pub and Lily Padio in Northfield were revoked.
The new location is about an hour’s drive from her home in Rosemont, Minnesota.
“I didn’t even know the governor’s name until he shut down the state,” said Zarza, a mother of three and grandmother of two who has lived in Minnesota since she was 7 years old.
She said that when stay-at-home orders and business closures were first implemented in March 2020, “I did everything I was supposed to do: I wore a mask, I socially distanced, I stayed home.”
But as the months passed and the state slowly reopened, salons, bars, and restaurants remained under Governor Walz’s closure orders, which were not fully lifted statewide until May 2021.
By October 2020, Zarza and his fellow bar owners had had enough and decided to defy the order.
“I stood up because he took away our rights. It was discrimination against a group of people, and we were one of them. He had no right to do what he did to us,” she fumed.
But this short-lived rebellion by local restaurateurs was quickly put down by the Walz administration.
“They threatened me with arrest and threatened me with fines. When the case was over, my lawsuit amounted to over $300,000, including attorney general’s fees. I filed for bankruptcy,” she said.
Meanwhile, most of the state continued to operate as usual, infuriating bar owners.
“Other stores, literally Target, Walmart, Home Depot. They were all 100% open. The same order that closed us also allowed all these other stores to reopen,” Zasa recalled.
“He has taken away from Americans and Minnesotans rights that they have no right to take away.”
Now her new location in America’s dairy country is thriving, thanks in part to “thousands of people” who have traveled from Minnesota and Wisconsin to support her.
But when she found out that Vice President Kamala Harris had chosen him as the Democratic nominee in this year’s election, the pain and hardship she’d experienced over the past few years came flooding back to her.
“I was brought to my knees and felt sick. I was literally sick to my stomach. It was a wake-up call for everything he’s done to our state. I cycled an hour to work and cried the whole way,” the pub owner said.
“Kamala made a big mistake by choosing him as her vice president. She thought a country farmer would be her vice president, but that wasn’t the case,” she added.
“I don’t want him running the country. God forbid.”
Zarza, meanwhile, welcomes the change of scenery.
“I love Wisconsin. I’m never going back to Minnesota. I’m going to live there for another seven months, but after that I never want to go to that state again.”
