DFL State House candidates discuss race to represent Moorhead, Oakport Township

The primary is on Tuesday and whoever wins will go against Republican Edwin Hahn in November.

MOORHEAD, Minn. – Heather Keeler is a native of Lake Andes, South Dakota and is the vice chair of the Moorhead Human Rights Commission.

She says growing up not seeing people who look like her in positions of power inspired her to take matters into her own hands.

“I need to have the courage to step up. We need to be in these tables of conversation, we need to have inclusive decision making,” Keeler said.

Chuck Hendrickson is a native of Warroad, Minnesota, but has called Moorhead home for the last 17 years.

He is a Moorhead City Council Member.

His dad was Mayor of his hometown of Warroad, Minnesota for 10 years and his mom was a county DFL Party Chairwoman.

“So, I followed in their footsteps and they thought me a lot of valuable lessons. You know, public service is the best way to serve your community and serve this country. So, I took that to heart and I’ve been doing it for seven years now,” Hendrickson said.

Keeler and Hendrickson have different priorities on what they would take on first if elected.

For Hendrickson, it’s dealing with COVID-19 and how it’s affecting the community.

“How are people going to survive? How are businesses going to survive? So, we need to tackle that,” he adds.

He adds infrastructure and creating a better downtown is also an issue he sees as a priority.

Keeler would like to focus on educational equity.

“In our community we’ve seen that impact us pretty dramatically, both with cuts just from support staff in our K-12 system, but also massive cuts in our higher education system,” Keeler said.

She would also like to focus on quality healthcare for everyone.

Due to COVID-19, both candidates say they’ve had to rely on social media and phone calls to connect with voters.

Here is the link to register.