Letters: Vote for someone who will cooperate

When it is time for us to exercise our civic duty and vote each Election Day, we all need to take time to decide which candidates will receive our precious votes. It is our duty to gather accurate information, weigh that with our beliefs, and cast our votes.

Sometimes we focus on a particular issue, because we want to vote only for someone who believes exactly as we believe. But when we send someone to the legislature, we need to remember that person has to work with all of the other legislators, and that every single issue is bound by difficulties and constraints we may not appreciate. Also, if we elect only single-issue candidates, then we find our legislature entangled with lawmakers who cannot work together because they will not listen to each other, and no one can back down without upsetting their constituents.

In a democratic republic, we do not cast our votes for candidates to do our bidding. We vote for people who are best able to take on the challenge of working together with others to create and maintain a system of government that meets the needs of us all. I want to send people to St. Paul with the confidence that they will work honestly and wholeheartedly for the best of all of the citizens of our community.

I talked to Pete Radosevich at the fair and heard him speak in May. I do not know how Pete will vote on the bills he will face should he gain enough votes to go to St. Paul. But Pete does know how to listen, and he knows how our government is designed to work. When he listens, he puts what he is hearing into the context of what he already knows, and searches for solutions in the arenas in which he can be effective. I will be voting Radosevich.

Rita Vavrosky, Mahtowa