Why I didn't vote Republican for governor

The St. Paul Pioneer Press was looking for someone who voted for Independent Party candidate Tom Horner for governor Tuesday night. Since that was me, I responded and was interviewed.

Here are the couple of lines they pulled out of the interview for the story that ran yesterday:

Joey White, 25, of Burnsville, considers himself a Republican but cast his vote for the IP candidate. "Horner had so many people lined up behind him saying, 'Yep, this is a balanced approach,'" White said.

"Emmer's only ideas were just cut, cut, cut Horner was able to find solutions that I think both sides of the aisle agreed with, and that was attractive to me."

Well, sort of.

When a 5-minute conversation is cut down to two sentences, you're not going to get much.

In short, Minnesota's biggest problem is the budget. It's a mess and needs to be fixed. Mark Dayton's proposal to raise taxes and inability to cut spending were a problem. Tom Emmer talked a lot about cutting taxes and cutting spending, but he said very little about what he would cut and what he did say didn't make much sense.

Horner was the only guy with a solution that included a combination of tax and spending proposals with cuts where needed and increases where needed. Horner was the only one whose proposals gained the support of independent groups and policy wonks across the board.

I knew Horner wouldn't win. The polling at the end made that obvious. Yet I don't consider my vote a throw-away vote.

My vote simply said that I thought Horner had the best solutions of the 3 candidates running. That's it, and that's really what a vote should say.