UnemployedGolfer

Sad news for Fairmont and all of Martin County. 3M is closing its Fairmont plant after 80 years. About 80 employees will lose their jobs — and the layoffs start December 18, one week before Christmas. These are our neighbors. Eighty families in a town of 10,000, wondering what's next. 3M says this is about "supply chain efficiency" — consolidating production somewhere else in its global network. They haven't said where the work is going. Here's what needs to happen now: 3M owes this community a good-faith effort to sell that plant to another manufacturer — not let a 150,000-square-foot facility sit empty on North State Street. Our local EDA and Chamber are already working on it, and Fairmont still has strong manufacturers hiring, like Kahler Automation and ADS. And let me be straight about the bigger picture: 3M didn't blame a specific Minnesota tax for this decision, and I'm not going to pretend they did. But when a company like 3M decides which plants survive and which ones close, every plant is competing on cost. And Minnesota has made itself one of the most expensive places in America to manufacture — a 9.8% corporate tax rate, a brand-new payroll tax for paid leave, and an economy that grew less than 5% in four years while the rest of the country grew 11%. A plant in Fairmont shouldn't have to be perfect to survive. It just needs a state that isn't stacking the deck against it. That's exactly what I'm running to change. 13 days until Election Day. #SaveOurState #StopTheFraud #VoteRepublican