Q & A: An Interview with State Senate Candidate Alex Moe

Alex Moe is running for Minnesota’s 8th Senate District on the Republican ticket. He graduated from UMD this year with degrees in cognitive science, criminology, international studies, music, political science and philosophy. Moe was involved in various student groups including President of Bulldog Republicans, Vice President of Mock Trial, and held various positions on the Student Association. 

Alex Moe, Republican Candidate for the 8th Senate District - Photo supplied by Noah Beardslee

Noah Beardslee: Why are you running for state senate?

Alex Moe: I think we have a lot of politicians nowadays that are career politicians and they’ve been in there too long. They don’t really understand what’s important for our younger generations. So even though those of us who are my age − your age, who can vote, we’re not really being represented, at least not in the way we should be. So I thought I could run as a younger candidate who’s actually representing our younger generations; the people who are just able to vote or within five to ten years of being able to vote rather than all these 50- and 60-year-olds who, especially with school issues, haven’t been to school in however many years. They don’t know what the current problems with the school systems are.

N: What do you think qualifies you for the position?

A: I think, like I said, one of the biggest things is I bring a new perspective that just is missing in [The Minnesota Legislature] right now. Right now, I think it’s a pretty homogenous group. Obviously you have Democrats and Republicans so there’s that diversity quote unquote in that sense, but you just lack right now that younger viewpoint, that younger perspective. And between that and the fact that I just finished college, I’m not that far out of high school. I have first hand experience with what the education system currently looks like and I can say from personal experience what needs improvement. I do think the education system needs some work. My dad, back when he went to college, he could work a solid 40-50 hours a week during the summer and mostly pay off his student loans that way and not be in any debt by the time he left college. Whereas nowadays, that’s impossible. And in all honesty it’d be one thing if the quality of education reflected that, but it doesn’t. I feel like the education we’re getting now is barely better than 20-30 years ago when our parents were in college.

N: So how do you address the rising costs?

A: I think part of it would be scrutinizing how colleges are spending the money they’re getting and putting a little more expectations on standards for education if they’re gonna be getting public funding. Because I mean from being at UMD and being a part of the Student Association I would see numbers on different budgets and stuff. I mean, to be honest, one of the numbers that upset me the most was Joan Gable, the president of the whole U of M system, [making] I want to say $600,000 a year. I get she’s the president of the whole system and that’s a big job but the President of the United States makes $400,000. Are you really telling me the president of the U of M system’s job is harder than the President of the United States? There’s a lot of admin-type positions where they’re getting hundreds of thousands of dollars and yet we have professors who have to have other means of supporting themselves because they went to however many years to get a PhD and some of them still have student loans. Yes, I’m sure [the administration] does a lot of work, but the thing is how much of what they do is relevant to us getting our degree and learning?

N: So would you say that’s a priority of yours if you were elected?

A: Yeah, I think education is one of my priorities.

N: What would your other priorities be?

A: Trying to just address the budget in Minnesota in general and the taxes in Minnesota. Our tax system is way too complicated. Unnecessarily so. There’s all these loopholes and special ways you can cheat to save money and if you know the tax system all of a sudden you can pay zero dollars in taxes because you know all these loopholes. There are certain ones that can maybe make sense, but then the fact that there’s thousands of pages of tax code? That’s ridiculous. Another thing I want to try to address is just mental health type issues like in our schools. Because a lot of people see school shootings, stuff like that, and they immediately jump to gun control type solutions. I think that’s stupid. I don’t think that’s going to fix any problem. Nobody’s selling guns to teenagers. It’s because there’s a gun in the house and they happen to get it. Yes, there is something to be said that these parents should be making sure those guns are locked up but that’s not going to solve the problem that this kid was very mentally and emotionally distressed and had no one to turn to. That's what truly led to the incident, not the gun being an available option. A lot of these kids probably would have found some other unhealthy way of coping or addressing their anger other than guns that would have been violent had they not had a gun. 

N: You mentioned you don’t necessarily see government control as the solution. But this summer Congress passed The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act which provides incentives for states to adopt red flag laws.  That kind of connects to the mental health issue. So where do you stand on red flag laws?

A: Red flag laws can be a very I guess grey area because although I think that obviously if somebody is mentally unstable they shouldn’t have a gun, obviously. A lot of red flag laws — existing laws — basically it’s a court that decides, “should you be allowed to have a gun?” And I get very, very worried about giving that ability to people. Because it’s so easy, like, what’s stopping them from just saying, “oh I don’t think he should have a gun” for their own reasons. That starts really breaching on the second amendment right because the second amendment is there to protect us from the government. It’s to protect us from tyrannical government because our founders had a tyrannical government and they weren’t allowed to have arms, technically. There’s a reason they wanted to make sure that was in place and that people were not finding reasons not to allow you to have guns. Obviously, like I said, there is something to be addressed in terms of the mental health aspect of it because people who are severely mentally ill shouldn’t have guns. But we need to make sure we do it in a way that’s not going to spiral out of control.

N: If you were elected you might have a hand in crafting such legislation. So if a red flag law had the right process, had due process and stuff, would you be on board?

A: I think I would potentially be on board as long as it allowed for us to follow the constitution, it allowed us to do it in an appropriate way that wasn’t going to overly give power to individuals to just take guns away. Because there are obviously individuals who really shouldn’t have a gun and there should be some way of checking for that. But it’s just a matter of we need to be very careful of how we’re doing it to make sure it’s appropriately used and not abused.

N: You recently wrote this for the Duluth News Tribune, “Though I am running as a member of one of the two major political parties, that does not mean I plan to ignorantly follow my political party at the detriment of my constituents.” So in what ways do you break from the Republican mold?

A: If you look at voting records on both sides of the aisle, there’s people who always vote for their party whatever their party tells them to do. At that point it’s like you’re not representing anyone, you’re just representing an ideology. And I have a problem with that because this is a democratic republic; we’re elected to represent our constituents so they trust us to do what’s best for them not what’s best for us. If I have to piss off the party and lose their support because they’re trying to ask me to do something my constituents just don’t want, I’m going to do that. Obviously I’m going to try to be respectful to my party because they are the ones who gave me the endorsement, but I’m not going to just blindly listen to what they tell me to do. I’m going to do what my constituents want me to do.  In terms of how I differ from other Republicans, I’m more libertarian then I am just straight Republican. A lot of times one of the ways I look at something is as long as it’s not causing me or an outside party adverse harm then I think it should be okay. That’s kind of the lens I look at gay marriage or LGBTQ rights. It doesn’t hurt me at all to respect LGBTQ individuals or allow them to get married if they want.

And then as well when it comes to abortion, I don’t really consider myself pro-life or pro-choice just because for one I don’t think that’s an issue the government should be getting involved with in general. I don’t think it’s the government’s place to decide “can you or can you not have an abortion?” I don’t think the government should be funding it either. That’s something your health insurance company should talk with you about — whether they want to cover that kind of procedure, just like any sort of elective surgery. If there’s an instance where something that might otherwise be an elective surgery is more important, you know, where the baby dies and you need an abortion so the mom won’t die then maybe that’s something the insurance company one hundred percent should cover because it’s saving a life. But in general, I don’t think the government should be involved in that stuff.

N: Another quote of yours from the Tribune, “We need to protect our amazing wildlife and wilderness areas while also allowing small businesses and families to thrive in a market that gives everyone the opportunity to do something meaningful with their lives.” Substantively, what does that look like? How would you push for that in the legislature?

A: So for one, I think we need to look at the regulations and how difficult we make it right now to be a small business owner. The thing we could have done [during the pandemic] that would’ve most easily helped these small businesses is not tax them so excessively. Make it easier for these small businesses to be continued to run. Have less red tape in terms of all this paperwork you have to fill out. It should be simple for somebody to at least attempt to start a small business even if it’s not easy to run a small business because it’s a lot of work. Things like taxes and financial documents shouldn’t be the things stopping you. If your aspiration is to start a small business, those shouldn’t be the things stopping you from doing it.

N: But on the wilderness and wildlife side, how do you view the legislative role in that? Your opponent supports the “Prove It First” legislation. There is controversy over the Boundary Waters. What are your policy positions?

A: I do think obviously there needs to be some sort of standards and regulations in place when it comes to making sure people and companies aren’t over-polluting the water, over-polluting the environment, etc. But we need to understand that stopping all pollution, period, is not possible; at least not if we want to continue to have access to these resources we need. That’s one of the reasons why I disagree with people who are trying to say “oh we need to stop using fossil fuels within the next five to ten years.” I would love it if we could stop using fossil fuels in the next five to ten years. That’s not realistic. I would love it if we could  somehow be all electric cars in the next five to ten years, but that’s not realistic.

N: Is there a time horizon that you would want to shoot for?

A: I mean, I don’t know enough about it to know a realistic time horizon. Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, the person who’s renowned for electric cars, said it was stupid and unrealistic to move everyone to electric in I think it was 20 years. Because he literally said “we don’t have the infrastructure for that.” It’s not realistic, we don’t have the electric grid that will be capable of handling everybody moving to electric cars.  So maybe some technology changes in a way that will allow it, but in the meantime, it’s not. And the other thing people don’t think about is all the precious metal you need to build an electric car and to build an electric car battery. Where are we going to get those? Well we have a bunch of them in Northern Minnesota but we’re not allowed to use them right now because of the way our legislation is. Are we going to get them from the Democratic Republic of Congo where they use child labor? Or China where they use child labor? Where are we going to get these minerals for all these electric cars we want to build? In the grand scheme, the way I look at it, we need these minerals until we find an adequate replacement. So, would we rather get it from other places that are going to abuse child labor and abuse the environment, or would we rather do it in America where we can oversee that and make sure we’re limiting the impact on the environment and not allowing the abuse of labor?

N: Is there anything else you think SD8 voters should know about you?

A: I think it’s important for them to know [that] if you’re going to vote and you see the “D” and the “R” on the ballot for Senate District 8, that shouldn’t be the only thing you’re thinking about. I don’t care if my constituents are Democrat, Republican, [or] independent. I’m going to push for what Duluth needs and what Duluth wants rather than what I want as an individual for Duluth. I don’t plan on taking any lobbyist money. I’m going to tell lobbyists, generally speaking, not to talk to me because I don’t want to hear it. I think lobbyists do not have the citizens’ best interests at heart. They have corporations’ best interests at heart.