Minnesota state Senate candidates talk affordability, economic growth

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – One of the top issues everyone agreed on during the Sept. 16 Senate candidate forum hosted by the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce was affordability.

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District 14 incumbent Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-St. Cloud, said regulations may make the issue worse, but affordability is also about culture.

“Everything is rented, and there are few opportunities to actually build wealth,” he said. “When you think of all the subscriptions you have, you rent TV now because you have subscriptions to all these different streaming services.”

The 75-minute forum featured District 14 candidates Putnam and Bernie Perryman, R-St. Augusta, and District 13 candidates Jared Gapinski, R, and Trent Dilks, DFL. District 14 encompasses most of St. Cloud, Waite Parke, Sauk Rapids, Sartell and St. Joseph. District 13 includes parts of Sartell, Sauk Rapids and St. Joseph as well as Cold Spring, Albany, Paynesville, Clearwater, Avon, Roscoe and Rockville among others.

All four candidates agreed on the severity of the affordability issue.

“We can’t have economic growth under that,” said Perryman, who is currently the House District 14A representative. “Every spending decision in St. Paul has a direct impact on our families.”

Putnam said he’d like to strengthen housing down payment assistance programs and similar efforts to help Minnesotans build wealth.

Additionally, he said fraud has impacted people for a long time.

“There are people who are exploiting and defrauding veterans,” Putnam said. “I worked very hard two years ago to try and get that passed so that we could have these folks who are defrauding veterans actually abide by federal law, which they currently do not, and, unfortunately, it became partisan. People in the House did nothing to get it passed and Republicans in the Senate blocked it.”

Perryman said the biggest factors impeding affordability are taxes and unfunded mandates. Taxes take money out of constituents’ pockets that could go into economic growth.

“My first (priority) will be the fraud crisis,” she said. “We’re hearing about it. We’re talking about it in Minnesota always. I can’t watch the news without hearing more and more coming, which turns into affordability.”

Having run multiple businesses in the area, she said she knows how big an impact affordability hurdles affect them.

“We need to go back in and look at our tax structure, our tax policies, where we can restructure the mandates that go out on businesses,” she said.

The District 13 candidates agreed on the negative impacts on affordability issues in the state.

Dilks, who has two young children, said he understands the lack of affordability more than anyone. He spends money on childcare as well as housing and healthcare.

“The best government is the closest government to the people,” Dilks said. “If the state is choking out the housing market with restrictive regulations, we have to look at where those are at. … But if it’s done at a local level, I’m not sure that the state government should step in.”

One thing that goes into talk about regulations is government transparency, especially around money that could be fraudulent or wasteful.

“I come from a nonprofit world,” he said. “You will call me up and you will say ‘Trent, what percentage of your nonprofit’s funds go to your mission?’ and I will say ‘87% by an independent audit last year, and it’s available. Our books are open on our website.'”

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That should be the same for the government, he said.

Gapinski, a current Benton County commissioner, said actions impacting affordability happen at every level: local permitting fees, state mandates and supply and demand.

“When you look at our (tax) levies, we just did our levy for Benton County yesterday,” he said. “These unfunded mandates and, we’ll say, cost shifts, they cost the county almost 2.5% on our levy yesterday, out of 7%. That’s huge.

“These are all getting pushed to taxpayers and their local property tax. So, (it’s) compounding. I don’t think there’s one quick fix to for all of this. We need to attack everything, all the way down from taxes to labor force.”

There isn’t one quick fix, he said. It will have to come with just about every decision in St. Paul.

After a question about economic growth opportunities, Putnam said growth is already happening in central Minnesota.

“I’m very proud of the work I’ve been doing with Niron Magnetics to build an actual factory here,” he said. “They want to put their entire national headquarters here in Minnesota, in Sartell, and so I worked very hard last session to get more money to invest so that they had a bigger business and a bigger footprint.”

Niron received more than $10 million in state funding in 2025.

Perryman said opportunities are everywhere, because it happens in buckets.

“Economic growth, if we get more housing, economic growth, if we grow more jobs, economic growth in education,” she said.

The biggest thing is to attack affordability first, she said.

Both candidates for District 13 said there are a lot of opportunities for the more rural of the two districts.

Dilks said he has spent a lot of time with farmers and people in the more rural communities who want to use new technologies like methane capturing, but need investments before they can grow. He said he’s seen the same thing in the rural communities’ downtown areas, too.

“Paynesville is ready to expand,” Dilks said. “They just need some help. They need an investment in a fire department so they can build bigger buildings.”

Gapinski, a current Benton County commissioner and former Sauk Rapids city councilman, said data centers can play a big role in the future.

“I think there’s a very big need for them, within reason,” he said. “And, I do believe that with the affordability issue that we have going on right now in the state, I think that with position centers like that, we can really bring some tax growth to our area.”

The chamber will host two more forums, one for each House of Representatives race. Candidates for districts 13A and B will be held at 8 a.m. Sept. 26 in the St. Cloud Area Chamber Office, 1411 W. St. Germain St., Ste. 101, in St. Cloud. The districts 14A and B forum will immediately follow, at 9:30 a.m.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Minnesota state Senate candidates talk affordability, economic growth

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Reporting by James Kling, St. Cloud Times / St. Cloud Times

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This story was originally published September 21, 2026 at 6:15 AM.