Candidate for governor Tim Walz says Minnesota is “probably headed” toward a 15-dollar minimum wage, but won’t say yet what number he’d support. “That kind of short-circuits the way that I build coalitions,” he says. “We have not had that general conversation yet. We have not built it together. What I do know is… that we need to have it.”
Republican rival Jeff Johnson responds Walz promised he’ll support a 15-dollar minimum wage. “He [Walz] kind of gives different answers, depending upon who he’s talking to — and so this is the same as guns and single-payer health care and Line 3 and tax increases.” Johnson says he does *not* support a 15-dollar minimum wage because “it hurts the people that we claim we want to help” and is a “killer” for the smallest businesses.
Walz also said it’s “critically important” for the state to set a wage floor but it’s “unacceptable” to pre-empt local minimum wage ordinances, like the Republican-controlled legislature tried to do with Minneapolis.