Sen. Lucero personally signing welcome letters before sending to the 89 new households who moved to our great community in March.

EDUCATION FUNDING OMNIBUS BILL

As a former educator myself, I have a deep passion for ensuring educational opportunities and academic excellence for all students regardless of the zip code they live. Minnesota’s K-12 education funding formula disproportionately benefits metro-area schools leaving lesser funding for schools in our communities such as STMA School District, Rockford Area School District, Saint Francis Area School District, and Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District, and others.

The Democrat written K-12 Education funding omnibus bill was heard on the Senate Floor Monday last week and unfortunately continues to further widen the gap between metro-area schools and schools in our community receiving the least state funding. I had SF 505, the bill I chief authored which targets funding at the bottom 20% school districts, converted into an amendment and I offered on the Floor during debate. With the help of several rural Democrats, my amendment was successfully added to the bill to begin moving us in the direction of correcting the current broken formula.

Video of my offering my pro-education funding amendment can be viewed at the following link here.

OBSCENE CONTENT IN SCHOOL LIBRARIES

Current MN law requires K-12 schools to have Internet filtering and restrictions in place to prevent children from accessing “material that is reasonably believed to be obscene or child pornography or material harmful to minors under federal or state law.” In other words, harmful content that is in digital form.

During the same debate on the K-12 Education funding omnibus bill last week, I also offered a second amendment that utilizes the identical language as current law to also apply to content in hard-copy form in school libraries. My amendment stated: “A school library within a school site must restrict all student access to material that is reasonably believed to be obscene or child pornography or material harmful to minors under federal or state law.” The intent of my amendment was to protect children against harmful content that may also be in physical form such as books or magazines.

Initially, my amendment was successfully added with 60 yes votes to 6 no votes. Because the Unfortunately, the Democrat majority indeed actually seeks to expose children to obscene, pornographic, and harmful content via school libraries. Thus, within minutes of realizing my amendment would thwart their perverse agenda, the Chair of the K-12 Education Finance Committee offered an amendment to roll back my amendment adopted only a few minutes prior that would have protected children by preventing obscene or pornographic material in school libraries. The Democrats were successful in deleting my amendment back out of the bill by a 34 yes to 33 no vote. In other words, Democrats supported my amendment until Democrat leadership told them to strip the Lucero amendment back out of the bill. Democrats fell in line to the obedience of Democrat leaders rather than to stand up for the protection of the minds of children.

As a former Teamster himself, Sen. Lucero visited with fellow Teamster and Otsego constituent John at the MN Capitol Wednesday last week.

ELECTION FUNDING OMNIBUS BILL

Last week Democrats rammed through their hyper-partisan Election Omnibus Funding Bill on a 34-33 party-line vote. The bill contains many terrible provisions seeking to undermine election integrity and the very core of our Republic. One of the provisions included in the bill adopts National Popular Vote (NPV). NPV is an Interstate Compact to electing the president by a national popular vote. Under the Democrat NPV provision, Minnesota would award our presidential electors to the candidate with the most votes nationwide...award electoral votes to the winner of the total votes accumulated across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

As a strong supporter of the Constitutional framework our Founding Fathers architected, I support our Republic form of government rather than the Direct/Pure Democracy form of government our Founding Fathers were trying to prevent. In a Democracy, sovereignty belongs to the majority which can impose its unrestrained Will on the minority. This is known as the tyranny of the majority over the minority. In a Republic, voters elect people to represent the majority within a district but sovereignty belongs to individuals and the majority cannot violate inalienable rights of the minority which are protected by the Constitution. Our Republic form of government is based on checks, balances, and separation of power in order to protect against a tyranny of the majority over the rights of the minority and is the basis upon why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Electoral College.

Because the United States is a construct of fifty separate and individual units of government, the election of President is a compilation of fifty individual elections held within each respective state. The Electoral College serves an extremely important function by acting as a check against the tyranny of the majority by creating a weighted system of indirect representatives tasked with selecting our President. The Electoral College is similar in concept to the weighted system of two US Senators apportioned to each state regardless of population density of the state. This model creates a weighted system to act as a check to the people's body (House of Representatives) that is apportioned based on population density.

I'm a strong supporter of the Electoral College our Founding Fathers gave us. I do not support the concept of a direct Democracy or national popular vote to elect our President.

Democrats on the other hand determine right-and-wrong, moral-vs.-immoral by simple majority vote. Democrats believe government knows better than individuals. Even worse, Democrats do not believe in unalienable rights and fail to acknowledge government/majority vote shall not violate individual liberty. This is the reason Democrats are fighting so hard to tear down the foundation of our Republic, including eliminating the Electoral College.

My comments defending the Constitution, our Republic, and the Electoral College during Floor debate can be viewed at the following link here.

Minnesota Democrats are fast-tracking the destruction of our once great state by ramming through giant wasteful spending bills and crushing tax and fee increases.

MARIJUANA BILL

Friday last week Democrats rammed through legislation legalizing recreational marijuana on a 34-33 party-line vote. The bill was nearly 400 pages long and has an effective date of August 1, 2023. The MN House also passed their version of legalizing recreational marijuana earlier last week so the two bills will need to be rectified in conference committee and then come back to both the House and Senate to be repassed at some point in the future.

STAYING IN TOUCH

Each and every day I’m continuously humbled at the opportunity to represent and fight for the values and priorities of our great community!

Please contact me to share any issues, concerns, or feedback you have to assist me best represent you. The best way to reach me is by email at [email protected] or by phone at 651-296-5655.

Sincerely,

Eric Lucero

State Senator

District 30

Rockford Township, Hanover, Saint Michael, Albertville, Otsego, Elk River, Nowthen, Western Oak Grove