Endorsement: Walz in First District

Voters in Minnesota's First Congressional District have an Election Day choice between starkly different candidates: Incumbent Tim Walz, a Democrat who for four terms has demonstrated the ability to work with members of both parties, and Jim Hagedorn, a self-described radical Republican who often doesn't get along with his own party.

We think voters should return Walz to Congress for a fifth term to fine-tune significant accomplishments already made and to take on new challenges like the Department of Veterans Affairs' scheduling scandal, rail safety, and the high cost of higher education and crushing student debt.

Walz's pragmatic and bipartisan approach has served farmers, small businesses and veterans in southern Minnesota's First District and the nation well.

Walz is an optimist who believes that government can be a force for the public good. Hagedorn is skeptical of government's role in people's lives, and he wants power and money shifted away from Washington.

Walz, who rose to the rank of command sergeant major as a member of the National Guard, has drawn on his military experience while serving as a member of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. He swiftly convened hearings on the VA scandal after the scheduling fraud came to light, and he's actively involved in bipartisan efforts to reform the VA.

Walz also deserves credit for his sponsorship of the STOCK Act, which prohibits members of Congress from stock trades based on insider information not available to the public. If re-elected, Walz should work to strengthen the law as part of his fundamental goal of establishing more transparency in government. Walz also serves on the House Agriculture Committee and was a key player in the passage of the five-year farm bill this year. Hagedorn said he would have stripped food-stamp provisions from the bill and replaced them with work-for-welfare language.

Walz and Hagedorn both support the Keystone XL oil-pipeline project. Walz believes that Keystone will boost the nation's energy independence. He also thinks oil moved through pipelines is far safer than rail cars filled with volatile crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken formation, and he recognizes that if more oil moved through pipelines, rail cars would be freed up to move grain.

Hagedorn considers himself a peace-through-strength Reaganite and says the GOP missed an opportunity when George W. Bush was elected and the party held both houses of Congress. "Finally, after 50 years, the people gave us the keys to the car and we promptly drove it off the cliff," he said, adding that Bush led the U.S. into "bad" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and expanded government.

Hagedorn is the son of former U.S. Rep. Tom Hagedorn, who represented what was then the Second District from 1974 to 1983. Jim Hagedorn worked in Washington as a legislative assistant in Congress and also as a Treasury Department official.

Asked about years-old blog posts that surfaced during the campaign in which he assailed women, American Indians, gays and national political figures, Hagedorn told members of the Star Tribune Editorial Board that he was trying to be entertaining and that not all of his posts came off as intended.