Welty Announces Independent Campaign for Congress
Two-term Duluth School Board member Harry Welty will begin petitioning Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District voters to be placed on the ballot as an independent candidate to challenge incumbent Congressman James Oberstar and former US Senator Rod Grams in this fall’s election.
Running as a “Unity” party candidate Welty says that if elected he plans to join the Democratic caucus as “Republicans can no longer be trusted with three branches of government.”
Welty was elected to the Duluth School Board in 1994 and served two terms until 2003. Welty also ran against Oberstar in 1992 as an independent candidate. His campaign has set up a website: www.welty4congress.org which encourages people to download petitions to help him get the 1,000 signatures he is required to return to Minnesota’s Secretary of State by the filing deadline of July 18th.
Welty, a former long time Republican who caucused with the Democratic Party this year, says that both party’s candidates will simply continue to do what the American public has come to dread – play politics. “Oberstar will try to get more pork barrel projects at a time when Congress has already saddled our children with a ten-trillion-dollar deficit and Grams voted to remove our last President from office.” Welty says he’s counting on moderate and centrist voter’s disgust with the current political climate. In a three way race Welty says he could get elected with as little as 34 percent of the vote. In Welty’s 1992 campaign for Congress he drew over 22,000 votes which was seven percent of the vote.
Welty will take his petition to cities through out the sprawling Eighth District over the next two weeks. He’s beginning his campaign this morning on Duluth’s favorite tourist attraction, the Lakewalk.
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