A conservative black Minnesota leader says Gov. Tim Walz will fit in nicely joining Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the top of the party’s ticket, since Minneapolis, like other great American cities, has been destroyed “under Democrat watch.”
“It’s the same way across the country,” Kendall Qualls told CatholicVote during an interview, noting the embrace of Marxism in the radical agenda of the Democrats. “Just recently, Walz was quoted as saying, hey, look ‘one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.’”
“Each one of our major inner cities in this country is a socialist lackey,” Qualls, a former Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota, observed:
As soon as you’re born, you get free birth, free public schools, free health care, you get free to low-cost housing – it’s utopian socialism. And they’re the worst places to live in our country. Literally, our cities are socialist islands. And they’re disasters, and I thank God I was able to escape that when I was a kid and join the capitalist side of the state.
Black American families, said Qualls, have been suffering at the hands of the Democrats’ policies.
“In my lifetime, we’ve gone from 80% two-parent families to 80% fatherless homes under Democrat watch, and without one initiative to reverse that trend,” said Qualls:
And Democrats have been leading that charge. They’ve been overseeing this, and they have done nothing to improve the plight of black families, and that includes Tim Walz. In each one of these major cities, these socialist utopias, they’re making kids illiterate – more so than in the pre-civil rights movement.
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Qualls is the founder of TakeCharge, a Minnesota-based organization committed to the notion that “the promise of America works for everyone regardless of race or social station.”
His movement has a goal for all black Americans:
Our mission is to inspire and educate black and other minority communities of their full rights and privileges as Americans granted to them by the Constitution. We desire to inspire them to take charge of their own lives, the lives of their children and not to rely on government and politicians for redemption and prosperity. We believe that a well-grounded knowledge of American history strengthens our diverse country and binds us together with a shared history of ideals and beliefs.
Qualls takes personally what he views as the damage heaped on black children, their families, and their communities as a result of the Democrats’ policies intended to keep blacks as loyal voters.
During his own rough childhood in the 1960s and 70s, he lived first with his mother in “drug and gang-infested Harlem,” and then later in an Oklahoma trailer park with his father.
Qualls never anticipated his life would take a positive turn, but with hard work, determination to get an education, and his Christian faith, he pulled himself out of the kind of tragic life he sees many black youth still struggling through decades later.
After serving in the U.S. Army and a successful career in corporate America, Qualls ran for U.S. Congress in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. Though his bid was unsuccessful, many of those who backed him wanted to hear more from him, leading him in January 2021 to start TakeCharge on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Later, Qualls entered the political arena again, this time in a bid for the Republican nomination for governor in Minnesota.
Qualls told CatholicVote Walz is perfectly aligned with Harris and the radical Democrats who oppose religious liberty and strive to bring about full access to abortion at any time during pregnancy. He noted that, in March, Harris was hailed by her allies in the media as the first sitting vice president to visit a Planned Parenthood abortion facility – in Minnesota.
In 2023, Minnesota Democrats quickly passed a series of radical abortion rights bills, including one that repealed a state law requiring medical staff to provide care for newborns who survive abortions and report their survival to authorities.
Evidence of Walz’s anti-faith stance is also readily observed, Qualls noted. The conservative leader currently serves as faculty in residence at Crown College School of Business, a private Christian college in Minnesota. He explained that the school was among the plaintiffs last year in a federal lawsuit against the state over a law, signed by Walz, that sought to bar faith-based schools that require a declaration of faith from students to participate in a program that allows high school students to earn both secondary and college credit simultaneously.
But Qualls sees in Minnesota the Democrats’ devaluation of marriage between a man and a woman – part of their agenda, he explains, to undermine American culture.
“Young people here – the ones that want to start families – are leaving the state. It’s not just the retirees anymore. It’s the young people,” he said. “If I want to start a family, I want to get married and have a view of life – and they’re leaving.”
“It is tragic and, you know, the state does nothing to support them,” he explained:
I think, right now, $36,000 is what people get that are on public assistance from all the different funnels for public assistance here, if you’re a single mom. There’s a marriage penalty in this state if you’re married. The closest state to that $35,000 number is Illinois, and they get $20,000 in public assistance. So, basically, they’re encouraging a single-parenthood lifestyle and discouraging marriage. And for those people that want to get married in this state and have a family, start a family, it’s become so expensive and, literally, they’re penalized even in our tax code.
As further evidence of how Walz has served as another Democrat governor who has presided over the destruction of a great American city, Qualls observed that, in October 2009, Forbes magazine ranked the top 25 cities in America, rating them for quality of life, cleanliness, and safety.
“Of those 25 cities, Minneapolis ranked number one,” he noted. “Today, it’s a shadow of that. People in this country, in this state, avoid going to Minneapolis consciously. Office vacancies, hotel vacancies, are at the highest level in a long time.”
He referred to once “beautiful Victorian homes” that are now “full of gunshots, with crime and homelessness all over the place.”
“And you go to any Democrat city, especially if it’s run by Democrat governors, they are just a disaster,” he said:
And I grew up in them. I remember growing up in New York City. It’s much like what it was when I was a kid, and it is a violent, violent place, and there’s no accountability, and the guys that they arrest one day would be back on the street the next.
Qualls said the “deliberate” destruction of American life at the hands of the Democratic Party is on full display in what passes for “education” in public schools.
“No other country teaches their kids to hate their nation,” he said:
And, so what they’ve done – these teachers’ union socialists – when these kids get old enough, they’re going to vote what they’ve been taught. The fact is you can’t be an advocate for your country, you can’t be proud of your country if you don’t know anything about it. That is what’s most heartbreaking, I think. The most dangerous and almost borderline treasonous thing that you can do, is to prepare your next generation to hate your country.
LifeNews Note: Susan Berry writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
