Ryan Wilson on family, coaching, and his vision for Minnesota
Interview questions by Chris Pederson
Family and the person behind the campaign
Before we get into politics, introduce us to Ryan at home. What do you and your wife, Janelle, most enjoy about raising your family in Maple Grove, and what family tradition—or everyday moment—best captures who you are as a husband and father?
I grew up in the area and was in the first graduating class of the new Wayzata High School. When our kids reached school age we wanted to move back to the area. It’s changed a lot since I was a kid, many of the farms are now subdivisions. The abandoned warehouses we used to bike around are now office buildings. But many of the traditions have stayed the same. My old church is still there and thriving. The kids still go sliding at Wayzata East Middle School. I remember skating at Klapprich Ice Rink when I was young, and it’s fun to drop my kids off there decades later for them to play shinny hockey late into the evening.
Local roots and life outside work
Your involvement with Hamel Baseball has connected you directly with families here in Medina. What drew you into that community, and what keeps you coming back? When you have a free weekend away from work and campaigning, what hobbies or favorite local activities help you recharge?
I love the small town feel of baseball in Hamel, we celebrated the 100-year anniversary this year. My family played baseball there when I was a kid growing up in Plymouth. It’s a great program that is welcoming to kids of all skill levels. I’ve enjoyed being able to help return to it and help grow the program while keeping its historic roots. As a coach, I love being able to help kids grow where they’re at. For some kids that means seeing them hit the first home run of their career, but my most memorable moments are when kids that might struggle at sports make contact with a ball for the first time in a season, sometimes the last game of the season, and get that game winning hit out of nowhere. Watching the team rush the field to cheer on a player that hadn’t had a lot of success, but is now smiling ear to ear, is one of the best rewards the kids can give me as a coach.
Regarding hobbies or local activities? With five kids I’m pretty much a full-time chauffeur. Occasionally, I might be spotted at Buffalo Wild Wings watching a Wild game with the other coaches.
Coaching, friendship, and a local tie
You’ve coached youth hockey alongside Breana Berry, who grew up in the Wayzata school district and has a “local tie” to our magazine. What is a favorite story from your time coaching together, and what have those young players taught you about patience, teamwork, and helping someone find confidence?
I have five kids who all played hockey. The greatest season of any of them so far was the first-year of squirts for my oldest boy. Bre was a great coach who taught the game to the kids in the locker room with an oversized vinyl rink and salt and pepper shakers to teach positioning. It worked – we won 3-4 tournaments that year and the kids learned a lot.
Making Minnesota work for families and businesses
You’ve built a business yourself, and your campaign with Lisa Demuth emphasizes affordability and a stronger business climate. For a family or small-business owner in Medina and the west metro, what specific change would you prioritize to make everyday life or running a business more affordable—and how would you pay for it while maintaining essential services?
The status quo isn’t working, and Minnesota needs a fresh start. We need to return Minnesota to a state that grows, everything works better when the economy is booming. We’ve had almost no population growth over the last decade, but the state budget has doubled — that’s a recipe for disaster. We need Minnesota to be open for business, rather than anti-business.
We must stop the fraud. There is a direct connection between fraud, waste and abuse, and higher taxes on businesses and families, including property taxes. It’s a shame the fraud was allowed to happen to our state. We’re better than this, we were once known as a good governance state. Lisa Demuth and I are committed to bringing that back.
We also need to make sure communities are safe from crime, and to do that we need a culture change. The first duty of government is to protect its citizens. We’ve seen shootings at Wayzata graduations, at Eden Prairie Homecoming games, and at Edina community parks. We should not accept that as the new normal. If we want to boom as a state, it starts with ensuring people are safe. Our public safety plan does that.
Supporting schools and the next generation
Schools are an important part of community life throughout Maple Grove, Plymouth, Medina, Wayzata, Orono, and the surrounding area. As a parent and youth coach, what would you bring to your ticket’s education agenda? Which changes would you champion to support teachers, strengthen academic achievement, and give parents a meaningful voice—and how would families know those changes were working?
Lisa and I have announced a robust education plan (all of our detailed plans are available at www.lisaformn.com). This area is blessed with strong schools, but our state is slipping. We were once rated one of the top states for education, but over the last 10 years we’ve dropped to the bottom half of states and have been passed by states like Mississippi, despite our record high per-pupil spending. We can’t continue on the same path and under a Demuth-Wilson administration we won’t.
Lisa is a former school board member and knows what needs to be done to get us back on track. She has pledged to return us to being a top 10 state in education.
I have 5 kids who have gone to a variety of schools (Lisa has 4 kids and 7 grandkids), and I think those lived experiences create an important real-world perspective in setting policy.
Accountability and earning public trust
Lisa Demuth’s fraud-prevention plan would put you in charge of coordinating oversight across state agencies. What would your first practical steps be to protect taxpayer dollars while keeping legitimate services accessible, and how would you work with people across party lines to make those improvements last?
Step one is replacing all the commissioners and deputy commissioners. Lisa will offer a real, meaningful change in the direction of the state, including a tangible plan to fight fraud. Not a single person has lost their job due to fraud, many of those that oversaw it have been promoted. Lisa has called for the immediate firing of specific commissioners and deputy commissioners, including those that refused to address fraud because it was, in their words, “a Republican talking point.” That attitude created a culture that led to an estimated $9 billion in fraud.
So while there are detailed plans and executive orders and actions that we have outlined in our plan to fight fraud, ultimately it starts at the top by changing the culture. That is why Lisa has a plan where I will be leading an anti-fraud task force to ensure fraud is rooted out in every agency and that findings are shared across agencies. Stopping fraud will take a “whole of government” approach and as Lieutenant Governor, I will lead the government wide anti-fraud task force. Lisa and I will bring the change needed to stop fraud. Minnesota can’t afford more of the same.
