Rep. Betty McCollum

Papa John Kolstad wants someone to challenge U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum in a primary. His beef? McCollum’s failure to sign on as a co-sponsor of legislation that would create a universal, single-payer health insurance system.

The veteran political activist (and noted musician) sent out an email to associates this week imploring someone to mount a challenge from the left to the five-term incumbent. The missive was then posted on the St. Paul Issues Forum by fellow liberal activist David Shove.

“People of the Fourth District have not been strongly represented by Betty McCollum,” Kolstad’s note contends. “She has done nothing to advance a health care solution and there is clearly one to support in HF 676. The people of Minnesota and
America can wait no longer, living in the private health insurance and Big Pharma world.”

The pertinent bill was introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and currently has 83 co-sponsors. However, only one member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, Rep. Keith Ellison, has signed on.

“This is a disgrace for a primarily Democratic state,” says Kolstad. “It’s shameful.”

But McCollum, in particular, has drawn his ire because she’s not politically vulnerable. Last year McCollum garnered 68 percent of the vote in winning her fifth term in the heavily Democratic district.

“I don’t know what kind of problems she could possibly face by saying we have to fix this problem,” Kolstad says. “She is being so weak — and she has no excuse for being so weak.”

McCollum’s political director, Will Blauvelt, takes issue with this assessment.

“Congresswoman McCollum is committed to working with President Obama to pass meaningful health care legislation this year that controls cost, ensures quality and increases access for all Americans,” he said in a statement to MnIndy. “Efforts motivated by either ideology or profits that are intended to undermine President Obama’s health care reform agenda should be recognized as more political game playing at the expense of millions of Americans who are demanding real change.”

Kolstad has long been frustrated by the centrist tendencies of the DFL. He was the Green Party’s endorsed candidate for Minnesota Attorney General in 2006, winning two percent of the vote. But he figures a third-party candidate wouldn’t stand a chance in taking on McCollum.

“I left the Democratic party in disgust,” he says. “I felt that the DFL did not hold their own candidates accountable to their own platform. I’d vote for a DFL candidate if I felt there was one worth supporting.”

Shove believes the lack of affordable health care could be the issue to galvanize voters.

“I think if anything is going to stir Americans to get of their butts it’s going to be single payer,” he says. “Other countries would be in the streets, but not us.”