Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, recently urged Gov. Tim Walz to prohibit the Biden administration’s plan to go door-to-door promoting the COVID-19 vaccine.
In a letter to Walz, Franson advised that any efforts like this would simply “undermine” trust from the public.
“Personal health decisions should be made between a patient and a doctor, not between a patient and the government,” Franson wrote, adding that “a door-to-door vaccination effort that seeks to entice or pressure Minnesotans to get the vaccine would only undermine the public’s trust and confidence.”
This would be “bad policy,” according to Franson. “An unsolicited visit to entice or pressure a resident to choose a vaccine without their personal physician present is bad policy,” she wrote.
She encouraged Walz to “protect Minnesotans’ personal decisions regarding the COVID-19 vaccine.”
Franson fears that the “door knocking vaccinators will be nothing more than liberal activists, harvesting for voter information,” she stated in a tweet. She also questioned the overall cost of the door-to-door vaccine program.
The door knocking vaccinators will be nothing more than liberal activists, harvesting for voter information while they stick you with a needle.
— 🇺🇸 Mary Franson 🇺🇸 (@RepMaryFranson) July 7, 2021
Franson has a history of calling out the Minnesota Department of Health’s COVID-19 policies. She highlighted in May MDH’s partnership with private health plans to “access who or who has not been vaccinated” in order to “target those zip codes and then [possibly] contact those not complying.”
She also called for a full audit of the death certificates for Minnesota’s COVID-19 deaths in December.
“Now we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people,” President Joe Biden said earlier this month, prompting widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers.
A recent poll of likely voters found that the majority of Americans think the door-to-door approach is a “bad idea.”
Meanwhile, the White House is also facing criticism for admitting that it is colluding with tech companies to censor “misinformation” about the vaccines.
Megan Olson
Megan Olson is a 2020 graduate of the University of Minnesota with degrees in political science and history. She works in public affairs in addition to serving on the Legislative Advisory Council for School District 196. She is also on the school board for FIT academy, a charter school in Apple Valley.
