To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Brad Kohler. I am running for Governor of Minnesota as an independent conservative in 2026. Before I ask a single voter for their support, I am asking your organization for something different: your expertise, your standards, and your voice at the table where the decisions will be made.

I am sending this letter to every major environmental, conservation, supply chain ethics, and labor organization with a documented interest in Minnesota's mineral and energy future — regardless of your current position on development. That includes organizations that have actively opposed the Duluth Complex. That includes organizations that have sued to stop the permits. The invitation is unconditional.

Agenda Minnesota is the most comprehensively sourced governing document ever put before a Minnesota voter. It discloses its own environmental risks explicitly. It acknowledges that Duluth Complex development carries real consequences for the St. Louis River watershed, for wetland ecosystems, and for the Lake Superior basin. I am not running from those risks. I am asking your organization to help me manage them responsibly.

Here is the honest frame: the minerals under northeastern Minnesota are being extracted somewhere. American electric vehicles, defense systems, and consumer electronics run on cobalt, nickel, and platinum group metals. Right now, 70 percent of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where child labor has been documented in artisanal supply chains by Amnesty International and the USGS. Minnesota holds 88 percent of confirmed U.S. cobalt reserves and produces zero.

I am not presenting that as a reason to abandon environmental standards. I am presenting it as the reason those standards must be applied to the full supply chain — not only the Minnesota end of it. The question is not whether these minerals are mined. The question is where, and under whose rules.

For generations, candidates and organizations like yours have played an adversarial role in this process. You pushed back. They ignored you, or they were bought by the interests that wanted you ignored. The result is sixty years without a developed Duluth Complex industry — the ground still locked, the communities still emptying, and the minerals still sourced from places with no comparable environmental standard.

I am asking you to try something different. Not because I am asking you to trust me blindly. Because I am offering you something no Minnesota candidate has ever offered before: a formal role in building the environmental framework before any permit is signed, with your standards documented publicly and your concerns answered on the record.

I understand that some of you will come to this table expecting to oppose the plan. I welcome that. I understand that some of you have concerns that cannot be resolved to your satisfaction. I want to hear those too. I would rather know exactly where the lines are before the ground breaks than discover them in a courtroom afterward.

Whether you believe in Agenda Minnesota's vision or not — whether you support my candidacy or not — bring your voice, your input, and your reasoning to the table in good faith. I will take it seriously. I will document it publicly. I will respond to it on the record. And I will build whatever comes from that conversation into the governing plan.