A former Minnesota bar owner who now commutes two hours a day to sling suds in neighboring Wisconsin said Gov. Tim Walz’s restrictive pandemic-era lockdowns in the state “decimated” local businesses — and caused financial ruin for those who stood up for their livelihoods.
“I think he’s an evil man who overstepped his role as the governor. He took small businesses and ripped them up. He destroyed us,” Lisa Zarza, 52, told The Post.
“I had to leave the state to be able to legally work and make a living.”
She opened the Outpost Bar and Grill in Bay City, Wisc. in March 2022 after she said she was stripped of her licenses to operate Alibi Drinkery in Lakeville and Froggy Bottoms River Pub and Lily PADio in Northfield.
The new location is a solid hour drive from her home in Rosemont, Minn.
“I didn’t even know the name of our governor until he shut our state down,” said Zarza, a mother of three and grandmother of two who’s lived in Minnesota since she was seven years old.
She said when shelter-in-place and business closures first went into effect in March, 2020, “I did everything I was supposed to do. I wore my mask, I social distanced. I stayed at home.”
But as the months wore on and the state slowly reopened, salons, bars and restaurants remained under Walz’s closure orders — which weren’t completely lifted statewide until May of 2021.
By October, 2020, Zarza and a cohort of fellow bar owners had had enough and decided to defy the order. --->READ MORE HERE
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will have to defend draconian decisions and glaring errors he made as a state leader in the COVID pandemic after being selected by Kamala Harris on Tuesday as the 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate.
Walz, 60, was one of several Democratic governors accused of “massive overreach” in wielding executive power to shutter schools, businesses and churches during the once-in-a-generation pandemic.
The Minnesota governor in 2020 even set up a hotline through which law enforcement received more than 10,000 emails from residents snitching on neighbors ignoring lockdown measures during that first year of the pandemic, Alpha News reported.
In selecting the Minnesota governor, the Harris campaign on Tuesday touted his dedication to countering Republicans who want to “roll back Americans’ rights” — saying he had “stood up for fundamental freedoms” in the past.
But that’s exactly what lawmakers and civil liberties groups accused him of not doing during the COVID years.
“From overseeing the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, to asking neighbors to tattle on one another for violating lockdown mandates, to forcing hospitalized COVID patients back in their nursing home facilities — Tim Walz proved during the pandemic he does not have the competency to lead in times of crisis,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told The Post.
“Like the rest of his tenure as governor, Walz’s pandemic response was a complete and utter failure,” Emmer ripped his former House colleague. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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