Becky Lourey wants you

Can a gun–toting Gold Star mom and state senator topple Tim Pawlenty?

A A A Comments By Britt Robson Wednesday, May 24 2006

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Through it all, Lourey never snarled, never asked how Patriot Radio proposed to provide health care for un-aborted but abandoned children, never pointed out that her taxpaying business was also paying private sector health insurance for its 70 employees, and never queried Mark Yost on how many jobs he had created lately. Instead, she noted at the end of the segment that she and the Patriot Radio moderators always seemed to find large areas of agreement.

Whatever one thinks about her political creed or her gubernatorial prospects, Lourey's life story is the sort that's liable to make any reasonable person wonder how she's managed without wearing down or turning cynical. Asked what has kept her grounded in life through dying sons and failed businesses and alarm clocks set to ring at 4:00 a.m., Lourey pauses. "I always knew that my sister had much more talent than me," she says at last, "and that was troubling to me as a girl. She was a child prodigy as a pianist. People drove up from the Twin Cities to watch her play when she was seven and I was four. At first a gentleman was playing with me, then everybody ran and saw my sister play, and I filled up my squirt gun with mud and ran in and shot it all over the gentleman's shirt. And I yelled, 'Everybody always wants to be with Judy!'"

Raoul Benavides

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Not long after that, Lourey says she heard the Parable of the Talents (from the Book of Matthew) in Sunday school. One servant was given 10 talents and turned them into 20; another was given 5 talents and turned them into 10. Both were told that they were good and faithful and would live in paradise. "But then the servant who was given one talent said, 'I was so afraid I'd lose it that I hid it under a rock,' and he was told that he was banished forever. And I said, 'What!!'" Lourey recalls with a laugh. "I remember lying awake at night a lot after that, thinking, 'I don't like that.' But then it came to me, and I said, wait. My sister has 10 talents and is turning them into 20. I have one and I have the responsibility to turn it into two. And that is why I believe every single person in this world has talents to double.

"Four years ago, I don't think Minnesota was ready for me," she adds a little later. "I think they are ready for me now." 