ABOVE: US House of Representatives First Congressional District Democratic candidate, Alex Eaton, starts walking along Lake Avenue in Fairmont on Thursday. Eaton said he will be in Fairmont for four days, meeting with people and discussing the issues while filming his journey.

FAIRMONT – Alex Eaton, a candidate in the Democratic Primary for the US House of Representatives 1st Congressional District race, is walking the distance of the district and has made his way to Fairmont.

Eaton, a real estate company owner who manages buildings in the Twin Cities, lives in Vasa, by Red Wing. He filed to run June 2 and started his journey in Manley on June 4. He decided to walk the length of the district while he was choosing whether to run or not.

“Back when I was in college, I studied abroad in the Middle East, and I actually spent a month in Syria, of all places,” Eaton said. “This is before their civil war and everything. I walked about 100 miles in the foothills of Syria. I really loved that I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where I was going to end up at the end of the day, and I would end up meeting random people and having experiences I never could have predicted.”

He said he wanted to put himself in that type of position again, where he could have genuine conversations with people of any background.

The journey has been in stints, four days at a time. Eaton said for each of those days, he is dropped off at his starting point, walks and meets with people, then is picked up at the end of the day. So far, he said it has been really fun hearing people’s perspectives and listening to them talk about their situations.

“Some of these, like really small towns, you can see glimpses of what the town used to be like,” Eaton said. “I was just in Alpha yesterday, and it was kind of comparable to Rushmore. In both these towns, I met people who had lived there for their whole life. In both cases, they talked about these bustling towns and what they used to be like. They used to have grain elevators in these small towns, so the local farmers would haul their grain to the local grain elevator. Then they shut it down and sold it to a private farmer.”

In talking with people, Eaton said the biggest thing he is hearing is frustration with the fraud.

“You take a situation where we care, Minnesotans care about our neighbors,” he said. “In that case of Feeding Our Future, we care about children that were struggling, missing meals and going hungry. The federal government put money out there and transferred it to the state government, and then, as it trickled down, there’s just so much paperwork. If the paperwork was in place correctly, they paid the money. It was never about where meals were served, and people are pissed about that. That’s the number one issue.”

The four pillars of Eaton’s campaign are universal single-payer health care, a tax cut for the working class so families that make $80,000 or less should pay zero income tax, universal basic income of $500 per month and universal pre-k education.

In particular, when digging into the issues, Eaton said he has been finding common ground when it comes to healthcare.

“I met somebody at their door,” Eaton said. “A Republican, Angel, who’s been really jammed up because of healthcare and short-term disability. She has this benefit that’s supposed to be there for her, but she’s not getting it. She had a little criticism of the new school that they have in Sherburn that’s being built now, because she’s struggling so much financially, and then the property tax goes up. I talked to her about my plan for universal health care, and she’s very receptive.”

Eaton said he chose Fairmont as he wanted to go to county seats and some of the bigger towns as well as smaller areas on his route. He will be spending four days in and around Fairmont. During this stint, he said his main goal is to continue meeting people and having genuine conversations as he experiences what Fairmont has to offer and battles through the heat.

“So far, it’s been okay,” Eaton said. “I am resolved with the idea that I’m gonna be sweating, like a lot of sweating.”

Along his journey, Eaton has been recording his trek, as well as his talks with people when they are okay with being recorded. As he meets with people in Fairmont and continues on to Blue Earth, St. James, Mankato, and all the way to Lake Crescent, Eaton said he wants to make sure he can share his journey with everyone.

“I have a lot of footage that I want to make sure I get the word out and share these stories that I’ve been having with people,” he said.

For more information, or to follow along, visit alexeaton.org