I am personally saddened and stunned by the tragic events that took place in Red Lake.

Pushing gun control drives people [in my district] crazy, gay marriage, abortion, deficit spending.All of that stuff adds up to be a problem for Democrats.

Try to un-gerrymander these districts so that you're not packing all the Democrats into one district, so you've got districts that are competitive, so that you've got a shot at electing Democrats. But that's more a long-term proposition, if it can even be done.

The [Democratic] party's become an urban party, and they don't get rural America. They don't get agriculture.

I think we are starting to get some information that will allow us to get to the bottom of this, and I hope we continue to work on this until we get to the bottom of it.

I've tried to maintain my independence in Congress. Sometimes that has meant opposing my own party leaders.

We [Democrats] have become a party of assembling all these different groups, the women's caucus and the black caucus and the Hispanic caucus and the lesbian-gay-transgender caucus and so forth, and that doesn't relate to people out in rural America.