Matt Gerszewski, Minot

First of all, thank you for your service in the Senate. You were a solid governor of good mind and character, and fairly commonsense, moderate ideology, and you deserved a shot in D.C. I’m asking you to draw upon that mind, character and moderate inclination and seek to support someone other than President Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020.

Yes, it’s early. Yes, most of your party and much of North Dakota likes the guy. But you are a popular office holder with some political capital worth spending. I hope you are a senator who covets and prioritizes the country’s fortune over that of party and leader, I ask you to show some political courage and independence, and denounce and oppose that leader when appropriate. It seems the longer he’s in office, the more appropriate it becomes.

It took a few handfuls of Republican Congressmen and Senators to show President Nixon the door in 1974. We need a few more to convince Mr. Trump of the error of his ways or to eventually show him the door as well. I don’t expect you to show up on MSNBC every night criticizing all that the President does. But many of the actions he has already taken and words he has already spoken (to name just a few, the recent idiocy with NATO and Russia, his treatment and attitude towards women, his false moral equivalency of black protestors and white supremacists last year in Virginia, etc, etc,) must have you deeply concerned. As an American of sound character, how could you not be?

I also don’t expect you to be endorsing and voting for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. But you can, and should, support another Republican. There were a few that fit the bill in 2016. This time around, I’d heartily suggest Gov. John Kasich should he decide to challenge Mr. Trump. I hope he does and I hope you can find a way to support him or some other reasonable Republican so we don’t have to envision four more years of a horrible presidency.

The next 2 1/2 years will be enough of a challenge and a burden to this country, and I’m hoping you can do your part to meet that challenge and lessen the burden.