A former Minnesota bar owner who faced more than $300,000 in fines during the COVID-19 pandemic described Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as an “evil man” who had taken “small businesses and ripped them up.”
In an interview with the New York Post, Lisa Zarza, who now runs the Outpost Bar and Grill in Bay City, Wisconsin, described Walz as having “overstepped his role as the governor.”
After months of having her two bars in Minnesota shuttered during the pandemic, Zarza, along with other bar owners, decided to defy shutdown orders and ended up being “threatened with arrests” and fines, she told the outlet.
“I think he’s an evil man who overstepped his role as the governor,” Zarza said. “He took small businesses and ripped them up. He destroyed us.”
Zarza, who previously owned establishments such as the Alibi Drinkery in Lakeville, Minnesota, and the Froggy Bottoms River Pub and Lily PADio in Northfield, told the outlet that she “had to leave the state” to earn a liveable wage.
“I had to leave the state to be able to legally work and make a living,” Zarza explained to the outlet.
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Zarza explained that she “did everything” she was “supposed to do,” but after several months had passed, and businesses such as restaurants and bars were still shuttered, Zarza and other bar owners ended up defying Walz’s shut down order in October 2020.
“I was threatened with arrests, I was threatened with fines,” Zarza explained. “At the end of the entire lawsuit, my lawsuit including Attorney General fees was over $300,000. I filed personal bankruptcy.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, Walz also ran a hotline where citizens could report on other people in Minnesota who may have defied his pandemic shutdown orders.
Zarza continued to point out that during Walz’s shutdown, places like “Target, Walmart,” and “Home Depot” had been “open 100 percent.”
“Everything else, literally Target, Walmart, Home Depot,” Zarza told the outlet. “Everyone was open 100 percent. The same exact order that shut us down, opened them all up.”
Walz was recently announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election. In response to Harris’s selection of Walz as her running mate, Zarza told the outlet that Harris had “made a big mistake” by selecting him.
“Kamala made a big mistake picking him as her VP,” Zarza explained. “She thought she was getting some Podunk freaking farmer. She didn’t.”
