Ivo Kalninš

Ivo Kalninš (Born October 11th, 1965) is a Doggerland Politician, former Co-Leader of the Centre Party and Minister for Agriculture and Rural affairs. He formerly was leader of the Steibo Farmer's Union and leader of the Centra Party.

Early Life
Ivo Kalninš was born on October 11th, 1965 to Jānis and Anna Kalninš, two lutheran Latvian immigrants that fled Latvia in the 1950s. The Kalninš had purchased a small farm in the rural southeast of Centra province, near the town of Orchardville. Ivo was the eldest child of the Kalninš family and had 2 younger brothers (Ivars and Strādulis) and one younger sister (Dace). Kalninš excelled at school and was accepted into Richelau College in Hoovsted on an academic scholarship to become an engineer in 1982 at 17.

Early Career
Kalninš studied for four years at Richelau before graduating in 1986 with an degree in engineering. Kalninš worked as an engineer and lived well off in Hoovsted until tragedy struck in early 1989. Kalninš' father Jānis was severely injured in a farming accident and Kalninš was forced to return home to Orchardville to take care for his mother and preseve the farm until his youngest brother Strādulis could finish agricultural college. Soon after returning home, Kalninš fell in love with farming and when he moved back to Hoovsted in early 1990, Kalninš quit his job as an engineer, bought a farm in the Platteland municiaplity of northern Steibo and joined the fledgling Steibo Farmer's Union. Just a few months after joining, longtime leader Hermann Strange retired and Kalninš decided to run for party leader. Despite being a new member, he was able to win the leadership election with 55% of the vote, beating out deputy leader Steven Paulsen.

Steibo Politics
Upon becoming leader of the SFU, Kalninš reformed the structure of the party to make it more democratic, including elections for deputy leader and most important party positions. In early 1991, Kalninš called a party convention at his farm in Platteland to create a new party manifesto. This move was incredibly popular with the party members who had grown apart from the corrupt and weak party establishment. The new manifesto was very popular among non members as well and the SFU experienced a massive membership boom.

Riding off of his newfound popularity, Kalninš ran for Chief Executive of Platteland in 1992 and easily won, becoming the first member of the SFU to be elected to office since the 1970s. As Chief Executive, he enacted many reforms including expanding the paved road network to farms that were on dirt or gravel roads, improving funding for rural schools and hospitals, and reforming property tax. In a first for Steibo, Kalninš organized the first election to the Steibo Municipal Cooperation Council in October of 1998 as before this election, all members of the Council were undemocratically appointed by municipal leadership. Kalninš won the election with 79% of the vote against independent opponent John Kuhl and appointed himself to the council in December. While a councilor, Kalninš lobbied for the provinces' farmers and founded the Rural League, a group of councilors representing rural municipalities.

Following the democratization of Steibo in 1999, Kalninš became a member of the House of Municipalities, the upper house of the Steibo Parliament until 2002, and later a member of the House of Councilors (the lower house) until 2008. As a result of the 2000 election, Kalninš resigned as party leader and was succeeded by his former rival Steven Paulsen, who lead the party until his retirement in 2003. Kalninš briefly lead the party again until James May was elected in early 2004.

Centra Politics
In late 2008, Kalninš decided to sell his farm to the party to act as a headquarters and moved back to the family farm in Centra. Just three years after he moved, he decided to join the agrarian Centra Party. The party, needing new leadership elected him as leader in 2012 to help revitalize the struggling party, which had not seen representation in the Centra Assembly since the early 1990s. As leader, Kalninš was elected to the Centra Assembly in 2013, running on a more modern version of his platform in Steibo. Kalninš stepped down as leader in 2019 and left the party in 2021 to help create the Agrarian Social Union/Doggerland Farmer's Society (Later the Centre Party), a national counterpart to the Centra Party and Steibo Farmer's Union.

Federal Politics
After the death of Pax, Baveland selected Kalninš to be his running mate in the May 2021 Doggerland presidential election despite Kalninš endorsing Baveland’s opponent Rune. Kalninš ran for Vice President for the second time when Hawyee selected him to he his running mate in the following presidential election. Hawyee and Kalninš were unsuccessful and subsequently endorsed Rune for president. After the June 2021 Doggerland legislative elections, Hawyee stepped down as co-leader. After the August legislative elections, the Centre Party was merged with the Evangelical Reform Alliance to form the Christian Democratic Party. Kalninš retired from politics on September 17, 2021 to focus on his family and farm.

Personal Life
Kalninš currently lives in a house he built on his family farm with his wife of 34 years Laurie Kalninš (neé David) and sons Jānis and Paul.