Minnesota’s campaign season is in full swing. The stretch between the Fourth of July and early August is when attention starts ramping up in races up and down the ballot.
This year includes an open seat in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the state’s largest public law office, and it deserves scrutiny. Last month, Cedrick Frazier was endorsed by the party’s increasingly DSA-dominated activist base at the County Convention. I attended as a delegate and witnessed DSA members, including Minneapolis Council Member Aisha Chughtai, working the floor for Frazier and against Sheriff Dawanna Witt. You would be forgiven for forgetting that Frazier was one of Mary Moriarty’s key supporters in her bid for the DFL endorsement in 2022, that he promoted her candidacy in the Star Tribune, and that he co-chaired her transition committee. You would be forgiven, because Frazier wants you to forget. Cedrick has scrubbed any reference to Moriarty from his campaign website, hasn’t accepted her endorsement, and is not publicly campaigning with her.
But some people remember Frazier’s ties to Moriarty. The same people who worked hard to get Moriarty elected four years ago. People who don’t live here and don’t have to live with the consequences of another four years of an inexperienced, ideologically-motivated politician masquerading as a prosecutor. The same dark money groups that backed Moriarty in 2022 are already pushing untraceable sums into Frazier’s candidacy. One of them, the Working Families Party (WFP) PAC spent tens of thousands of dollars in 2022 to support Moriarty. The same group lists Frazier as the only Minnesota candidate they’re backing this year and had already started spending this year to boost Frazier through paid social media ads. They abruptly pulled their ads down after Folk’s campaign team cast a light on the outside influence, another apparent sign that Frazier will court the Moriarty coalition and campaign in her tradition — as long as you do not know about it.
So, who funds the WFP? We don’t know. That’s the point. These groups are structured to shield themselves from any real transparency.
With just weeks until the August 11th primary, the Hennepin County Attorney’s race has not received much attention, and Frazier’s ties to the Moriarty school of justice have garnered even less. Hennepin County voters should ask themselves: Can they trust a DSA-supported candidate who led the charge to elect Moriarty? Can we trust someone who takes dark money from out-of-state PACs to make impartial prosecution decisions? If you believe the answer is no, I hope you will join me in rejecting Cedrick Frazier and supporting Anders Folk.
Tim Keane is a Minneapolis resident and practicing attorney.
This is NOT a very factual attack on Frazier and Moriarty. The implication that Frazier is taking ‘dark money’ from somewhare is completely unsupported by evidence. The support of the Worker Families Party is neither formidable nor sinister. Check the wikipedia page:
“WFP is a center-left[17] to left-wing party.[18] Most commentators describe WFP as a “progressive” party[19] or a social democratic party.[20] WFP has been frequently described as the “Tea Party of the left”.[21][22][23] In 2016, Bernie Sanders said: “The WFP is the closest thing there is to a political party that believes in my vision of democratic socialism”.[24]
WFP has worked with both centrist Democrats and leftist Democrats. WFP has endorsed candidates to compete with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members, and has also endorsed DSA members.”
WFP currently has elected council members in Hartford CT, and Philadelphia, PA but otherwise records that none of its endorsees hold elected office.
It would be more relevant to discuss Moriarty’s record in prosecuting crime in Minneapolis in detail. Generally it is good. Rates have gone down across most categories of crime. My experience as a crime victim while a small business owner was that the Hennepin County Prosecutor’s office was very professional and conscientious in following up with the prosecution and sentencing of individuals apprehended for armed robbery at our facility.
Local police frequently dismissed the county prosecutors when I talked with them, claiming that offenders were “let off with a slap on the wrist” etc. But my experience was not like that at all.
Folk’s campaign states that he will “end the Moriarty era” . I find that ominous and I have not voted for him. Does he want a return to the ‘shoot first and ask questions afterward’ attitude of the police before the George Floyd demonstrations? Will he fail to prosecute police if they behave in that way? How, exactly does he plan to end gun violence? (It is horrific but the incidents are infrequent enough that they do not affect overall crime rates very much.)
Ending gun violence has much more to do with gun control legislation than with county prosecution.
Woods Halley
Succinct and factual. Anders Folk all day, every day.
So hypocritical, taking PAC money to campaign against capitalism. If you believe you are going to win, why do you need their money???
“Can they trust a DSA-supported candidate who led the charge to elect Moriarty? Can we trust someone who takes dark money from out-of-state PACs to make impartial prosecution decisions?”
Nope and nope.
Voting for Folk…all day.