By Martha Holton Dimick
In an August 7, 2025, Star Tribune article, I announced that I would not be running for Hennepin County Attorney this year. When Mary Moriarty revealed she would not seek another term and Cedrick Frazier signaled interest in the race, I raised a concern many shared: “Can we just get a prosecutor in that office?”
Then Anders Folk reached out. I was immediately impressed. Anders is a former federal prosecutor with real trial experience — the kind of experience the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office desperately needs. I knew right away he was the right person for the job, and I proudly endorsed him.
Why Anders Folk
Anders will restore the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to the strong, steady institution it once was by:
- Prosecuting violent and repeat offenders
- Holding juveniles accountable with consequences that fit the offense
- Working closely with law enforcement and justice partners to ensure safety across all Hennepin County communities
We need Anders Folk — and we need him now.
Vote for Anders Folk: A vote for safety and justice.
-Martha
This is a meaningful endorsement from a veteran prosecutor with deep roots in the city. Who would think that it’s a good idea to have an experienced prosecutor runnng the Hennepin County Attorney’s office? The general public, maybe? We’ll find out, I guess.
Are the people pushing Folk denying the validity of the statistics, which indicates that crime rates are down across
all categories? My experience, which is anecdotal but quite extensive, has been that the problem with law enforcement in Minneapolis is not with the county attorney but with the police department, at the level of refusing to assign investigators to many cases or of bungling or dropping them after investigators were assigned. I have often experienced that. Just one example: We had a robbery in my store in which a group came in when the single staff member was briefly away in the basement and started looting. The staff member came upstairs and found them and they fled to a waiting vehicle. We had video, a license plate number, witnessses. An investigator was assigned, briefly interviewed us, glanced at the video and said he was dropping the case because the part of the video showing a perpetrator in full flight was ‘blurred’. There were at least 10 such cases in which no investigator was assigned or dropped the case for spurious reasons when we had abundant evidence. In a few cases we got an excellent investigator and the case was prosecuted and then the county attorney’s office handled it very well.
My take on this is that either the supporters of Folk don’t understand this or that the Folk campaign is based on a kind of dog whistle racism and Folk’s real intention is to return to the kind of policing and prosecution which we had before the George Floyd events.
Woods Halley