This is a judgeship in Hennepin County. Voters in Hennepin County will see this race on their ballots. On the ballot:

Matthew Frank (Incumbent)
Christopher Leckrone

Judge Matthew Frank was appointed by Governor Walz in 2023. There are basically two really straightforward reasons to vote for Judge Frank and not his opponent.

1. One of the foundational experiences lawyers should have if they want to become a judge is to spend time in court — you can be a prosecutor, defense attorney, or litigator, but you really do need to be going to court. According to his resume, Christopher Leckrone has worked for many years primarily in compliance, a job done entirely outside of courtrooms. (He does list pro bono work with foster kids that might involve going into the courtroom, but that is very clearly not what he’s spending most of his time doing.) (ETA: his website says he worked as a prosecutor, so I checked his resume again. From 2010-2010 he worked for the DA’s office in Middlesex, MA. I stand by my assessment that this is not someone bringing a wealth of courtroom experiment to the table.)
   
2. Matthew Frank was one of the lead prosecutors in the state’s case against Derek Chauvin. And of the 19 judges in Hennepin County up for election this year, that’s the guy Leckrone decided to run against. Leckrone has a completely hidden or sanitized social media presence and I found no indication of his political views except that he opted to run against this particular judge. (It’s not just that Frank is new — a cursory check quickly turned up several judges appointed in 2022 or 2023. There’s some other reason Leckrone decided to run against him, and this seems by far the most likely.)

Anyway — Frank is well-qualified and Leckrone is not. I would vote for Judge Frank. I think all the other 4th District Court judges are running unopposed.

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I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people to donate to fundraisers I can then see fund. Usually I do teacher fundraisers (and I found one for this year, Ms. Pierce at Lucy Craft Laney school in North Minneapolis who would like donations to buy snacks for her students and supplies like Lysol wipes — stuff that schools with wealthier families just have the parents send in).

But I’m also fundraising for something slightly more personal to my family this year: YMCA Camp Northern Lights. Camp Northern Lights is a family camp, which is a camp that whole families attend together. My family went to Camp Du Nord (the other YMCA family camp) for many years, and my daughter Kiera has worked as a counselor at Camp Northern Lights for the last two summers. One of the things that makes Camp Northern Lights unique is their serious commitment to inclusion of families from communities that have been underrepresented at YMCA camps.

Last summer, Camp Northern Lights had a serious fire early in the summer — no one was hurt, but they lost their commercial kitchen and the housing for the counselors-in-training. They are hoping to raise enough money to rebuild an expanded kitchen. I have set up a fundraiser towards that goal. If you’d like to express your appreciation for the usefulness of this blog, you can show your love by donating to my fundraiser! (9/23 note: the images aren’t loading on their pages — any of them, as far as I can tell, it’s not just me — but the fundraiser still works.)