EDITED TO ADD: Looking for an alternative to Keith Ellison in light of the domestic abuse allegations? My recommendation would be Mike Rothman: he seems solid and competent, and the lawyers who’ve worked with him all seem to like him. Debra Hilstrom has close ties to Lori Swanson, which is even less appealing now than it was when I wrote this post last month; Matt Pelikan still has a resume I’d consider thin even for a seat in the legislature; and Tom Foley’s defamation lawsuit against WCCO really ticks me off. Mike Rothman looks fine to me, and I’m probably going to vote for him on Tuesday.

Here’s the post I originally wrote about this race:

This is a statewide race. Thanks in part to our ongoing national nightmare, I think people are more aware now than they were for a while that this is an extremely important job.

I’ve never been a fan of Lori Swanson. She was a Mike Hatch protege, and I really didn’t like Mike Hatch. When I saw Pelikan was challenging Swanson for the endorsement, at my SD convention, I grabbed one of his stickers and slapped it on, although there was no “uncommitted for governor, Pelikan for AG” walking subcaucus to join so I thought this was probably pretty quixotic. At the state convention, Pelikan got enough votes to prevent a first-ballot endorsement of Swanson — it was 52% Swanson, 48% (I assume) Pelikan — at which point Swanson dropped out of the race entirely and announced she was running for governor, instead. The convention endorsed Pelikan, and then a bunch of other people, starting with Keith Ellison, jumped into the AG race.

What a year. Anyway, here’s who’s on the ballot:

Mike Rothman
Debra Hilstrom
Matt Pelikan
Tom Foley
Keith Ellison

All five of these people are qualified, legitimate candidates. All of them are lawyers, all of them have relevant experience, none of them are actually Republicans and none of them are loons. (Sharon Anderson is running in the Republican primary, and don’t count her out, she beat Charlie Weaver in the GOP primary back in 1994 and was the Republican AG candidate on the general election ballot.)

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