This is another very straightforward one. On the ballot:

Keith Ellison (DFL)
Ron Schutz (Republican)

Keith Ellison (DFL)

Keith may be my favorite of our current set of elected Democrats. He has worked so hard, and done such an outstanding job, at meeting the terrifying moment we’re in. He has sued ICE; he has worked with Mary Moriarty to file charges against ICE agents for criminal behavior in our state; he has worked to investigate the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti despite a lack of cooperation from the Feds. He was part of a lawsuit to block federal funding cuts to affordable housing. He worked with other attorneys general to keep Trump’s DoJ from seizing Minnesota’s voter lists.

He’s also been very good at fighting for everyday Minnesotans across the state, including the red parts — for example, he was part of a lawsuit that resulted in the right-to-repair John Deere settlement. He’s terrific at consumer protection generally, but also, one of the first things he did on taking office was to create a Wage Theft division of the AG’s office. Given that wage theft is a huge problem (it’s astronomically larger than any other kind of theft) it’s honestly shocking that this didn’t exist before. His office has made wage theft a priority and recouped a huge amount of stolen wages for people.

They’re also responsive. Back in July, someone posted a thread to the Twin Cities Geeks FB group a couple weeks back that turned into people telling their own stories about Keith and his staff. A couple of excerpts:

As a patient of MHealth Fairview, I was following the arguments between Fairview and the U closely, wondering how it would affect my care. Ellison stepped in when nobody else wanted to.

He helped me with finding my employer who skipped town without paying me and the other workers at a factory here in Minnesota he owned.

I experienced an extremely frustrating situation with a well known health insurance provider who had informed me they would cover a particular expensive treatment. This information was provided to me on two different occasions. They then proceeded to backtrack and deny the claim even after numerous appeals on my part. After contacting Mr. Ellison’s Department, one of his attorneys took my case, all of my information and my claims were renegotiated and were fully covered. […] I also had the opportunity to deal with this office again when a company insisted on charging me sales tax on an item of clothing I had ordered on-line when Minnesota does not charge sales tax on clothing. After several attempts on my part without any success, the Attorney General’s Office was able to solve this concern in my favor. Again, with very kind and thoughtful assistance.

Sometimes he buys his groceries at my Cub location, and when he does he checks in with employees and sees how we’re doing. He’ll even swing by the pharmacy even though we’re out of the way to ask us how we’re doing, answer our questions if we want to know what he’s working on, and thank us for the work we do.

That was just one thread! And it was FULL of people who’d gone to his office for help and gotten it.

I’ll note that I have my own story along these lines: a company tried to screw me over, I complained to the AG’s office, and the company refunded my money. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, and one of the things I really really appreciate about Keith Ellison’s office is that it doesn’t have to be a huge amount of money for them to care.

As the Republicans have gone after Keith Ellison over the Feeding Our Future fraud, they have brought up the fact that he met with some of the ringleaders in 2021. Keith’s response (he talks about it in this interview) is that he meets with constituents multiple times a week, and he took this meeting, investigated whether their claim of being harassed was legitimate, and determined it wasn’t. I would say that the Facebook thread demonstrates the accuracy of this: FoF didn’t get special treatment. If Minnesotans want to meet with Keith because they’re having a problem, he meets with them. Also, the Attorney General’s office (along with the Department of Education) went to the FBI with the initial suspicions against FoF, worked with them on the investigation, and did the clean-up afterwards.

(Also, if Republicans as a whole gave an actual flying fuck about fraud, they would support one of the proposed bans on insider trading by elected officials, and do literally anything about Trump.)

Keith Ellison is an incredible asset to the people of Minnesota and I am absolutely going to vote for him.

Ron Schutz (Republican)

Like Keith’s opponent four years ago, Ron Schutz is trying to pretend he’s a moderate. He is absolutely not. Ron is an unapologetic Trump toady. The Reformer ran a long and detailed editorial on this race and noted that a week after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good, Ron was whining about Keith trying to protect Minnesotans from ICE:

The Reformer asked Ron what he’d do to get Christian Castro (the ICE agent who fired through a closed door, barely missed shooting a child, hit a man in the leg, and lied about the incident) back to Minnesota; Ron didn’t respond.

In a TV interview (watch the relevant bit here) he got asked if he would buck the party line and file suit if Trump did something illegal:

KTTC: Should the Trump administration make an unlawful decision, would you go against the Republican status quo and challenge him in court?

Schutz: Well, that kind of begs the question about what’s an unlawful decision. Okay? And it’s, that’s something I certainly can’t answer in the abstract, but what I can tell you is my goal is to protect the citizens of Minnesota. I … I doubt if President Trump is going to be um, you know, taking some action that would be blatantly illegal. I know the Democrats think he has done that. I can tell you from having spent a lot of time in the courtroom, there can be differences of opinion on this.

During the State Fair, some folks from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota went to Ron’s booth to ask him about his stance on Trump’s cuts to health care; he refused to answer and did this thing that absolutely makes my hair stand on end, which is that he did the buddy-buddy put-his-arm-around-the-person-he’s-really-pissed at thing while calling the Alliance people stalkers for showing up to ask him a question he didn’t want to answer. (Video is here.) The question was just “what do you think of Trump’s cuts to Medicare.” Also, dude, you are a politician who’s running for office. People who come and ask you questions are not stalkers even if you don’t want to answer their questions.

There’s a website here that says, “Schutz supports Trump’s cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, to give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.” Ron has tweeted out a graphic saying this claim (which he attributes to the Alliance for a Better Minnesota) is false. But OK let me just show you the relevant portion of his graphic:

So here are the things I want to note.

1. The website I found said that Ron supported cuts to the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Ron calls out only the claims about Medicare and the ACA, not the claims about Social Security or Medicaid.
   
2. He then very noticeably does not go on to say that he opposes cutting Medicare and the ACA. This is deeply reminiscent of the bit in a murder mystery where the guy says “you can’t prove anything!” Like, okay, my dude, what is your stance here? Literally this is what the Alliance “stalkers” were asking him about!
   
   A final note: In his tweet with the graphic, he claims that ABM refused to leave until he asked them for the sources of their claims. Literally this is not what happened! You can watch that not happen in the video!

ABM: Mr. Schutz! I just want to know what you think about Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, because that is impacting so many Minnesota families.

Schutz: Well, all I know is that apparently ABM has decided to lie about everything I’ve said about them.

ABM: That is not true. What do you think of Trump’s cuts to the Affordable Care Act?

Schutz: What you guys should do is — you guys should just [inaudible].

ABM: You don’t have an answer for me.

Schutz: I’ve got people to talk to and things to do, and you guys are stalking us. And so that’s good enough. Thank you very much. Have a good day at the fair, guys. [Walks away.]

Anyway I e-mailed him a question (“Do you support reversing Trump’s cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?”) I’m sure you will be flabbergasted to hear that he did not respond. It’s only been a day but you know what, he’s not even responding to real reporters who ask him questions, he’s absolutely not going to get back to me unless it’s with a restraining order because I also left him that question as a reply on Twitter and apparently asking him questions is stalking.

The Alliance for a Better Minnesota in fact has a page where they source this more specifically:

Schutz was the chair of the board of the Center of the American Experiment (CAE), a far-right extreme think tank in Minnesota. CAE expressed support for Trump’s disastrous budget bill that gave massive tax breaks to corporations and billionaires at the expense of working Minnesotans.

CAE also denied claims that Trump’s budget bill would strip Medicaid coverage from Minnesotans, despite 17 million Americans and 179,000 Minnesotans being expected to have their healthcare coverage taken away under the bill.

Anyway, Ron Schutz: you very, very obviously support Trump’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, and Social Security. Do not pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, you smarmy, patronizing, prevaricating whiner.

Also, I almost forgot this: journalist Aaron Rupar turned up a post from April of 2020 in which Ron wrote a poem-shaped rant suggesting that gun violence against government officials would be the appropriate response to the shelter-in-place orders at the time.

If Ron Schutz is elected, he will kiss Trump’s ass and sell our state out to his billionaire buddies.

The Attorney General race four years ago was worryingly close. Vote for Keith Ellison, make sure your friends know that they should vote for Keith Ellison, doorknock for Keith Ellison, donate if you have some spare cash.

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This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.) I raised $7,230 during primary season so I’ve raised the goal.

I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies.