Last week brought news that a three person panel containing both Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison had issued a pardon to a man who had been convicted of repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl.
After November’s elections, there will be a new governor on the panel and, possibly, a new Attorney General. Obviously, we know what Keith Ellison would do should a similar case arise, but what would the other candidates for this panel do?
Attorney General
The Republican candidate running to unseat Keith Ellison, Ron Schutz, has been clear that he disagrees with the pardon:
Governor
Of the Republican candidates to succeed Gov. Walz, Kendall Qualls has been clear that he disagrees with the pardon:
House Speaker Lisa Demuth has also said that she disagrees with the pardon:
But Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic nominee, has been much more reluctant to share her views. The Star Tribune reports:
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the DFL-endorsed candidate for governor, signaled that she, too, may have handled the Vang case differently.
“I would want to look at the entire record before making a decision on any pardon case, but as a former prosecutor I have not supported pardons of sex offenders,” Klobuchar said in a statement Thursday evening.
Sen. Klobuchar has long been an ackowledged master of the art of speaking without actually saying anything, and this statement is in that tradition.
Now that she has had a long weekend to familiarize herself with the case, perhaps Minnesotans can get an answer. The question of whether or not a Governor Klobuchar would have pardoned this child rapist, as Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison did, is an important one for the safety of Minnesotans.
