As Republican attorney general candidate Doug Wardlow gets a campaign boost today from Vice President Mike Pence, Democratic rival Keith Ellison is tapping some well-known Minnesotans to question Wardlow’s record. Former state Supreme Court Justice Paul Anderson says while Wardlow was a law clerk for another justice, he authored a partisan blog. Anderson says, “I found the conduct of Mr. Wardlow so egregious, so undermining of the ethics and the standards that we had on the court, [that] I thought he should have been terminated immediately.” Wardlow’s campaign manager responds, “No matter how many times Democrats try to level these attacks, they will not work.”
Meanwhile, Minneapolis police union head Bob Kroll said Democratic attorney general candidate Keith Ellison “was a criminal defense attorney basically for all the gangs” — and about Ellison’s plan to keep closer tabs on cases where officers shoot suspects, Kroll says, “He’s been on the other side, representing criminal defendants against our officers for many years. I think he has a bias against police and I don’t think that he could be impartial if he started in a role down that path.” Ellison has said he’ll be the people’s attorney general, pointing to his work in Congress and the legislature, plus 16 years as a public defense attorney.