We have Ron Schultz who is running for Minnesota Attorney General. I'm just going to read their
intros for you. He frequently introduced or frequently recognizes one of the top lawyers
in the country. He was named to Forbes inaugural list of America's top 200 lawyers in both
2024 and 2025. Ron began his career by serving as a military lawyer in the United States Army
Jake Court, where he prosecuted felony court martial laws. And now for over two decades,
he has been included in the list of Minnesota's super lawyers and most years has been listed
among the top 10 super lawyers in the state. Though currently serving as a board member of
the Center for the American Experiment, a member of the Federal Society since 1993,
advisor to Upper Midwest Law Center, who we've had them speak here before too as well.
Ron Schultz has decided to step from advisor to active participant by running for Attorney
General of Minnesota. So, Ron, why don't you come on up.
Thank you, Dennis. So the first thing is the guy who ran last time, his name was Schultz,
almost like mine, S-C-H-U-L-T-Z. I have no L in my name. So I'm trying by the end of the
campaign. Everybody does this. By the end of the campaign, people will have my name down. It shoots
S-C-H-U-T-Z. So thanks for the kind introduction. What I'll do is give you a little bit of a
background again. I'll flesh out some of the things that Deeta said. I'm a lifelong
Minnesota and I was born and raised here. I grew up on a dairy farm in the southwestern
part of the state. If you go all the way south to Interstate 90, head west, stop about 40 miles
before you hit Sioux Falls. There's a town there called Adrien. When I grew up on a dairy farm
outside of Adrien, went to a small town high school. The typical, I think there were 74 kids,
or 78 kids in my high school class, kind of a typical small town high school existence,
played some sports. But we didn't have a lot of money. I was fortunate to get a four-year
Army ROTC scholarship. I used that to go to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
where I got a degree in mechanical engineering. After I graduated from Marquette, I went to
the University of Minnesota law school, got my law degree there, and then I went into the Army
and spent four years in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, which is the,
those are the Army's lawyers. And I spent the first part of my career as a defense lawyer,
and the second half of the four years I was in as a prosecutor. Almost all the cases were
felony level cases. I was at a base with the Seventh Infantry Division, so there were
20,000 infantry troops there. And we prosecuted all crimes that any of the service members
committed on post. Well, when you got a lot of testosterone charged 18 to 20-year-olds, and
you got a big population like that, you're going to have problems. And the cases typically
were assault cases, rape cases, some larceny cases, drug cases. On the defense side,
I did have a murder case on the prosecution side. Several rape cases, some child molestation cases,
those were really hard. But it was a great experience and served me well through the
rest of my career. When I got out, I came, we were stationed in California, Fort Ord, California.
When I got out, my wife and I, I was married, I got married in between my junior and
junior year of college to my high school sweetheart, Janet. She's the co-campaign manager
on the campaign right now and has really been responsible for keeping me on track during
the course of this campaign. Janet and I came back to Minnesota with two of our three children.
Two were born in Army Hospital in Fort Ord. Came back here. I spent most of my career
in private practice, when I got out in private practice, at a large law firm in downtown Minneapolis,
200 lawyer law firm. I resigned from it in February to concentrate on running for attorney general.
But while I was there, my practice was basically complex litigation because I have an engineering
degree. I did a lot of patent litigation. So it was technical, very technical complicated
stuff where most of the time I represented either individuals or small companies against
corporate giants. I have taken on the likes of the entire MRI industry because I've represented
the inventor of the MRI industry, Dr. Raymond Damadian. God bless his soul. God rest his
soul. He's passed away. But we sued everybody in the MRI industry. General Electric, Siemens,
Hitachi, Phillips, you just go on and on with all these major multinational corporations
that we asserted Dr. Damadian's patents against them successfully. One case I won $110 million
and it basically saved the company. It injected that money into the company that had been crushed
by these bigger corporations. But I've also sued a lot of tech companies, the Microsofts,
the Amazon, the Samsungs, the Sonys, the Cannons of the world. One of the things that
the Democrats are going to try to do in this election is just paint me as fancy big firm lawyer
who, you know, represented corporate America. Well, from time to time I would represent some
larger corporations because they're entitled to lawyers too and they want to hire the best
lawyers and I ended up getting hired by some of those folks. But I would say the vast majority
of the cases I had were representing a little guy against major corporations.
I ultimately became chairman of this 200 lawyer law firm from 2019 to 2024. And at that point,
I went through what a lot of people do when they're at kind of my stage in life where you've
reached the pinnacle of your profession or you've been a CEO or the head of a company.
And it's time to move on from that, but you've got a lot of energy. I knew there was another
chapter in my life. I just wasn't exactly sure what it was. I'd been around politics a long time.
I was the chair of the Judicial Selection Commission for Tim Palenti when he was governor
and worked with Governor Palenti to appoint 104 district court judges and four of seven
Supreme Court, Minnesota Supreme Court justices. And I'd been approached to run for public office
several times in the past, but the timing was never quite right. Well, now having stepped down
as chairman of my law firm and at this stage of my life, the timing was right. So that's why
one of the reasons I ran for attorney general, I mean, if the state were all hunky gory and
everything was fine, I wouldn't need to have done that. But as you all know, and one of the
reasons you're sitting here right now is it's a mess out there. It's a mess out there. Somebody
asked to step up to the plate and do something about it. I've always been a doer and I'm not
afraid of doing hard things. I've done hard things all my life, everything from trials to some of
the physical marathons, mountain climbing, other things I've done in life. And so this was
not intimidating in terms of the challenge. It's a lot of work. A lot of work and
as this campaign goes on, people are going to say bad things about me. And I remember,
I can't remember who the politician was years ago. I was at an event, something like this,
where he was talking, and it was in the throes of the campaign. And he said,
the things they're saying about me are so bad, my wife sleeps with one eye open. Okay.
So we may get to that at some point in the campaign, but I take a lot of comfort
in the fact that my friends and family, you know, love me and support me and they know who
I really am. They won't believe all the bad things that are going to be said about me.
Let me talk now a little bit about the major issues in the campaign. And I'll go a little
deeper than I usually do when I just have five minutes and I'm at a convention event where
I just don't have time to go deep. But what I want you to have when you leave here
is some ammunition. All right. When you're out there talking to your friends,
your neighbors, your coworkers, other people in the place of worship, and you talk about
the attorney general's race, I'm going to give you some specifics that you can use
to have a rational discussion and convince them that we need to fire Keith Ellison and
how you mean. Okay. So let's start with an issue that everybody's campaigning on and that's fraud.
All right. We have a massive fraud problem in the state and we've had it for a long time
and it really started ramping up 2017, 2018, 2019. Well, Keith Ellison came in office. He was
elected in 2018. All right. He is going to try to convince people that he is now a fraud
fighter. I mean, that's what he's going to try to convince people. And if somebody says that to you,
you have to say, well, wait a minute, where's he been the last eight years? Okay. We've had
billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers in this state and where has he been? He can't now
come to the forefront and claim he's a fraud fighter because that's a joke. It's just an
absolute joke. Yes, he prosecuses a fraud case here or there. If somebody, some investigators
plop the file on his desk, but take defeating our future fraud scandal, for example, that was all
done by the feds. And a lot of what this other stuff is done by the feds. I saw recently where
he said, wow, that's the feds, you know, because they have more power to do that. Well, that,
again, is a bunch of hogwash. The attorney general has broad, broad investigatory powers
to ferret out fraud and be proactive. The other thing that is, I don't know if it's
unique to Minnesota, but the way we're set up, the attorney general is the primary
regulator of the state's nonprofits. And a lot of the fraud's been committed by
nonprofit entities. The attorney general can has free reign to investigate nonprofits.
He can go in, look at the books, start taking depositions of people and shut them down if
they're committed. Engage in fraud, he hasn't done that. You're all probably, I'm going to
keep an eye on the time, you're probably all aware that he had a meeting with the fraudsters
in December of 2021. Deda mentioned the Center of the American Experiment Organization on whose
board I've been sit for 18 years has obtained a secret recording where he's meeting with
the soon to be indicted fraudsters and offered to help them. If I had more time, I could,
I could walk you through more real interesting things in the transcript of that meeting,
but I, I, that we'll have to wait for another day. So that's on the fraud. Just give you a
little ammunition on the fraud stuff. The other thing is his, he's a charter member
of the anti-police movement. Just to be blunt, he hates cops. He always has and he hates cops.
Back after the George Floyd riots in the fall of 2021, the city of Minneapolis, the city council,
you know, those of you out here, God bless you, you're somewhat insulated from the
craziness that goes on the city of Minneapolis. We have a communist city council. I mean,
literally a Democrat, socialist of America, communist city council. And they proposed an
amendment to the city charter that would have done two things. The first thing the amendment would
have done was eliminate the numerical requirement that there be a certain number of police officers
per population city, Minneapolis, because there's a requirement. You got X number of people,
you got a Y number of police officers, that would be eliminated. The second thing it would have done
is abolish. Yes, abolish the Minneapolis police department and replace it with a so-called
department of public safety, which, and this is language right out of the proposed charter
amendment, which could, if necessary, have licensed police officers. Well, that was their
entree to completely defund the police. Keith Ellison stumped the campaign trail
for months seeking to get that passed. But even the people of the city meant for the people of
the city of Minneapolis, that was a bridge too far. They refused to vote for that. It went down
56% no votes or it didn't pass. So when Keith Ellison claims, as he tries to do from time to
time, that he was never in favor of defunding the police, it's a lie. It's just a flat
out lie. All right. And we've got copies of speeches. I mean, he can't run away from it,
the fact that he voted for this. The other issue that is central to our campaign
is getting back to having fairness in girls' sports. As I frequently say when I'm out on the
campaign trail, I plan on restoring some common sense to the Office of Attorney General,
where the criminals are the bad guys, the cops are the good guys, and boys are boys,
and girls are girls. He has led the legal fight that forced girls to have to compete against boys.
And here's how he's done it. Back in February of 2025, a little over a year ago, he issued an
Attorney General opinion, which is within the power of the Attorney General to do,
if asked by a state agency. He was asked by the Minnesota State High School League
whether they had to allow boys who identified as girls to play on girls' sports teams. He issues a
four-page legal opinion saying that under the Minnesota Human Rights Act, if a boy who identifies
as a girl wants to play on the girls' sports teams, you have to allow it. If when I was
in private practice, a young lawyer would have put that legal opinion on my desk, I would
have fired them. It is the worst, axially deceptive piece of legal work that I have ever seen in my
life. If it were submitted to a court, he would be sanctioned by the judge for that. Let me tell
you why. The Minnesota Human Rights Act, 60, you can print it out, you print it out, it's
like 60 pages, okay, single spaced, very extensive. But if you read through it,
there is a specific section titled exceptions. And section, its missile statutes, chapter 363a.23 is
a statutory section. It has a specific exception for sports teams, for educational sports teams
over high school sports teams. And it says, and this is really what's important about this,
because in lawyer ease, when you have statutes that start out by saying not withstanding any
other provision of this statute or any other law, that's basically saying we don't it, we the
legislature in adopting this language, it overrides everything, no matter what any other
statute of law says when it starts out with that not withstanding any other law language.
And it goes on to say that educational institutions can have single sex sports teams.
Not gender, sex. And there's a difference between sex and gender. And they'd like to say sex and
gender are the same. They are not legally the same. And they're not, they're not the same,
even under the definitional sections of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. The first thing
that I will do when I get in office is I will revoke that attorney general opinion and issue a
new one. That's the very first thing I'm going to do. All right. He's also the Trump administration
has recently sued the Minnesota State High School League for violating Title IX
for this very thing. And we'll see how that works its way through the court system, but
the case should resolve the way I've just laid it out from a legal perspective. All right.
So that's basically, you know, the major issues there, you know, other, you know, issues that I
could get into, but in the interest of time and everything. I think I'll probably stop my remarks
now and turn it back to Deetta. And I understand we're going to have a Q&A section later. So if
there are some things that are in particular that you all are interested in, I hope that
you'll ask those questions when we get to the Q&A section.