First, we're going to have Tad Jude come up. He's running for Minnesota's Secretary of State.
And I'd love to have him kind of talk about what the Secretary of State does as well as who he is and why he's running.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's a real privilege to be here tonight and to be a part of your faith and freedom program.
And I see the two of them being intertwined. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, it gives you freedom.
And I've seen a real relationship between, if you go back, you know, I've got some legal training, I've got a law degree.
I see our Creator giving us the natural law and the natural law gets reflected in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution,
in the founding documents of our country and of our state.
And eventually, hopefully the law that you and I live with
and is applied in our daily lives reflect that Constitution and the way it gets applied.
So it's all inspired by a deep faith in Jesus Christ and the blessings we've been given.
And in any case, my name is Tad Jude. I'm running for Secretary of State.
And yet I indicated I should probably tell you a little bit about what the Secretary of State does.
And that's a good idea because I have been asked whether I'm running against Marco Rubio.
And I have to... you know, that's one of the things I every once in a while get asked.
But I'm running against Steve Simon. Steve Simon has been Secretary of State for the last 12 years.
And he has a very low profile in state government, but it's a very important job.
And you could ask the Speaker of the House, the Speaker of the House, Lisa DeMuth,
has basically your elected speaker, I think, as a result of a big problem created
by our Secretary of State, Steve Simon, at the beginning of the legislature last year
when they organized, there were 67 Democrats, 67 Republicans.
And the Secretary of State has asked to do a lot of ceremonial type things
or administrative type things until they aren't.
And they're big things, like organizing the Minnesota House.
Supposedly the Secretary of State is to convene the Minnesota House, and that's it.
That's what it says in the Constitution.
But he went beyond that and was recognizing whether or not there was a quorum present.
And that's something that's not delegated to the Secretary of State.
So there was going to be a great big court case about this.
And then, you know, for three weeks the Democrats didn't have to show up
and were still paid to do nothing.
In the Minnesota House, that was because of Steve Simon.
But there are a lot of other things where the Secretary of State, I think, plays a critical role
where he or she can put their hands on the machinery of state government
in a critical and sometimes determinative way.
Secretary of State is responsible for all the election administration in the state of Minnesota.
And one of the things our Secretary of State has been refusing to do is to work with their partners
in other levels of government, like the federal government.
Our Department of Justice wants to clean up our voting rolls,
make sure that in Minnesota, in order to vote,
you need to be 18, you need to be a legal resident of Minnesota,
you need to be a legal U.S. citizen.
Importantly, you need to be alive, you know.
And that's what the federal government is trying to determine.
The federal government is trying to determine whether you're a legal U.S. citizen, whether you're alive
in all those requirements.
But the Secretary of State has to work with the townships, has to work with the counties,
has to work with the school districts, has to work with the cities,
has to work with the federal government to just clean up our voting rolls.
And I will do that as Secretary of State.
Our Secretary of State right now is in lawsuits.
He's got a federal civil lawsuit where they're saying,
you know, we want to have access to the voting records.
He won't give them access to the voting records.
It makes no sense because he's giving access to a non-profit that he pays a lot of money to
that represents maybe half the states, not even that.
But he won't use the federal government, what they call the save voting rolls
in Washington, which he can use free to clean up the voting rolls.
He won't do that. It doesn't make any sense.
So anyway, that's one of the jobs.
The other job, big job of the Secretary of State is to register businesses.
And we've had a lot of fraudulent nonprofits operating in the state of Minnesota.
Somehow we're so loosey-goosey, we have people coming here from other states
to take advantage of Minnesota taxpayers.
They'll come here from Pennsylvania.
It used to be that Minnesota was known as a good government state.
You know, we'd have openness, we'd have transparency.
Now, people in Illinois or New Jersey or Louisiana, they look at Minnesota
and they see taxpayer money available.
So that's a big job of the Secretary of State.
Secretary of State takes care of all the open appointments.
So, you know, when you have a good Republican governor,
you know, we can, you know, appoint good people to different boards
and commissions in the state of Minnesota.
That all goes to the Secretary of State's office.
Secretary of State registers people, of course, to run for public office.
I don't think our current Secretary of State is in a real good job of doing some of that.
We had a legislator a couple of years ago who actually had a Wisconsin driver's license.
And I don't think he lived in the district he was supposed to be representing in St. Paul.
But, you know, I could go on and on about what Secretary of State does or doesn't do.
I just want to give you a little bit of the background of my background.
I was born in St. Cloud, the oldest of 11 children,
and I took care of my little brothers and sisters a little bit.
And I could tell you a story, yeah, I could tell you stories that go on and on and on.
But I would go around with my mom and dad delivering grocery supplies to small businesses through a lot of central Minnesota.
And I got to know the needs of small businesses doing that.
And in fact, I do own a small business right now that's up and operating.
And, you know, I'm also commander of a local American Legion post in Fridley.
It's post-303. I'm a veteran.
So I went on to law school and went to William Mitchell, St. Thomas College.
I was worried for undergraduate.
And I've really enjoyed being involved in public policy.
Now, some people say, well, you've got a lot of experience, but what good does it do?
You know, we don't need somebody with experience anymore.
You know, I'll explain one of the bills I worked on in the legislature that I really think was a result of having a little experience.
And that was a bill to include unborn children under the protection of Minnesota criminal law.
So, you know, if you see an expectant mother getting beaten up to kill the unborn child, that is prosecuted by prosecutors today.
And that's because of a bill I chief authored in the legislature.
And that's one of the times I think experience was real important.
Now, I went on from being in the legislature as a Hennepin County Commissioner for four years.
Then I went on to be a district court judge.
And I was a district court judge.
And if you have questions about the court system, I'll be happy to give you my opinions on them.
I've got a lot of opinions, but the main thing I want to do is to make things work.
I want to have elections to be fair, open, transparent, and accountable.
The same thing with our court system.
And we can talk about that a little bit.
So the area I represented in the courts, I was out in Stillwater most of the time.
It was 11 years.
But I was in Cambridge, or, yeah, Cambridge at least once.
And I was up in Moira once.
And I was up in Pine City and I'd be in Anoka.
It was kind of, they call it the 10th district.
And if you look at these districts, they don't make a lot of sense in some ways.
And that's one of the things I think as Secretary of State I could have a little influence on.
And I think my experience would be of some benefit.
But there is one thing that I think has to be addressed that isn't talked about a lot.
And it's a big problem.
And that is when you go and vote on the back of the ballot for judges.
How many think you need to have more information when you go vote on judges?
Yeah, I mean, it's a blind ballot that you're casting.
And we have to address that.
Now, I brought with me tonight a couple of things.
Now, I said I had a couple of minutes to speak, so I'm not going to take too long here.
This is what you call the legislative manual or the blue book.
It's put out by the Secretary of State.
And you've got the Constitution of Minnesota in there.
And you've got the founding documents of our country and of our state in here.
And you have the election returns in there. It's very interesting to read this.
But you find out that judges are supposed to be elected in Minnesota.
So they call the back of the ballot an election.
Now, how many people think that's an open and fair and informed election?
And we pay a high price for that.
We've got a Minnesota Supreme Court right now that has seven people on it,
all appointed by Governor Dayton or Governor Walls.
That's not fair.
If you have a case before the Minnesota Supreme Court,
you don't have no hope of getting an Antonin Scalia on the bench in Minnesota right now.
You don't have any diversity of opinion.
I mean, it might look like you have a, you know,
the bar scene out of Star Wars up there on the Minnesota Supreme Court.
A diverse group.
But you don't have diversity of opinion.
And elections should at least create some balance.
And if you have a case before a court, you want to have an impartial court.
You want to have an open court. You want to have a fair court.
And those are things that should be talked about a little bit.
Yes.
Because that's not fair to the litigants.
It's not fair to the taxpayer.
It's not fair, really, to the court system.
So we can do better.
And I'd like to do that as Secretary of State.
Now, so I think my experience would help a little bit in that area.
You know, there are some things we can do.
That's not my time, is it?
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure.
Well, anyway, there are a few things.
And, you know, I have had some experience running for election
and have been able to do okay on the ballot.
And I think that's important. We have to win.
You know, I've been a winner in at least 10 general elections.
You know, more primary elections.
And that's what we need to do in Minnesota.
I ran for Congress down in the Third District two years ago.
And we were 5% better than the top of the ticket.
And we do that across the state. We win.
And in any case, you know, I'm running because I really love Minnesota.
You know, I love God, love my family.
Jackie and I live in Maple Grove.
Kind of where 494-94 come together.
And I think we can make a difference.
We can improve our elections.
We can have photo ID when you go vote.
We could have the Minnesota version of the SAVE Act
to make sure people are legal U.S. citizens when they go vote.
We could have that on your driver's license.
Now we have driver's licenses for everybody.
But it doesn't indicate whether or not you're a legal U.S. citizen.
I support paper ballots.
I'd like to have, you know, look into having a watermark on the ballots
to make sure they're legitimate.
In the last election, they had 10 cases of ballots
sitting out in a parking lot in the Dina City Hall
just sitting there with nobody watching them.
And we've got vouching. We have to get rid of vouching.
Steve Simon has been going around the state
advocating ranked choice voting.
And ranked choice voting is going to be an incredible nightmare
from the standpoint that you vote for three, four, or five people.
And then they keep on counting.
And then they keep on counting.
And then they keep on counting.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think it creates more gamesmanship and confusion, and you name it.
But that's what Steve Simon has been advocating.
Now the thing that I think is really a slap in the face of Minnesotans,
if you look at this blue book, this is written by the Secretary of State.
You can order one on the Internet.
Get it sent to you if you send the money for shipping.
Okay, I'm going to just point out to you.
You open it up.
Here on the dedication page, he dedicates it to his special project.
His special project then gets a full-color section.
His special project was replacing our historic traditional Minnesota flag.
He was the only elected official that's had on the commission that decided
on the design of the Minnesota flag.
And I look at it.
I mean, how many people would like to go back to our historic traditional Minnesota flag?
I mean, this means something.
You know, it means our history.
It means honoring working men and women, our natural resources.
We're going to have a vote on it when I'm Secretary of State,
and I will dedicate the next blue book to having a vote on the Minnesota flag.
So that is going to be a big issue.
But with that, I think I've probably taken enough time here,
and I'd be happy to visit about questions you might have about our court system
or questions you might have about the race.
So, thank you.