Kim Crockett running for Minnesota secretary of state to focus on ‘election integrity’

Kim Crockett, the former vice president and general counsel of the Center of the American Experiment who was suspended from the think tank after making racist remarks about Somali refugees in St. Cloud, will announce this week she is running for Minnesota Secretary of State.

“People are stepping up to fight, and I include myself in that,” she told a group of activists at a gathering of Liberty Tea Party Patriots. “I wanted to let you know tonight I am running for Secretary of State of Minnesota.”

“I’ve been debating this for some time… whether I should make this run in 2022,” she said in remarks captured on video and shared by the Minnesota DFL. “It’s a special year. I don’t want you to get discouraged — I want you to get in the mood to fight and join me in the fight.”

Crockett, a lawyer, has reportedly been mulling a run, but her remarks last week confirmed those plans.

The MN GOP has struggled to attract candidates to run for secretary of state, and the field, which includes a former House candidate, is sparse.

She currently works as a legal policy adviser to the Minnesota Voters Alliance, an advocacy group that has filed legal challenges in Minnesota opposing mask requirements at election polling sites.

She said that as the state’s top elections official, she would focus on “election integrity,” casting doubt about the results of the 2020 election. “We’ve got work to do in this state,” she said during a September event sponsored by Alpha News. “Other than California, we’re probably the state with the least amount of integrity, so we have a ton of work to do here.”

Ken Martin, DFL Party Chair, said in a statement: “Kim Crockett wants to make it harder for you to vote. She is running to restrict your freedom to vote by attacking common-sense things like early voting and vote by mail. Crockett’s lack of respect for the rights of her fellow Minnesotans is no surprise since she was recently suspended from her job and forced to apologize for making comments so racist they made headlines in the New York Times.”

In 2019, comments Crockett made to the New York Times caused an uproar. She was interviewed about racial tensions in St. Cloud which has a large population of Somali refugees while she still worked for the Center of the American Experiment.

“I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” Crockett said in the Times article. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”

She later apologized and was suspended without pay for 30 days.