Contact Information:
Tim Tingelstad, 218-556-8188 or Tim@HighestHill.com
Mark Skogerboe, Campaign Chairman, 218-444-9069 or Chairman@HighestHill.com
Release Date: Tuesday, July 8th 2008
Ninth Judicial District Magistrate, Tim Tingelstad, of Bemidji, will seek election to the Minnesota Supreme Court on November 4th. Tingelstad has chosen to file for the seat currently held by Justice Paul Anderson.
Tim Tingelstad will carry two issues to the people in this campaign:
First, the people need to rediscover that our Constitution was built upon a foundational belief that God is sovereign over both the Church and the State. This Absolute Truth was proclaimed 150 years ago in the Preamble to our Constitution, which states, "We the people, of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings and to secure the same to ourselves and to our posterity, do hereby establish and ordain this Constitution."
Second, to secure this "liberty and justice" the Minnesota Constitution has given the people the right to meaningful judicial elections. But our Minnesota Supreme Court Justices are lobbying to replace judicial elections with "Merit Selection and Retention Elections" (hereinafter MSRE). They argue that judicial campaigns will soon become too expensive, too negative, and too influenced by partisan politics and special interest groups.
Tim Tingelstad respectfully responds:
• Meaningful, contested, non-partisan judicial elections keep our courts accountable to the people. MSRE would make the judicial branch accountable to the executive branch, rather than to the people.
• Under MSRE, the people never elect a judge. An "election" is the act of selecting one or more from others. A "retention election" does not include a second candidate, so it is not an "election."
• MSRE would not remove politics from judicial selection, it would simply hide the politics from the people. The politics would be condensed into small, unelected and unaccountable committees.
• Retention elections would be the most extreme examples of negative campaigns. The Retention Committee would be required to make public all negative information about the judge that the committee determines to be unqualified.
• MSRE would not eliminate special interest groups from the judicial selection process. Instead, our courts would be ruled by two very powerful special interest groups: (1) the Selection Committee, and (2) the Retention Committee.
• History raises strong concerns about the judicial appointment process. Of our six appointed Minnesota Supreme Court Justices, four were appointed only after serving on the Judicial Selection Commission.
• Expensive judicial campaigns take place when judges ignore the will of the people, as expressed by the original intent of our Constitution. We should be grateful that people are willing to invest in the cause of holding our courts accountable.
For more information on Tim Tingelstad’s campaign go to "HighestHill.com"
