DFL takes issue with mailers attacking House members over expungement vote

Minnesota Democrats are taking issue with a series of mailers that use an expungement bill passed last legislative session with broad bipartisan support to attack House representatives running for re-election.

The negative mailers targeting about a half-dozen DFL House members, have been spotted in greater Minnesota and the metro alike. In one instance, a mailer targeting Rep. Mary Sawatzky of Willmar reads: "Mary Sawatzky made it easier for felons to hide their records and work with children in our schools."

The mailers were sent by the Republican Party of Minnesota and are not authorized by any specific candidate.

A memo sent Tuesday by Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi on behalf of the Minnestota County Attorneys Association also criticized the mailers.

"It is unfortunate that during the course of election campaigns that misleading statements about the negative impact of the reforms to the expungement law have been published," the letter said. "Not only are such statements misleading, they run contrary to the principles of justice and good public policy that these reforms addressed."

A spokesman for the Republican Party of Minnesota was not immediately available for comment.

The statement is in reference to the state's Second Chance Expungement law, the result of a years-long, bipartisan effort involving multiple coalitions to seal not just court records in the case of an expungement, but also those collected by state agencies like the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or Department of Human Services. As a result, people who successfully received an expungement were still turned away from jobs because their criminal record was still available through other searches. The new law will give judges the authority to expunge all records, but applies only to nonviolent offenses.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis and Rep. Carly Melin, DFL-Hibbing, passed the House 84-48 and the Senate 58-4.

"This attack is misdealing and the kind of fear-mongering that aims to lead voters to false conclusions, as we've already seen from Republicans in the Eric Dean TV ad," DFL House Caucus spokesman Michael Howard said. "In fact, due to the expungement bill, the Board of Teaching, the Department of Education, and the Department of Human Services now have better access to expunged records during background check s than they had prior to the bill's passage."