Mary Moriarty will not seek a second term as Hennepin County attorney

Mary Moriarty will not seek a second term as Hennepin County attorney, setting a sudden deadline on a tenure that has been filled with reform-minded policies and controversial charging decisions.

In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune this week, Moriarty said she wants to spend the rest of her time in office focused on the work she has started. She also wants the results from that work to be understood as an effective tool for improved public safety and criminal justice reform — something she feels is more likely if she is not the focus of coverage.

“When I thought about how I wanted to spend my last year-and-a-half in office and my choices were campaigning — which would be a lot of being away from the office — and actually doing the work … I decided that doing the work was what I would rather do.”

Moriarty’s decision upends the upcoming election for county attorney and brings a unique instability to the office — one that has typically been held for long stretches.

Her predecessor Mike Freeman served in the role for 24 years, with current U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar serving as county attorney for eight. Prior to Freeman, Tom Johnson had served as county attorney for 12 years.

Moriarty said policies her office has implemented — from creating intervention programs targeted at youth gang violence and juvenile car theft, to more holistic considerations around charging decisions and diversion programs — are having a quantitative impact on public safety.

She said that work has been overshadowed by coverage of individual charging decisions her office has made, and that efforts to convey how her office is working to keep the community safer will be more effective if she steps aside.

In 2021, Moriarty announced her candidacy as a reform candidate to lead the prosecutor’s office after Freeman announced he would retire. She spent 31 years as a public defender, rising to chief public defender in Hennepin County before the Minnesota Board of Public Defenders declined in 2020 to reappoint her following controversies, including a suspension. She campaigned in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and focused on what she saw as the erosion of trust between the County Attorney’s Office and community members.

She easily defeated former prosecutor and Hennepin County Judge Martha Holton Dimick to become the first openly gay woman to oversee the state’s largest public law office.

When asked if she was concerned that her decision to leave could undermine the structural and data-driven changes she has implemented inside the office, Moriarty said it’s clear that Hennepin County wants progressive leadership around criminal justice and public safety. She believes she would have won re-election and that another progressive candidate will resonate with voters and keep the office moving in a similar direction.

“When I campaigned there were all kinds of attacks on me, but I won by 16 points,” Moriarty said. “That was because I talked about a new way of doing things in the system that were actually more equitable, they were more trauma informed, they were more about what actually keeps us safe, and so I firmly believe that voters will, again, elect somebody who has those values, who intends to do the actual work. I feel comfortable with that.”

She also said that several institutional changes she has made will have a lasting effect no matter who is in charge, including reorganizing divisions to implementing data tools to drive prosecutorial decisionmaking.

Moriarty has drawn criticism on a variety of charging decisions, including giving plea deals to the teenagers who killed Zaria McKeever at the behest of Erick Haynes and charging Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan with second-degree murder for the shooting death of Ricky Cobb. The latter charges were later dropped at the recommendation of outside counsel hired by her office.

The United States Justice Department launched a pattern and practice investigation into her office for suspected civil rights violations after Moriarty announced a new policy asking her prosecutors to consider racial identity at key decisions points in plea deals and charging decisions.

Her critics have included Republicans and Democrats, and she has been routinely lumped in with other progressive district or county attorneys across the country.

When asked if that criticism had anything to do with her leaving office, Moriarty said she is “one of the most stubborn people on the face of the earth” and the decision to leave office was based on her own thoughts and conversations with trusted people in her life.

At the same time, she said she is human and the level of criticism directed at her has often felt personal and removed from any argument over how her approach is trying to have a direct impact on public safety.

When she was asked about her decision to divert charges against a state employee who keyed a number of Teslas earlier this year — a fairly marginal crime that drew national headlines to her office — Moriarty said it served as a reminder that media focus is not the same thing as meaningful work.

“The people in north Minneapolis don’t care about a keyed Tesla,” she said. “They care about gun violence. They care about their kids being shot. ... What does the media choose to write about it and from what point of view do you choose to write about it?”

Moriarty said that serving as county attorney creates an inherent tension: The position is elected and answerable to the community. It also means that her charging decisions have constantly been viewed as inherently political.

“I am proud of being able to say after two-and-a-half years, and I’m sure after four years, none of the decisions I signed off on or I made were impacted by what people would say politically or how it would impact me politically or what would be safest,” Moriarty said. “People get into this office and if they are here to hold onto power or use it as some steppingstone to some other office, they are going to tend to make the safe decisions that won’t get them in the public eye.”

In announcing her decision to not seek re-election, Moriarty said power was never her goal.

She will remain in charge of the Attorney’s Office until Jan. 4, 2027, and a number of policy initiatives that will press her agenda forward are in development.

She is unsure of what comes next. She is interested in teaching. Since March, she has hosted a podcast called “We Don’t Have to Choose,” where she speaks with experts on how the legal system can be improved without harming public safety.

Still she knows it’s unique for a reform-minded candidate to attain such a powerful office. Letting go of it will come with tradeoffs.