Press Release

Today, Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin called on the Minnesota GOP and their candidates to disavow their plan to send “SWAT Team,” including members of law enforcement, to polling places on election day.

Recently, several outlets reported that Marty Probst, husband of GOP Secretary of State candidate Kim Crockett, was at an October 6th meeting of the Tea Party Patriots in Champlin and, speaking on behalf of Crockett’s campaign, said:

“If you’ve got friends or family or whatever in sheriff’s deputies or sheriffs — we need them on Election Day. That’s part of the SWAT team to get out when certain places don’t follow the rules that they’re supposed to.”

Probst was introduced as “Kim Crockett’s right arm” and again as providing an update from Crockett’s campaign. At the event, Probst also discusses working on elections trainings in partnership with RNC Election Integrity Director for Minnesota Lukas Severson.

After Probst brought up recruiting sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies to act in a partisan capacity on election day, Severson says “he brought up a great point there” and discusses the need for additional capacity in the MN GOP “War Room”. Also in attendance at the event were MN GOP Vice Chair Donna Bergstrom and RNC Committeewoman Barb Sutter.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement:

“I am calling on the Minnesota Republican Party and their statewide candidates, Scott Jensen, Jim Schultz, Kim Crockett, and Ryan Wilson, to cancel any plans to deploy partisan ‘SWAT Teams’ to polling places to scare voters on election day. Trying to turn members of law enforcement into tools to intimidate voters is disrespectful to our sheriffs and harms our democracy. This Republican plan cannot be allowed to go forward.”