Mark Ritchie

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Mark Ritchie (born 1951 in Iowa) is the current Democratic Secretary of State of Minnesota. He has declared that he intends to seek re-election to the position in November 2010.[1]

Education

  • Bachelor's degree, Iowa State University (1971)

Political experience

In the 1980s, Ritchie worked as a high-ranking official in the Minnesota Agriculture Department where he became involved in an incident where he sent copies of confidential trade documents to members of Congress. According to a Star Tribune story, the U.S. trade representative at the time said that the documents were classified and that their release could have hurt the country's negotiating position with other nations. Ritchie, however, denied in the article that the documents were secret and said he had obtained them legitimately. In any event, the controversy did not diminish respect for Ritchie in the civic society community or in the international trade community. Ritchie's visionary work on trade in that era will be remembered for awakening NGOs and legal academics as to the dangers of trade negotiations that are unchaponered by attention to health, environment, and human rights.

For about two decades beginning in 1986, Ritchie served as president of the Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a non-profit research and advocacy organization that works alongside businesses, churches, farm organizations, and other civic groups in order to promote sustainable food, farm, and trade systems for Minnesota’s rural communities. He also founded the League of Rural Voters.

In 1994, Ritchie helped co-found the Global Environment and Trade Study (GETS), a non-profit research institute established to study the complex linkages between international trade and environmental sustainability in addition to expanding role of civil society in global governance, centered at Yale University. The GETS Board, having come to the conclusion that the research institute had accomplished a sufficient amount over the decade, decided to terminate the project in 2004. The same year GETS was founded, Ritchie organized a conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference. The 1994 conference, held at the Mt. Washington Hotel, featured a return of many of the "old timers" who had attended the 1944 conference or other founding conferences for the postwar economic system.

In the midst of the 2000 presidential election, he helped form with cooperation from fifty-two farm and rural activists the Family Farmers' National Alliance for Nader/La Duke, which lent its support to Ralph Nader's failed presidential campaign.[2]

Ritchie was asked in 2004 to lead National Voice, a national coalition of non-partisan organizations from across the country. 400 Minnesota organizations under National Voice former the Minnesota Participation Project, which, in turn, led the national media campaign, NOVEMBER 2, to help find new ways to get people involved in the elections.

Controversies

Use of contact information

In 2007, Mark Ritchie was accused of "improperly using a list of participants in a Secretary of State civic engagement program to solicit contributions for his own political campaign."[3] He initially denied knowing how his campaign received a list of e-mail addresses of participants in the state-sponsored program who were sent e-mails asking for campaign contributions. A complaint was raised by two Republican activists who attended the office's publicly funded event for having their e-mail addresses turned over to Ritchie's political operation. Shortly following an investigation conducted by the Legislative Auditor of Minnesota, Ritchie admitted "he personally provided a copy of the directory to his campaign and requested that those on the list get a copy of his campaign's civic engagement newsletter."[4] State Republican leaders, believing Ritchie had betrayed the public trust and raised questions concerning his ability to serve as a non-partisan overseer of state elections, called for his resignation as Secretary of State.[5] The State Legislative Auditor, though admitting that Ritchie had not broken any laws in his campaign's use of the e-mail list because it was public data, chastised him for not fulfilling his legal obligation to make a full and timely response to a request for information.[6]

ACORN

In the midst of the highly controversial recount for the 2008 senatorial race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and former-SNL writer/personality Al Franken, the media, both statewide and nationally, largely ignored the fact that Ritchie, who chaired the non-partisan Minnesota Canvassing Board overseeing the recount, received an endorsement in addition to campaign donations from the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee in 2006. One article on his campaign website even bragged about the "fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage."[7] ACORN, which also endorsed Franken, boasted about playing a major role in the 2008 elections, claiming to have "registered 43,000 new voters, which it describes as 75 percent of the state's new registrations. Franken's margin of victory in the Senate race was razor-thin: 312 votes out of about 3 million cast."[8] Over 25 voting precincts recorded more votes than there are registered voters, votes that "happened" to be overwhelmingly in favor of Franken.[9]

Tides center

Mark Ritchie and his brother own and operate a "'sustainable coffee' company called Headwaters, Inc., which does business with the public using the name Peace Coffee." Not only does Headwaters, Inc. conduct its operations out of the same office as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), the very same non-profit organization Mark Ritchie is president of that "just happens to advocate society's total conversion to Peace Coffee's main product," the company has received over $20,000 from the Tides Foundation, "alleged to be one of the most corrupt players in American political money laundering."[10] Founded in 1976 by California activist and liberal philanthropist Drummond Pike, the Tides Center and its tangled web of offshoot operations has "established itself as an important funding nexus for movements and causes aligned with leftist ideology."[11] The Tides Center also has ties to the embattled ACORN organization. Wade Rathke, who helped found ACORN, "has been a Tides director from the start and chairs Tides, Inc."[12] Rathke's brother, Dale, laundered over $900,000 from ACORN, a crime that was never reported to law enforcement; "the Rathke family was allowed to work out a deal to repay the money"[13] so as to keep the incident quiet and out of the public eye.

Electoral history

2006 Race for Secretary of State - General Election[14]
Candidates Percentage
Mark Ritchie (D) 49.1%
Mary Kiffmeyer (R) 44.2%
Bruce Kennedy (Independent) 3.7%
Joel Spoonheim (Independence) 3.0%
Total votes 100%

Family life

Mark Ritchie has lived with his wife, Nancy Gaschott, in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the past twenty-four years.

Contact Information

Office of the Secretary of State
Retirement Systems of Minnesota Building
60 Empire Drive, Suite 100
St Paul, MN 55103
Metro Area 651-296-2803; Greater MN 1-877-551-6767
Email: business.services@state.mn.us
Fax: 651-297-7067


External links

References

  1. ↑ Politics in Minnesota "Ritchie says: Act now! Time is running out!" 18 June, 2009
  2. ↑ Nader 2000 - Family Farmers Endorse Nader
  3. ↑ Star Tribune "Election official allegedly used list improperly" 29 Oct. 2007
  4. ↑ Star Tribune "Ritchie now says he gave e-mail list to campaign" 20 Nov. 2007
  5. ↑ Star Tribune "Secretary of State should resign, GOP chair says" 21 Nov. 2007
  6. ↑ Office of the Legislative Auditor - Investigation: Use of Contact Information
  7. ↑ The American Spectator "SOS in Minnesota" 7 Nov. 2008
  8. ↑ The Corner on National Review Online "Sen. Al Franken (D., ACORN)" 29 Sept. 2009
  9. ↑ Gun Owners of America "ACORN, MoveOn.org Could Receive Billions of Dollars" 2 Feb. 2009
  10. ↑ True North "Blind Squirrel Finds ACORN" 14 Oct. 2009
  11. ↑ Activist Cash "Tides Foundation & Tides Center"
  12. ↑ Green Tracking Library - Drummond Pike
  13. ↑ The Union "ACORN crime covered-up by Drummond Pike" 20 Aug. 2008
  14. ↑ Minnesota Secretary of State - 2006 General Election Results
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