For the last two years there has been controversy swirling around former State Representative John Thompson (D) who represents the east side of St. Paul. From protests in Hugo, MN outside the home of former Police Union head Bob Kroll and his wife, former WCCO-TV reporter Liz Collin, to an encounter with police and labeling it “racial profiling”, and finally questions around his residency due to a Wisconsin driver’s license and reports of domestic violence and a public disturbance charge from 2019.
Thompson came under fire and was asked by many Minnesota Democrats to resign including Governor Tim Walz.
Thompson didn’t resign and will finish his term in the State House. But this past Tuesday, Thompson was soundly defeated in his Primary. He lost to DFL challenger Liz Lee who received nearly 89% of the vote, while Thompson received a little over 11%.
In a rare and wide-ranging interview with WCCO Political Analyst Blois Olson, Thompson opened up about those controversies, his view of racial inequities in Minnesota politics, and the lack of resources for people in the diverse neighborhood he represented.
The entire interview will air as part of “Sunday Take” which airs at 9:00 a.m. on WCCO Radio.
Olson, who described Thompson’s tenure in the State House as “a distraction for Democrats”, says that Thompson definitely demonstrated some passionate views that aren't necessarily outside the mainstream, and that those views aren't at all radical despite the issues he ran into due to his behavior.
“It was not becoming of a public official or a citizen for that matter,” Olson says in his introduction to the interview. “John Thompson deserves to be heard.”
Thompson says he was abandoned very quickly after he was elected, and others in his party and caucus tried to silence him.
“Here's what I encountered,” explains Thompson. “My first couple of weeks, I had seasoned colleagues say, ‘freshmen should be quiet and listen and learn and soak it all in’. And I'm like, that's not why I'm here. I didn't come here to be quiet. And if that's what you thought, then you were sadly mistaken. Drastic times call for drastic measures and my community has an economic noose around their neck. And so for me, I don't have time to be soft spoken about anything because there's nothing soft spoken about the conditions that my community's in.”
When Thompson was elected, it was the beginning of the pandemic. He said that he tried to explain to state leaders that the conditions people he represented were facing would lead to major issues down the road.
“The pandemic started,” says Thompson. “I told legislators, my colleagues and the governor back then, I said, ‘my community's going to be an epidemic.’ Once the pandemic has lifted, once you open the state back up, the courts are going to be filled with people who are evicted from their homes. Crime's going to be high. People going to be selling drugs, stealing cars. I predicted this, not because I'm psychic, but because I've been Black all my life, and I know what's going to happen in my community. I was 100% right. If you look at the carjackings, the gun violence, the thefts, you know, people are trying to live.”
Before Thompson was elected, he was caught up in a controversial protest outside the home of Bob Kroll and Liz Collin. No stranger to controversy himself, Kroll at that time was the head of the Minneapolis Police Federation (he has since retired), and had been outspoken in support of the officers involved in the death of George Floyd. Collin was Kroll’s wife and a reporter for WCCO-TV. Collin now works for Alpha News.
A crowd gathered outside their home demanding justice for Floyd and the officers Kroll represented. They also were calling for Collin to be fired from WCCO-TV due to her alleged bias because of her marriage to Kroll (she did not report on police matters for WCCO-TV according to the station). During the protest, a piñata, which was an effigy of Collin, was hung up and Thompson was seen hitting it.
Thompson, while still critical of Kroll and the union, says he regrets the incident.
“You know, Liz Collin has never done anything wrong to me or my family,” explained Thompson. “Liz Collin didn't deserve for someone to be out in front of her house, hitting a piñata. And that's my honest statement. You asked, what did I learn? Well, my wife would kill me if I show up to somebody's house again, ever in my life. And that's something I've learned and grown to learn, and I think it's wrong to show up to people's house. You know, here I am a young activist and I want my voice to be heard.”
He also spoke about being pulled over by police on July 4, 2021, and claimed at the time it was racial profiling. But St. Paul Police say they pulled him over due to a missing front license plate.
“I still feel like I was racially profiled,” says Thompson.
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Thompson explained that he met the officer that pulled him over and confronted him about it, telling him he thought he was profiled.
“Me and him talked,” Thompson said. “He said ‘John, I don’t feel like I profiled you, I sensed attitude so I wrote a ticket’. I said I felt like your neck turned like the Exorcist when I drove past your car and then you bust a U-turn. We didn’t leave that meeting seeing eye-to-eye but we see each other man-to-man.”
It was the traffic stop that led to more problems for Thompson who was then under attack by the police and police unions due to his claims of profiling.
Then, because he had a revoked Wisconsin driver’s license, Thompson was questioned for running for office, living and representing east St. Paul while holding a Wisconsin license. Thompson didn’t explain why he had a Wisconsin license, but did say that people in the Democratic Party in Minnesota knew where he lived yet still called for him to step down.
“I'm saying to you, and you can quote me on this, Ken Martin had no problem dropping Joe Biden signs off at my house,” Thompson said. “And so when Ken Martin, who's the chair of the (Minnesota) Democratic Party, says that he doesn't know where I live? When he says that, I know what I'm dealing with is bigger than just the police union. You know what I mean? He’s been to my house. He knows exactly where I live, and he could have said right then and there, ‘no, I've been to John Thompson's house and I know he lives in the district now’. And I was getting calls from DFL’s asking me to resign because we may lose seats in rural Minnesota. If you don't resign, they're going to use your image.”
There were also allegations of domestic violence that led to more calls for his resignation after police reports surfaced from 2003 and 2010.
Later in July of 2021, Thompson was found guilty by a Hennepin County jury in connection with a 2019 disturbance at North Memorial Hospital.
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Thompson said that Melissa Hortman (D) who was the House Speaker at the time, was calling him every day asking him to resign. The Minnesota House ultimately removed him from the Democratic Caucus and he is serving out the rest of his term as an Independent so that he can still serve on committees.
“You resign, you need to resign,” Thompson says about Hortman. “I still feel the same way. I'm the first person to be convicted in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Something I was found not guilty of in the court of law. Flat out didn't get due process in the House.”
As for Thompson’s future, he says he will spend some time with his family who he said has been “drug through the mud.”
“My entire family is my support system,” says Thompson. “What ultimately happens next is that meeting with my family. I ask God all the time why’d you put me here? He said who else. I don’t know what’s next but it’s going to be big.”
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