Mike Mosedale
Minnesota Reformer

A tribal court has banned a longtime elected official of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe from running for office because of a past felony conviction that was later overturned.

Last month, four of five judges serving on the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s Election Appeals Court voted to decertify Arthur “Archie” LaRose as a candidate for secretary-treasurer, the second most powerful elected office on the north central Minnesota reservation.

The decision came in the wake of an appeal brought by three candidates who are now running for secretary-treasurer, the office LaRose occupied for the better part of two decades until his ouster in 2022.

In their ruling, the judges concluded that it did not matter that LaRose’s 1992 conviction for third degree assault was vacated by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in 2024.

Under its election ordinance, the court noted, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe prohibits tribal members from running for office “if he or she has ever been convicted of a felony of any kind.”  

“The plain language reading under the bright line rule that has been adopted by this court requires this court to discontinue the analysis of a criminal matter, and any subsequent judicial decisions or administrative actions related to the criminal matter, after the entry of a felony conviction is found,” the majority held.

The judges acknowledged that one could argue “whether that is a just and correct outcome in this instance,” but said that the only remedy would be a change in the election ordinance initiated by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s Tribal Executive Committee, the umbrella entity that governs six Ojibwe reservations in northern Minnesota.

In a dissent, Michael Harralson, a judge from White Earth, said LaRose’s case is “fundamentally different” from prior certification challenges in which candidates were barred even though they had received pardons or expungements related to past felony convictions.

“It is not like an expungement, where a conviction occurred and the file is sealed. It is not like a pardon, where a conviction occurred and the consequences of the conviction are erased,” Harralson wrote.

In Harralson’s view, it’s not even equivalent to the 2022 challenge to LaRose’s candidacy, in which the election court found that LaRose’s third-degree assault conviction — though subsequently “deemed a misdemeanor” by Minnesota courts — still counted as a felony.

Later, In 2024, LaRose succeeded in overturning the conviction on the grounds that his 1992 plea bargain was improper. 

“To continue to say that Mr. LaRose was convicted of a felony is a manifest injustice,” Harralson wrote.

In a telephone interview, LaRose denounced the tribal court’s decision to decertify and said he plans to petition the MCT Tribal Executive Committee to reinstate his candidacy.

While LaRose said he is optimistic that the Tribal Executive Committee will see things his way, the timelines may be difficult to overcome: ballots for the election have already been printed, with the primary scheduled for March 30.

“It’s a sad thing that I have to jump through all these hoops. It’s dirty politics,” said LaRose. “I know my rights are being violated but this can be corrected.”

This story was originally published by Minnesota Reformer.