Minnesota Senate president has blurred the line between his legislative and legal business for years

Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion has blurred the line between his legislative and private business for years, pushing funding for organizations run by his past legal clients and representing a nonprofit he had secured state funding for.

The north Minneapolis Democrat now faces the second ethics complaint of his Senate career, this time over advocating for a violence prevention nonprofit to receive $3 million in funding in 2023. Champion never disclosed that he had represented the Rev. Jerry McAfee, who founded 21 Days of Peace, in several court cases, one of which didn't wrap up until after he introduced the $3 million bill.

A Star Tribune review of Champion's past bills and legal clients found additional connections between his legislative and legal work. The senator's possible conflicts of interest have drawn scrutiny at the State Capitol and prompted calls for stronger ethics rules.

Champion has argued "there was no potential conflict to disclose" with McAfee and 21 Days of Peace, because his representation of McAfee was pro bono. At the same time, he stepped down from his role as chair of the Senate ethics subcommittee and asked the panel to give an advisory opinion determining whether there was a conflict of interest.

The relationship between Champion and McAfee goes back more than a decade, with Champion having represented the reverend's New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in a 2012 lawsuit filed by a lending firm.

Champion represented McAfee again starting in 2022, months before he pushed funding for 21 Days of Peace. Last month, Champion introduced a bill to award another $1 million to McAfee's nonprofit.

"The fact that you can represent a client as a lawyer and then go and effectively represent that client in the Legislature … is a sign that our laws and our rules are pretty short of what people would expect out of basic ethics in government," said former DFL House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler.

Winkler was an attorney at the same time he served in the Minnesota Legislature. He said that if he were in Champion's position, he would have at least disclosed the legal relationship with McAfee, or asked another legislator to carry the bill for 21 Days of Peace.

"I don't think that Sen. Champion is trying to do something unethical, but one of the reasons we need strong ethics laws is to protect against the appearance of corruption," Winkler said.

Minnesota's law on conflicts of interest is narrow, only defining conflicts as when a senator "is required to take an action or make a decision that would substantially affect his or her financial interests or those of an associated business."

In a statement Tuesday, Champion said his free legal work didn't constitute a conflict under that definition: "Non-compensated work, like pro bono legal services, does not meet that threshold. Nor would paid work concluded prior to a legislative session, or initiated after one."

Champion's funding bill for 21 Days of Peace wasn't the first case where his legislative and legal business overlapped. The senator faced an ethics complaint in 2014 alleging he threatened to withhold state aid from Minneapolis Public Schools if it didn't award a contract to Community Standards Initiative, an organization run by community activist Al Flowers, who had hired Champion as his attorney after he was arrested in a confrontation with Minneapolis police.

"Sen. Champion misused his position as a state senator to unduly influence the Minneapolis School Board to approve a $375,000 contract to an organization that financially benefited his friends and associates, and possibly himself," the complaint stated.

Champion emphatically denied that he threatened the district. The Senate's ethics subcommittee deadlocked on whether to investigate further, ultimately adjourning without taking action.

In another case, which wasn't previously reported, Champion sought millions of dollars in state funding for a "Minnesota SafeStreets program" in 2019 and 2021 to do community-based violence prevention.

Both Flowers and McAfee are listed as registered agents of Minnesota Safe Streets LLC, according to its business filing. The YMCA of the North partnered with Minnesota Safe Streets in 2021 and quoted Flowers in its announcement.

Champion described Minnesota Safe Streets as a coalition of community organizations and leaders "that came together in response to a crisis of violence in Minneapolis, before and after the murder of George Floyd." That coalition included McAfee's Salem Inc., which Champion would provide legal representation to starting in 2022.

Champion said there was no conflict of interest for him to disclose on the Minnesota Safe Streets bills because he was not representing Flowers or McAfee at the time, "and had not in many years."

"In addition, when I had represented them, my work was unpaid," Champion said. "Under Senate rules, there was no conflict of interest for me to disclose."

In an interview, McAfee said that all legal work Champion has done for him and his associated companies was "pro bono, period." McAfee said he's known Champion "for a long time" but declined to specify how close they are.

Before he was sworn into the Senate in 2013, Champion and then-fellow Sen. Jeff Hayden posed for a picture with their family and friends, with McAfee standing among them.

"How big do you think north Minneapolis is?" McAfee said Monday, adding he's been a pastor on the northside for 35 years, so of course he knows the senator well.

McAfee declined to talk about Minnesota Safe Streets, saying, "I don't care to explain it." He then accused the Star Tribune and the Minnesota Reformer, both of which reported on Champion's possible conflicts of interest, of being "bigots."

In another case, Champion briefly represented a substance abuse treatment provider called Turning Point in 2024, a year after he sponsored a bill that awarded funding to the nonprofit to repair its Minneapolis facility. Champion said his legal representation of Turning Point was also pro bono.

"In November of 2023, Turning Point reached out to me for legal advice after a tenant client of theirs threatened legal action following the collapse of his ceiling," Champion said. "I later filed a response on behalf of Turning Point and advised that they submit a claim through their insurance and seek counsel through that method, which they subsequently did, ending my involvement with the matter."

Winkler said Champion is "blurring the lines between being a lawyer, a legislator and a lobbyist."

"To me, the question is, how does Sen. Champion benefit?" Winkler said. "As of now, we're not aware of any way that he has personally benefited."

'A conflict of interest by any standard'

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen focused on ethics and campaign finance, said Champion's dual relationships with nonprofits as both lawmaker and attorney constitute "a conflict of interest by any standard."

Ethics experts and a fellow attorney serving in the Minnesota Senate say it doesn't matter if Champion's representation was pro bono. Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, said that even if an organization receives pro bono representation, the attorney-client relationship can create issues.

"It's not as simple as just saying, 'I wasn't paid, therefore nothing to see,'" said Kreun, one of six GOP lawmakers who on Thursday filed an ethics complaint against Champion.

An attorney, Kreun noted, can't use information they discovered in the course of representing a client outside of that attorney-client relationship. That could include an organization's financial status, accusations of impropriety or other information.

"If you have information as you're presenting a bill to the Senate that you learned about because it's your client … you cannot disclose those things to your fellow senators," Kreun said. "You can't give them a complete picture of this organization that you're trying to steer millions of dollars towards."

Lawmakers and experts acknowledge that because most Minnesota legislators have other jobs, conflicts can come up. But when appropriating money to a specific nonprofit, they should disclose any ties to that organization, said Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and former White House counsel.

"If it's not disclosed," Painter said, "it shows lack of candor to the public and also to their fellow members of the state Legislature."

Painter said Minnesota's ethics policies for lawmakers are too weak. Instead of having a clear policy on conflicts of interest, he argued, legislators are expected to police themselves.

"Maybe we're playing 'Minnesota nice' too much when it comes to ethics," Painter said.

Champion said he welcomes discussions about strengthening ethics rules.

"If legislators and members of the public feel that the Senate should modernize its disclosure rules to eliminate potential conflicts, or even their appearance, I welcome that discussion. I have used our existing and long-standing rules as the guide to my legislative and legal work." Champion said. " I am confident the Senate Subcommittee on Ethics will find that to be true, both in the advisory opinion I voluntarily requested and in response to the ethics complaint filed by Republicans."

Holman said he considers Minnesota's ethics rules to be "not extraordinary, not particularly weak." One of the issues he sees is that Minnesota doesn't prohibit lawmakers from awarding grants to campaign donors.

McAfee and his wife, Carmen, each contributed $1,000 to Champion's campaign in December 2023.

Minnesota's practice of allowing lawmakers to directly appropriate funds to nonprofits rather than require them to compete for grants can give rise to conflicts of interest, some legislators argue.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, said the process had been abused.

Kreun said he thought the Senate should take a closer look at the legislative grant process and consider requiring competitive bidding.

"If there are going to be some legislatively named appropriations," Kreun said, "maybe we should have some more rules infrastructure around those."