I have to tell you a short story about Minnesota before I can tell you something about Hawai‘i. Sit tight for some unpleasant details.
It starts with Tou Lue Vang, from Laos, who was at one point legally living in the United States, in Minnesota. Vang went on to behave terribly while here. He was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual assault for repeatedly molesting a 10-year-old girl over two years, from 2002 to 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“He once offered his victim $10 to keep quiet about the sexual assaults,” DHS said. “When interviewed by police, he tried to justify his actions as ‘a cultural thing,’ and even said that his victim was just as guilty as him and should also be arrested.”
These actions cost Vang his right to be in the United States. On Oct. 31, 2006, a Department of Justice Immigration Judge ordered that he be removed.
That never happened. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Laos refused to take back its deported citizens until 2025, until it finally relented under pressure from the United States.
According to DHS, ICE arrested and detained Vang in December but by then, Minnesota was in full meltdown over immigration enforcement and in February, a District of Minnesota judge ordered him released from custody.
That wasn't only the ally Vang found. At some point he applied for a pardon, in hopes that wiping his record clean would eliminate the reason ICE was coming after him for deportation, as reported by KARE11.com.
That pardon was granted, in a unanimous decision. In Minnesota, such pardons are granted by a three-person panel: Gov. Tim Walz (D), Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), and nominally non-partisan Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
This was widely seen as an extension of Minnesota’s sanctuary state policies, done out of spite to frustrate Trump and ICE.
It didn’t work. DHS deported Vang on July 10.
On July 14, media asked Walz about the deportation and he had the audacity to question the government’s motive for removing a convicted child molester.
“Did that make us any safer?” he said. “Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
On question 1: Yeah, it did. Vang's conviction disqualified him from staying here, that’s the law. He only evaded it because Laos didn’t want him back.
Question 2: Walz is possibly, obliquely referring to Vang’s own children. What is the logic here? Our prisons are full of natural born American citizens who are separated from their children by incarceration and no one sane goes around saying, “Wait, we can’t put people in prison for molesting children! Doing so destabilizes their children!” If it's a tragedy for Vang and his family, it's one he wrote himself.
Question 3: It’s possible the syntax of this one is so garbled and awkward because some tiny voice in Walz’s head is second-guessing what’s he’s saying. No one likes to be judged by their worst day. OK. Fair enough. For most people, their worst days do not include serially molesting a 10-year old over two years. But Walz’s inner sociopath smacked down his last sensible neuron and he said this ludicrous thing anyway.
What does any of this have to do with Hawai‘i?
You might not know this, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was the guest of honor as keynote speaker at the Hawai‘i Democratic Party’s state convention in Waikīkī at the end of May.
“Walz … brought the nearly 400 party delegates and guests to their feet several times at the Hilton Hawaiian Village ballroom,” reported Civil Beat, covering the convention on May 31. “He got a lot of whoops and shout-outs, too, by calling Trump a ‘corrupt, petty, cruel wannabe dictator’ and ‘a pile of crap.’”
Tim Walz, greeted in Hawai‘i with applause and aloha.
Surely, the local invitation predated Walz’s bizarre defense of an illegal immigrant child molester. But local Dems had plenty of facts before them at the time that Walz had stepped forward to defend, categorically, every convicted criminal in Minnesota that ICE had gone in to arrest. Surely, they were aware that they were inviting, with honors, a man who presided over a state government that got fleeced for as much a billion dollars’ worth of fraud across multiple social programs. Surely, they could’ve known that in January, Minnesota lawmakers accused Walz and his administration of retaliating against whistleblowers about this fraud, thereby enabling it.
Surely, they remembered that Walz himself withdrew his re-election attempt in light of these many scandals.
They overlooked it all and gave this guy a hero’s welcome.
I've been meaning to write this ever since the convention happened, but news about Walz just kept evolving and I wanted to see where his latest escapades would go. Now that this Vang chapter is over, I have same question I had in May: If he’s the role model for the party going forward, what does that mean for the future of Hawai‘i?
What does that tell us about who they serve? Local interests and concerns? Or, as we saw with Act 11, is the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i just fully colonized by Mainland politics and priorities?
The party is running on fumes of nostalgia for when it was sensible and stood for the betterment of people right here in the Islands. But the party of serious people like Burns, Ariyoshi, Inouye and countless others — sober, responsible — seems intent on following the pied pipers of Act Blue, Indivisible, and the Democratic Socialists of America, straight into insanity.
Based on historic voting patterns, there’s a good chance if you’re reading this that this your party. You’ve voted for it all your life. You likely always will. Anything but cast a vote for those icky Republicans! If so, please do everyone in the Islands a favor: Get involved, and knock some sense into your people. If Walz is their idea of an accomplished statesman, an example to cheer on and follow behind, they need an intervention.
A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.
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A. Kam Napier can be reached at kam@alohastatedaily.com.
