The biggest gaffe of the local campaign season? Against stiff competition from Michele Bachmann, it may have been Deborah Hedlund hitting “reply all” as the candidate for the Minnesota Supreme Court responded last month to an email with the provocative title, “Can Muslims Be Good Americans?” from a man named Matt Look in Ramsey. Look’s email stated that Barack Obama is a Muslim who refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag with his hand over his heart and took his oath of office on a Quran. It also claims that Muslims are forbidden “to make friends with Christians or Jews” and cannot be “good Americans.”

“Matt, we speak the same language,” Hedlund wrote in her return post. “And I still need to let voters know they have a choice to ‘Seek Justice, Vote For Experience’ for the Minnesota Supreme Court.” Then she hit “reply all,” sending it to everyone who had received the original post from Look.

In the predictable uproar that followed, Hedlund claimed she was strictly referring to negotiations with Look, the proprietor of Look Signs, over the cost and content of lawn signs she wanted him to do. Certainly the second sentence of her post conforms to that explanation. But what about that first sentence, or, for that matter, the entire context of the exchange?

Even if we accept Hedlund’s version of events, it raises serious questions about her awareness and judgment, obviously crucial components for someone campaigning to become the final arbiter of our state laws as a Minnesota Supreme Court judge. When you claim to “speak the same language” as a post full of religiously bigoted smears (it lied about Obama’s Christian faith and use of a Bible to take his oath), a post whose controversial content was made plain in its title, it is at best a gross lapse in judgment. Then Hedlund compounded it by telling the St. Paul Pioneer Press that she had “no idea” whether or not Obama was a Muslim. “My level of information about the presidential candidates would not fill a thimble,” she added. That’s a pretty wanton proclamation of civic disengagement from someone whose decisions would, if elected, fundamentally affect the fabric of civic life.

Dig a little deeper, however, and Hedlund’s defense becomes even more specious. According to her candidate profile in Minnesota Lawyer, Hedlund has served as an adjunct professor at Northwestern College in St. Paul for the past 11 years. On the Northwestern College website, under the heading Statement of Philosophy, it reads, “Northwestern College endeavors to provide education that is grounded first and foremost in the truth of the Bible and in God as the Ultimate Reality of the universe….When the apparent truths of an academic discipline conflict with the truth of God’s Word, we put our trust in God’s revealed truth in the Bible.”

It seems pretty clear that Northwestern College believes that, even from an academic perspective, the Word of God trumps the rule of law–including, if push comes to shove, the Minnesota State Constitution. But lest anyone be confused, Northwestern spells it out more blatantly under its Foundational Beliefs. “At the core of the College’s educational purpose is the pursuit of truth as revealed in the Bible and through God’s creation….We believe there is consistency between biblical truth and truth discovered through reason and experience; however, we hold that when apparent conflicts occur, all truth claims defer to the truth revealed in the Bible.”

Ironically, in Look’s email there are statements that Muslims cannot be “good Americans” because the U.S. Constitution is “based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.”

In addition to her association with Northwestern College for more than a decade, Hedlund is a longtime member of the Wayzata Free Church. A judge for the past 28 years, she has often told the story about how her occupation was ordained by the biblical connotations of her name. As her profile on the Hennepin County Bar Association district court webpage puts it, “Deborah Hedlund has fulfilled her uncle’s prophesy during her childhood, of a future judicial appointment—‘All Deborahs should be judges because the Deborah in the Bible was a judge. So why don’t you grow up and become a judge?’” Fourteen years ago, Hedlund amplified the anecdote, saying that “between the ages of nine and 11, without even knowing what it was, being a judge was on my mind, and I started to think it was what I was supposed to do.”

Does anyone seriously believe that Hedlund has less than a thimble’s worth of curiosity about the religious affiliation of a presidential candidate named Barack Obama? Or did the lady protest too much about her ignorance regarding Obama and the Muslim email smear?

When Hedlund’s email gaffe splashed over the media last week, the name rang a distant bell. Sure enough, checking through my archives, I unearthed a cover story I wrote for City Pages back on November 2, 1994, entitled “Pollyanna With A Gavel.” It reminded me that Deborah Hedlund is no stranger to controversy. What follows are abridged highlights from the piece.

Beginning late in 1992, Hedlund presided over the murder trial of A.C. Ford, the first of a group of gang members eventually convicted of killing Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf.  She ruled that Ford’s jury should be anonymous, the first time that had been done in the entire history of Minnesota jurisprudence. According to Diane Wiley, a founder of the National Jury Project, the ruling sent a clear message to the jury: “It says, ‘[The defendants] are extremely dangerous. So dangerous that we can’t protect you from them.’” Adding to the fear, Hedlund, the presiding judge, told KARE-11 early in the trial, “Minnesota has lost its innocence.”

One of the key witnesses against Ford was a woman named Wyvonia Williams. After Ford’s conviction, when called to the witness stand in the trials of other gang members accused of killing Haaf, Williams testified under oath that Hedlund had approached her before the Ford trial. “She said to get A.C. Ford, that ‘Once we got him, then the rest of them will be easy to get,’” Williams swore on the Bible. Hedlund denies making the statement. Ford lost his appeal for a new trial. At his sentencing, Ford complained that he was convicted by an all-white jury. “I’m sadder still that you think all this has to do with racism,” Hedlund replied. “I suggest it is time for you to become a member of the human race.” Later, the judge told the Star Tribune that Ford was no more entitled to have minorities on the jury that she would be entitled to a jury of white female judges.

A year later, in June 1994, Hedlund struck down a Minneapolis City Council ordinance that provided health care benefits for domestic partners of unmarried city employees who registered their relationship with the City. Lawyers for the City and its employees argued it as a clear-cut issue of municipal jurisdiction—they believed they had a right to expand upon state law, and that  sexual practices and other lifestyle issues were hot-button sideshows.

In a voluminous, 33-page decision, Hedlund strongly disagreed. “Redefining family relationships is not a proper subject for municipal regulation,” she wrote. “Marriage enjoys a protected and preferred status in society,” and because the city ordinance did not acknowledge the primacy of that marriage relationship, it was “repugnant” to state law. Legal parallels between homosexuality and impermissibly “licentious” behavior were invoked and the state’s criminal penalties for sodomy were cited. After the decision, the lawyer who argued against the ordinance, serving free of charge on loan from the Virginia-based, pro-Christian, Home School Legal Defense Association, crowed that Hedlund “reads the laws the same way I do. Right down the line, she agreed with what I said.”

Two months before her written decision overturning the ordinance, thousands of lawyers from the Hennepin County Bar Association were surveyed about the 17 county judges who were up for reelection in 1994. On the basis of “Fairness and Lack of Bias,” Hedlund finished dead last. On the basis of “Judicial Demeanor,” she finished 16th.

The 1994 story also reveals precedents for Hedlund’s method of proclaiming ignorance and nonpartisanship when she has taken politically controversial positions. Back then, she told me she didn’t know the A.C. Ford trial would be such a big deal because she doesn’t read local or national newspapers. She also said she was “in a fog” and otherwise “pretty much unaware” of the controversial way she had her girlhood dream ratified when then-Gov. Al Quie appointed her to become a judge in 1980.

District court judge Herbert Wolner had already announced he was stepping down, prompting 11 hopefuls to file papers to run for his seat in the fall primary. But because Wolner would turn 70—the state’s official retirement age—four days before the November election, Quie claimed the right to make the appointment. A variety of people I spoke with told me that Hedlund was picked because she was a woman, a strong Christian (like Quie), and a Republican. Hedlund disagreed, saying, “I have never considered myself a Democrat or a Republican,” a nonpartisan stance she continues to voice today. But her attendance at a $1000-a-plate fundraiser for then-Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, featuring then-President Reagan as the guest speaker, probably signaled to others that she might lean Republican.

Since then, Hedlund has run unopposed for reelection every year but 1994, when she was challenged by perpetual judicial candidate Kevin Kolosky, hampered not only by his Stassen-like regularity on the ballot, but a prior arrest for domestic violence. Ironically, in stepping up from the district court to challenge incumbent Supreme Court justice Lorie Gildea (a Pawlenty appointee), Hedlund is citing her vast trial experience. Meanwhile, her original patron Quie headed up a commission arguing for an “impartial judiciary,” that would necessarily deemphasize the role of voters.

Now, however, the choice between Hedlund and Gildea is in the hands of the electorate.