Delegates to the Minnesota Republican Party’s convention held a moment of silence over the weekend for Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, six years after he murdered George Floyd and touched off a national reckoning over policing and race.
The decision brought searing criticism from Democrats, who accused the Republicans of disrespecting the courts and Mr. Floyd’s memory. In recent years, some conservatives have sought to reshape the narrative around Mr. Floyd’s killing and have pushed President Trump to pardon Mr. Chauvin for his federal conviction.
A delegate who proposed the moment of silence during a morning session of the convention described Mr. Chauvin as someone “who should get a state retrial, who should get a federal pardon.” Audio of the delegate was recorded by The Minnesota Reformer, a local news outlet. His identity was not clear.
When a voice vote was held on a motion for a moment of silence or prayer, many people in the room could be heard yelling “aye.” The nays were far quieter.
“It wasn’t even close,” said State Representative Danny Nadeau, who presided over that portion of the convention, held in Duluth.
Mr. Nadeau said he chose to make the moment of silence last only a few seconds, “the minimum amount necessary.” He said he had told the delegate that he would prefer that the delegate not pursue a moment of silence before the convention began that morning.
“It’s not a good look, in my opinion,” said Mr. Nadeau, whose district is in suburban Minneapolis.
He said he did not know the name of the delegate, who was among about 2,300 Republican delegates who gathered to make endorsements in this year’s state elections.
Democrats noted that the decision to recognize Mr. Chauvin came within days of the anniversary of Mr. Floyd’s death.
“They cannot run from this,” said the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat who prosecuted Mr. Chauvin in state court in 2021. “They either are OK with what happened or they’re going to denounce it. I haven’t seen one person denounce it. I haven’t seen one person say, ‘That was a bad, ugly thing.’”
Mr. Floyd, who was Black, was killed in 2020 when Minneapolis police officers, including Mr. Chauvin, responded to a call that Mr. Floyd had used a counterfeit bill. Mr. Floyd defied the officers’ efforts to put him into a squad car, and in the ensuing struggle, Mr. Chauvin knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes as he pleaded to be released and eventually stopped breathing. Horrified bystanders, filming on their cellphones, captured videos that were quickly seen around the world.
Mr. Chauvin, who is white, was convicted of murder in state court and pleaded guilty to a civil rights crime in federal court. He is serving a prison sentence of more than 20 years.
Asked about the moment of silence by a reporter for WCCO Radio, Alex Plechash, the chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said that “there are a lot of people, I think, that believe that Derek Chauvin was improperly convicted and not treated well.”
Mr. Plechash said in an emailed statement that it had been “a spontaneous motion brought forward from the convention floor” and “was not a statement from party leadership.”
“To be clear, party leadership did not support this motion,” he said.
Justin Malone, the chairman of the Republican Party of Otter Tail County, said that he was busy getting his delegates seated at the time of the vote and had chosen not to weigh in. He said some delegates seemed caught off guard by the mention of Mr. Chauvin.
“It was overwhelmingly accepted,” Mr. Malone said of the moment of silence. “There was not too many people who said no.”
Republicans have struggled to win statewide races in Minnesota over the last two decades, though they have sometimes come close. The party has also at times held majorities in the State Legislature.
Democrats are defending the governorship and a U.S. Senate seat this year, but neither race has an incumbent running.
Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, dropped out of the running for a third term early this year after facing criticism for widespread fraud of state social service programs that played out under his watch. The Trump administration used that fraud as part of its justification for an immigration enforcement blitz in Minnesota that led to three shootings, thousands of arrests and tense face-offs between federal agents and protesters.
At their convention over the weekend, Republicans endorsed Kendall Qualls, a businessman, for governor, and Adam Schwarze, a military veteran, for Senate. Those endorsements are not binding, and voters can choose those candidates or others in the August primary.
At their convention, Democratic delegates endorsed Senator Amy Klobuchar for governor and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for Senate.
The moment of silence for Mr. Chauvin received relatively little coverage from local news outlets in the immediate aftermath of the convention. But as Democrats began drawing attention to it, few Republicans seemed eager to comment.
Reached by phone, Mr. Schwarze declined to comment, saying he was not in the room at the time of the vote. Mr. Qualls’s campaign did not respond to emailed requests for comment, nor did the campaigns of Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth, another Republican seeking the governorship, and Michele Tafoya, a former sportscaster running for Senate.
Democrats were already seeking to make it a campaign issue.
“Rather than a moment of silence to honor the service members killed this year in combat across the globe,” said Jason Heaser, a Democrat seeking Mr. Nadeau’s State House seat, “they chose a political stunt to honor a man unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers for murder.”
Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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