A cabinet-level political appointee of Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz decorated the walls of her home with posters of murderous communist dictators, according to a photo posted on Facebook in December 2021 that was discovered by a Minnesota resident and shared with Fox News Digital.
Ida Rukavina, the commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation, was appointed by Walz in 2022 to oversee the economic development of the northeastern part of the state, where the world’s largest untapped copper-nickel reserve sits.
On Dec. 19, 2021, Rukavina posted a photo of her dog to Facebook, according to metadata attached to the image, which appears to have been deleted. In the background were clearly visible posters of communist leaders Mao Zedong and Che Guevara decorating the wall. The poster of Mao, China’s communist dictator from the late 1940s until his death in 1976, and whose policies have been blamed for the deaths of millions, included the communist slogan frequently extolled during his rule: “Revolution is not guilty.”
Meanwhile, the poster honoring Guevara, a prominent communist figure during the Cuban Revolution who murdered and tortured hundreds of his political opponents, was paired with a novel on Rukavina’s bookshelf about his life.
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An image of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Commissioner Ida Rukavina’s now-deleted December 2021 Facebook post shows her walls decorated with communist posters. (Ida Rukavina/Facebook)
Fox News Digital reached out to both Rukavina and the Walz campaign several times but did not receive a response by publication time.
Rukavina’s affinity for communist leaders comes amid scrutiny over Walz’s ties to communist China. By the governor’s own admission, he has traveled there several times, including a trip in 1993 that was paid for by the Chinese government. Walz, a former social studies teacher, was often accompanied on these trips by his students, one of whom described the governor turned vice presidential candidate as “Maoist to the core.”
Rukavina was tapped by Walz to ensure “local communities in northeastern Minnesota have the resources they need to thrive.” Part of the region Rukavina oversees includes one of America’s only primary domestic sources of nickel, which the United States currently exports from a variety of other countries, including Russia, Canada and Norway.
In 2024, the United States experienced a negative trade deficit on raw nickel of $79.4 million, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
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Ida Rukavina, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation, alongside her deputy commissioner. (Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation)
Rukavina is the daughter of the late Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Tom Rukavina, who has been described as holding communist and socialist sympathies.
“Tommy Rukavina is someone I once called ‘Tommy the commie’ on the House floor,” Congressman Tom Emmer, R-Minn., said jokingly during remarks eulogizing his relationship with the late politician.
Meanwhile, Rukavina reportedly once boasted he was the last socialist in the Minnesota legislature, according to local news outlet the Pioneer Press. “He’s gotten a little conservative in his old age. He’s a socialist now,” former Democratic state Rep. Carly Melin said, the local news outlet added.
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The late Tom Rukavina was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives between 1987 and 2013. (Charles Bjorgen/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
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Meanwhile, last week, the Daily Caller News Foundation uncovered that one of Walz’s other political appointees in Minnesota is a member of China’s third-largest political party, which has been granted permission to operate in the communist country because it pledges to “rally closely around” the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the outlet reported.
The appointee, a Minnesota-based attorney named Chang Wang, was tapped by Walz in 2020 to serve on the Minnesota Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, which advises “the Governor, the Legislature, state agencies, and Asian Pacific organizations and citizens,” on issues impacting the Chinese Minnesotan community. Wang is currently the council’s vice chair, according to his profile on the council’s official government website, and his term there is expected to conclude in January 2025.