It’s the second stupid, bigoted attack by the DFL in as many weeks – and it involves my good friend and longtime Northern Alliance colleague King Banaian.
Can you imagine the uproar if a Republican campaign would be stupid enough to drop a campaign piece saying…:
- “Keith Ellison: Too involved in Saudi Arabian politics to bother with Minneapolis”
- “Satveer Chaudhary: Too Hindi To Bother With New Brighton”
Not only would the DFL descend on the idiot candidate like a biblical plague, but 99% of the GOP would feel obliged to join them.
But the DFL has done it again.
Last week, it was the anti-Catholic attack on Dan Hall in Burnsville, which has gotten national attention.
And over the weekend, perhaps a dumber attack still.
Courtesy of Luke Hellier at MDE, this mailer was sent out in re King Banaian, who’s running for House in District 15B – the east half of the Saint Cloud area.
King is the former chair of the Economics department at St. Cloud State. He’s prominent enough an economist to land all sorts of contracting work for governments around the world who are interested in opening up free markets; since I’ve known him, he’s consulted with the Macedonian, Ukranian, Mongolian, Armenian, Kazakh and other governments.
Heaven forbid someone in the Legislature would have earned international respect at economics.
Here’s what the piece says:
King Banaian certainly has a resume – jetting acrosst eh globe to consult the governments of Egypt, Macedonia, Armenia, Ukraine and Indonesia.
But what does all his international travel tell him about the needs of families here in St. Cloud?
Other than the fact that he’s lived there for a couple of decades and become a pillar of the community, you mean?
But worst of all is the photo. King – that is his real name, and it’s a family thing – is of 100% Armenian descent. And like most Caucasians from that part of the Caucasus, he’s fairly described as “swarthy”. Sitting in front of an exotic-looking building, the piece is clearly aimed at some SEIU droog who might be wavering in his DFL loyalty; they’re counting on that droog to look at the picture and go “d-uuu-uuuh, he looks like one of them AY-rabs, g’huck”.
Check out the postcard. It’s from Saint Paul. And while I can’t make out the ZIP code from the postmark, I’ll lay 1000-1 odds it’s from the DFL mothership down on Plato.
(On the upside? At least the DFL bothered to check his biography; had they gone by his name, the piece might have read “Saint Cloud doesn’t need any drunk Irish running things”. If they went by the photo alone, we might have been favored with some Juan Valdez references. We should perhaps be thankful for small favors).
I asked Banaian for comment earlier. He’s too busy campaigning to worry about it yet.
The DFL: they want to win Minnesota one ignorance racist rube at a time
UPDATE: King Banaian says “people here knowmy service as a local economic expert as well as international adviser. Voters care about fiscal accountability, not my passport”.
I suspect he’s right. But it’s not the people in 15B that I’m worried about. It’s that wacky bunch down on Plato.
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