The District, Part IV: Idle Hands

Last spring, this blog got into a bit of a flap with the sitting leadership of the MNGOP’s Fourth Congressional District over airing out a report that the district’s chairman, John Kysylysczyn, was pondering not getting involved in the district’s various legislative elections or, for that matter, the CD4 Congressional race.   The evidence?  An email from Kysylyczyn to a BPOU chair which circulated to a much, much wider group.

Along with that came a report – from a source inside the district’s leadership who asked for anonymity to protect themselves from reprisal – that Kysylyczyn was pondering not making the customary donation to the district’s endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

While that idea apparently never got past the pondering stage – the donation did in fact pass the full committee – if current plans remain in effect, the district’s leadership apparently still doesn’t believe there’s a role for the district in the campaign (the flap also earned me a stern tongue-lashing from Kysylyczyn, who in a move unprecedented in CD4 politics, used the district’s website to tell the membership that he wouldn’t talk with bloggers because, apparently, the mainstream media is fairer to Republicans or something).

In a couple of announcements on the CD4 GOP website and the district’s Facebook page, the district’s leadership cancelled the October meeting – the only meeting remaining before the election.

And while under normal circumstances it’s just another meeting, these aren’t normal circumstances.  It’s election season.  CD4 endorsed a candidate for Congress, Hernandez, who is running an aggressive and active campaign.  Campaigns take money.  The Fourth CD reportedly has a decent little chunk of cash, in its “federal” account – $6139.48, as of the August committee meeting – which has to be spent, by law, on matters pertaining to federal races.  It’s a broad category; it can be spent on training, software, computers, consulting…

…or, naturally, the race its endorsed candidate is running.

The district can donate a maximum of $5,000 from this amount (on top of the earlier donation) to the Hernandez campaign – but not without a full committee vote.  Which requires a full committee meeting.

Which has just been cancelled until after the election.

Is this what the 4th CD GOP is supposed to be doing with its mandate?

CLOSED CIRCUIT TO CHAIRMAN KYSYLYCZYN

In your little riposte to me on the CD4 blog last spring you sniffed that you’d only talk to journalists whose publications subscribed to the “Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics“.

With one small exception, the SPJ Code is nothing but a framework of big thoughts that journalists use to provide justifications for their abuses (the exception, of course, is plagiarism, which among professional journalists is just about the only chargeable offense).

Because notwithstanding the fact that the only codes I observe in this blog are The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments (including Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment), the Minnesota Defamation statutes and The Buckley Rule, the fact is that I did more in the way of “journalistic ethics” than any “legitimate” reporter would have done; I sent you four or five emails seeking clarification of the original story; you’d be doing well to get more than one from Erik Black or Tom Scheck.

10 thoughts on “The District, Part IV: Idle Hands

  1. Mitch:

    Maybe they can some money to Romney since everybody knows that Romney was a better candidate than Paul.

    Maybe they can give some money to Kurt Bills since Bills wants to cut government like Paul does.

    Maybe they can give some money to help Bachman, Kline, Paulson, and Chip.

    Oh won’t they need a meeting for that?

    Walter Hanson
    Minneapolis, MN

  2. If there are enough people who feel as you do on the committee, there should be a provision in the CD4 or State Party constitutions to force a meeting to be held. And that is what should happen. What is the guy thinking?

  3. Sadly, CD4 does not have a monopoly on tomfoolery. Take, for example, the dysfunctional family in Carver County, where the Deputy Majority Leader and Chair of the Tax Committee has won the primary election (and it wasn’t close), and the party has decided to wait a month until mid-September to “consider” endorsing her in the General Election.

    Further, they have contributed ZERO dollars to her campaign, though they sent $300 each to Cindy Pugh, Dave Osmek, (barely in the county) and three COUNTY COMMISSIONER & CITY COUNCIL candidates they have endorsed. There is $7,000 in the bank…just sitting there…during a Presidential election season….

    There is far too much at stake with our Legislative majorities for this kind of nonsense. I *thought* the GOP’s purpose for existence was to get Republicans elected to office. Apparently in Carver County they have lost sight of that mandate and would rather argue with each other than be in office. Come on, people!

  4. Thank you for publishing this article! Without your attention to detail, the rest of us would not even know this is going on. Didn’t this Krysrylycrzyn accuse everyone who cried foul over his consideration of using Republican money for Ron Paul supporters to go to Tampa or his use of Republican money for “non-partisan educational seminars” – a “liar”? Oh, they’re just “spreading rumors” according to Krysrylycrzyn. When emails were sent all over the district to Republican activists, Krysrylycrzyn trashed the names of email senders. Now the truth comes out AGAIN. Who is responsible for this nimrod and his actions? Has anyone talked to the rest of the board members?

  5. Didn’t this Krysrylycrzyn accuse everyone who cried foul over his consideration of using Republican money for Ron Paul supporters to go to Tampa or his use of Republican money for “non-partisan educational seminars” – a “liar”?

    Since neither of those things are true, why shouldn’t anyone who goes around continuing to say them be called a liar?

  6. thorleywinston,
    Ask the CD4 Executive Committee what the current Chair told them he wanted to do with the money. Either your head is in the sand or you are no better than the rest of the lying liars who joined our party, because yours can’t get anyone elected.

  7. Pingback: A Vote for Johnson is a Vote for Obama | Carver County Current

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