Shot in the Dark

Place Your Bets

The DFL and Media (should almost be one word, shouldn’t it) are howling about allegations of domestic abuse against a GOP legislator, six weeks before the election:

In 2008, Dotseth was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. In a sworn affidavit by his ex-wife when filing for divorce, she detailed years of alleged abuse, according to the newspaper, including that he allegedly kicked and choked her in one incident and in another, pinned her against a wall.

Anyone but me getting deja vu, here?

I’ll help you out – 2006, during Keith Ellison’s first run for Congress, when the Strib put out a hatchet piece against GOP congresisonal candidate Alan Fine, dredging up domestic abuse allegations from his first marriage, but never managed to add a few things to the story: there were no convictions, Fine got custody of their son, and the wife went on to get arrested later on for…domestic abuse.

I’ll wager a shiny new quarter the allegations were brought up by an ex-spouse and her sleazebag lawyer to try to put a thumb on the scales during a nasty divorce – which is far from unprecedented, and in fact likely accounts for a huge percentage of domestic abuse allegationws.  Husbands and fathers are guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as the media and political class are concerned – as we saw with Fine. And it’s why the story is coming out today.  

I say nobody should even talk about leaving a race until Keith Ellison comes clean about his own, much better-documented history, not to mention Nicole MItchell leaving office and Judd Hoff leaves his legislative race. 

My two cents: This story means one or both of two things:

  • The race for the state legislature is closer than the DFL is letting on. .
  • Some oppo researcher, somewhere, is about to drop a big domestic abuse allegation against a DFLer. 

Any action on that bet?

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Mitch Berg

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9 responses to “Place Your Bets”

  1. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    I seem to remember that there were credible allegations of domestic abuse against Hakim X/Ellison a while back as well, and it’s interesting to see this hullaballoo when a DFL legislator broke into her parents’ home to steal some things. Sauce for the gander doesn’t seem to be working here properly, at least not in the minds (?) of the media.

  2. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    I’ll take their claims of “ethical issues” seriously when they discipline Woodbury’s Sen. Mitchell. There’s not much doubt about her since she was caught in the act and admitted what she was doing. But without her, they can’t push things through the legislature, so nothing of real consequence has been done about her.

    On the other hand, any claim of *anything* on either side in an ongoing or immanent divorce without supporting video evidence should be disregarded. I’ve seen far too many cases where false claims of battery, theft, etc were made to get court orders to make the divorce go one way or another. One of the worst of these cases I’ve personally seen was when two lawyers got divorced. She claimed assault while picking up the kid from visitation, and yet the security camera video contradicted her. That actually wound up making her life more difficult since the divorce court wasn’t as sympathetic as it might have been, and he made sure the Bar was aware of a false police report.

  3. BradC Avatar
    BradC

    Any action on that bet?

    Nope. It’s called Berg’s 7th Law for a reason.

  4. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    One other note; the “Center for Prosecutorial Integrity” (not a totally unbiased source) claims that about 8% of Americans–11% of men and 6% of women–report being falsely accused of domestic violence, 27% of those false allegations being made in family court.

    One thing I’ve learned as well as I look closely at the data is that the rate of intimate partner murder, presumably the nastiest form of domestic violence, is going up somewhat faster than population growth since about 1998. For women, it’s about the same as population growth, and for men, it’s about 2x the rate of population growth. We might bitterly joke that the “Violence Against Women Act” is achieving its goal of creating serious violence against women and men alike.

    (one interesting thing is that from 1976 to 1997–VAWA was first passed in 1994–the intimate partner homicide rate, especially for men, plunged….I attribute that to no fault divorce and the fact that one no longer needed to savage one’s spouse to leave them)

  5. MtkaMoose Avatar
    MtkaMoose

    I looked at that story and said to myself, “Huh, so they got nothing?”

    I then wondered who else’s divorce was going to be scrutinized. Can’t wait to see which DFLer it is.

  6. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Those two cents seen pretty dead on target. I mean dredging up a story for statewide publicity from 16 years ago can only have one purpose (outside of the fun of embarrassing the guy). And that purpose is to sway the votes of a few hundred possible wishy-washy Nice Republicans in one single state house district far outside the metro area. That seems like the very definition of desperation.

  7. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    Any word on whether Minnesota Democrats have been injured by exploding pagers, walkie-talkies, home solar systems, etc? Ilhan and Ellison okay?

    I suppose not. I suppose those weren’t distributed to supporters, enablers and fellow travelers, but only to paid-up members of Hezbollah.

  8. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Where is the GOP chair? If I’m that person, I’m holding a press conference to basically tell Ken Martin to pound sand!

  9. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    DFL Leadership re Sen. Mitchell at different points of the calender;
    End of Session w/ 1 vote majority – “We must wait for Due Process, and removing her would disenfranchise her constituents!”
    Immediately post Session – “It’d probably be better if she resigns and focuses on her Court Case. Maybe?”
    After the deadline to get a Special on the November Ballot – *crickets*

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