{"id":1677,"date":"2007-11-21T08:17:16","date_gmt":"2007-11-21T13:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1677"},"modified":"2007-11-21T10:44:38","modified_gmt":"2007-11-21T15:44:38","slug":"say-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1677","title":{"rendered":"Say It!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, Michael Brodkorb at MDE <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minnesotademocratsexposed.com\/2007\/10\/29\/mde-exclusive-campaign-email-solicitations-suggest-ritchie-may-have-used-his-official-office-for-campaign-purposes-letter-requesting-investigation-will-be-filed-this-morning-2\/\">broke the story<\/a> &#8211; Minnesota&#8217;s DFLer Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was abusing the power of his office to get political contributions.<\/p>\n<p>The local Sorosphere erupted in response:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;He&#8217;s a GOP operative!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Oh, yeah?\u00a0 Well, at least Ritchie&#8217;s not Mary Kiffmeyer!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Brodkorb&#8217;s on the GOP payroll!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Tool!\u00a0 Tool!\u00a0 Tool tool tool!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Brodkorb gets his money from the GOP!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But lo and behold, that noted GOP organ the Strib notes that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/10220\/story\/1564555.html\">Brodkorb was right<\/a>!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie now says that he personally gave his campaign a list of participants in a state-sponsored &#8220;civic engagement&#8221; program so it could send them a campaign newsletter that asked for a political contribution.<\/p>\n<p>Ritchie, a DFLer, was elected on a platform of de-politicizing the office, which supervises elections. He has been under fire since two Republican activists who attended the office&#8217;s publicly funded event filed a complaint over having their e-mail addresses turned over to Ritchie&#8217;s political operation.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, Ritchie had denied knowing how the campaign got the list. He now insists that it solicited contributions only to pay for the newsletter itself. But its text invites recipients to an upcoming campaign fundraiser.<\/p>\n<p>Ritchie said on Tuesday that it was a mistake for his campaign to use the list and took responsibility, saying he has taken measures to ensure that people can easily &#8220;unsubscribe&#8221; from the newsletter and that it will from now on contain only news, not solicitations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow.\u00a0 Brodkorb was right!<\/p>\n<p>(Or is that &#8220;The GOP was right&#8221;?\u00a0 Hmmm.\u00a0 Who knows?)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Minnesota Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles said Tuesday that his office has accumulated a significant amount of information regarding the complaint against Ritchie and was assessing the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ruh-roh.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ritchie, responding by e-mail while recuperating from a medical procedure, said Tuesday that he believes firewalls need to exist between taxpayer-funded programs and his campaign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, you could say that.<\/p>\n<p>Kudos, M-Brod.\u00a0 Yet again, you&#8217;ve proven that the local Sorosphere is your beeyatch.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE AND FLASHBACK: Of course, Joe &#8220;Learned Foot&#8217; Tucci notes that <a href=\"http:\/\/koolaidreport.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/very-special-moron-mail-why-do-dfl.html\">he had Ritchie&#8217;s number<\/a> before &#8220;having Ritchie&#8217;s number&#8221; was cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, Michael Brodkorb at MDE broke the story &#8211; Minnesota&#8217;s DFLer Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was abusing the power of his office to get political contributions. The local Sorosphere erupted in response: &#8220;He&#8217;s a GOP operative!&#8221; &#8220;Oh, yeah?\u00a0 Well, at least Ritchie&#8217;s not Mary Kiffmeyer!&#8221; &#8220;Brodkorb&#8217;s on the GOP payroll!&#8221; &#8220;Tool!\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}