Gavin Sullivan has been trying to ask CD3 GOP Congressional candidate Erik Paulsen some questions.\u00a0 The discussion, for whatever reason, isn’t going well; Sullivan isn’t getting answers, Paulsen isn’t talking to him, Sullivan carries on an escalating campaign to get the answers, Paulsen doesn’t play along, Sullivan posts Paulsen’s home address on his blog, charges are made that Sullivan is “stalking” Paulsen, it’s noted that Paulsen’s site also has the home address…<\/p>\n
…in\u00a0 other words, a typical day in the Twin Cities blogosphere.<\/p>\n
Let’s come back to that fracas in a moment here.\u00a0 Because Gavin turns the flap into a question<\/a> that strikes close to home:<\/p>\n A hypothetical: Let’s say I’m your longtime DFL state representative and I’m the endorsed DFL candidate for US Congress in CD3. Let’s say you’re a conservative blogger who resides near me, in the same legislative district. You start emailing questions; I don’t reply. You include my staffers’ email addresses; you still don’t get any reply. You find that whether you ask a policy question or you simply ask me to confirm biographical data, I refuse any<\/em> interaction with you whatsoever<\/em>. Eventually, you corner me in a public setting and ask me why I won’t answer your emails; I tell you I refuse to respond because I believe you’re insincere<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hypothetical?\u00a0 Sez who?<\/p>\n I’ve gotten the same thing from my city council president<\/a>, my Congressional representative, Rep. Ellison, one of my Senators<\/a> – and gotten nothing.\u00a0 Not even the courtesy of a “f**k off, you hatemongering conservative”.\u00a0 The reason…<\/p>\n …well, none of them ever gave a reason, but the peanut gallery pointed to my “credibility” (absurdly so; the Northern Alliance is honest about its biases, unlike most of the Twin Cities media) and worries that I’d “ambush” the politicians (a baseless worry – and a hypocritical one at that, since the same people criticize Rep. Bachmann for citing the same reasons for avoiding the partisan local media).<\/p>\n So no, Gavin, there’s nothing hypothetical about your scenario.\u00a0 Even among my local representation – while Senator Anderson (DFL-SD66)\u00a0is quite conscientious about her constituent relations, so as much as I criticize her politics, I admire her for that, at least. \u00a0 Rep. Hausmann (DFL-66B)\u00a0can’t be bothered; she’s too busy pretending to be an engineer<\/a>.<\/p>\n So as to Rep. Paulsen avoiding Mr. Sullivan’s blog?\u00a0 I don’t know; I’d like to get Paulsen’s take on things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gavin Sullivan has been trying to ask CD3 GOP Congressional candidate Erik Paulsen some questions.\u00a0 The discussion, for whatever reason, isn’t going well; Sullivan isn’t getting answers, Paulsen isn’t talking to him, Sullivan carries on an escalating campaign to get the answers, Paulsen doesn’t play along, Sullivan posts Paulsen’s home address on his blog, charges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-campaign-08"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615","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=2615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22279,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions\/22279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}