{"id":46116,"date":"2014-08-04T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46116"},"modified":"2014-08-04T15:03:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T20:03:42","slug":"the-good-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46116","title":{"rendered":"The Good Guys And The Bad Guys"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance has released its biennial Candidate Ratings list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t vote\u00a0entirely<\/em>\u00a0based on this list – there\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>other issues – but suffice to say nobody with an “F” is going to get my vote, or any meaningful support, ever, no matter what.<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise – Ron Erhard’s petulant outburst<\/a>\u00a0to a GOCRA volunteer.<\/p>\n

Other than that? \u00a0It’s amazing what pro-Second-Amendment the outstate DFL is making.\u00a0 The list is, by the way, rigorously non-partisan; there are not a few DFLers that out-score Republicans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read the whole list, and vote accordingly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One quick note: \u00a0I’m a GOCRA member, but I’m not involved in management. \u00a0And I have a small bone to pick with the group. \u00a0GOCRA’s grading system generally gives an “F” to candidates who don’t return the survey. \u00a0As a general rule, this applies to two types of candidates; those whose campaigns are so badly organized they just don’t return surveys, and quixotic campaigns – DFLers in safe GOP districts, and GOPers in safe DFL city districts where a GOCRA grade would only be beaten on by their DFL opponents (if they noticed them at all); there is likely a fair amount of overlap between the two<\/p>\n

I get GOCRA’s stated reasoning – that candidates who don’t return the survey are usually anti-gun. \u00a0But there are<\/em> quite a number of inner-city Republican candidates who I personally know are solid pro-Second-Amendment, but who didn’t return the survey; while I’m sure GOCRA wants more commitment, the F given for non-response is, I think, counterproductive; it peels away the residue of GOCRA-aligned voters in the inner city who see an “F” and think “he’s anti-gun!”.<\/p>\n

It’s like cleaning your toaster with a baseball bat; it gets the point across, but maybe not in the most productive way possible…<\/p>\n

That being said, I’m gratified to see more inner-city Republicans, at least on the Saint Paul side, returning the questionnaire.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/strong>And just to elaborate: my mild criticism of the grades for those who don’t return surveys lives about the margins of an effort that is an indispensable guide to the legislative landscape on this issue.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a huge effort on GOCRA’s part, and one of the better guides to the legislative landscape you’ll find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance has released its biennial Candidate Ratings list. I don’t vote\u00a0entirely\u00a0based on this list – there\u00a0are\u00a0other issues – but suffice to say nobody with an “F” is going to get my vote, or any meaningful support, ever, no matter what. The biggest surprise – Ron Erhard’s petulant outburst\u00a0to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46116","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=46116"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46126,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46116\/revisions\/46126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}