{"id":48914,"date":"2014-11-07T05:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48914"},"modified":"2016-05-18T22:19:53","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T03:19:53","slug":"open-letter-to-the-mngop-judicial-elections-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48914","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter To The MNGOP Judicial Elections Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

To:\u00a0 The MNGOP Judicial Elections Committee
\nFrom:\u00a0 Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Who Resents The Time He’s Wasted Listening To You People Over The Years
\nRe:\u00a0 Monday Morning Quarterbacking<\/p>\n

Dear JEC,<\/p>\n

Quick – without looking at a ballot, tell us – who was running for the other Supreme Court\u00a0 of Minnesota (SCOM) seat on Tuesday?<\/p>\n

We’ll come back to that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of you are giggling like schoolgirls that Michelle MacDonald, after all of the back-and-forth over her endorsement and legal issues,\u00a0got 46% of the vote for Supreme Court against Darth Lillehaug (who came in at 53%). .\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hold the giggling.\u00a0 Did you remember who was running for the other SCOM\u00a0seat that was up for grabs?<\/p>\n

It was\u00a0Mimi Wright against John Hancock; Wright won 56\/42.\u00a0 And Hancock didn’t have the benefit of five months of media attention to his (non-existent) endorsement fiasco, party wrangling and legal travails.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And perhaps more importantly, he wasn’t running against Darth Lillehaug<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Look at every other judicial race in the state<\/a>.\u00a0 The challengers in the (very few) races that weren’t opposed generally netted 35-40% of the vote.\u00a0 And why?\u00a0 Because they weren’t incumbents. Random noise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So 35-40% of Michelle McDonald’s 46% were votes the GOP could have gotten by nominating Sharon Anderson or Leslie Davis or Clu Berg, my golden retriever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So don’t go claiming any credit for outperforming the GOP as a whole.<\/p>\n

Now, this blog has already spent plenty of time castigating the JEC for the sleazy way you got McDonald endorsed – trotting her across the stage as a convention hall full of delegates with numb asses from 20 hours of wrangling over the Senate\u00a0endorsement were getting ready for another half day of untangling a 5-way Governor race, and – unforgiveably – voting to not <\/em>disclose to the delegates\u00a0that Ms. McDonald had a pending court case for driving while intoxicated, rushing her through an acclamation endorsement without bothering to mention that the woman had “Media Poo-Storm” written all over her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We apparently didn’t need to know that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She spent the next five months, camera diliigently thrust in front of her, roaming the state, trashing the GOP, getting headlines from a media whose mission is also trashing the GOP, mostly winning her legal case…<\/p>\n

\"\"

A camera. Michelle MacDonald is standing behind it.<\/p><\/div>\n

…and making people who follow these sorts of things wonder what was going on in there?<\/p>\n

So let’s recap:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The JEC performs a dishonest sleight of hand, and gets Michelle MacDonald endorsed.<\/li>\n
  • MacDonald spends months getting the kind of media attention no SCOM candidate ever, ever gets.<\/li>\n
  • She runs against David Lillehaug – one of the few other <\/em>SCOM candidates this side of Alan Page with a media profile.<\/li>\n
  • She gets 4% better than a complete unknown running in an unknown race against an unknown opponent.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    This tells us a couple of things:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • A good 30-40% of the vote in any contested judge race will be anti-incumbent, no matter who it is.\u00a0<\/li>\n
    • Apparently that 30-40% doesn’t care if someone was charged with DUI, or wouldn’t know if they did.\u00a0<\/li>\n
    • Either people liked Michelle McDonald, or they hated David Lillehaug.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      So – how could things have gone differently?\u00a0<\/p>\n

      What if you, the JEC, had tried just a skosh of honesty?\u00a0 What would have happened?<\/p>\n

      Maybe you’d have lost the nomination.\u00a0 And then again, maybe a straightforward minority report, coupled with an honest explanation of the exigencies from Ms. McDonald, would have won the delegates over.<\/p>\n

      Of course, the media would have have bellowed “GOP ENDORSES ACCUSED DRUNK DRIVER”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Which they did anyway! Only this time the GOP would have been at her back (although that would have taken some cojones<\/em>).\u00a0 And then it would have been off to the general election, Where 30-40% would have voted for her or Sharon Anderson or Paula Overby or Clu Berg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      And 4-6% would have voted for her because they’d heard of her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      And then Minnesota’s Second Amendment lobby, convinced they were backing a viable candidate instead of a skittery liabililty, could have called in the tribes and fired off some of their carefully-hoarded political capital against David Lillehaug, their sworn enemy.\u00a0 If there’s anyone who wants Lillehaug to go into retirement, it’s Minnesota’s shooters.\u00a0 Most of their races won; their support turned out the tribes in support of not just a few longshots.\u00a0 To take down Darth Lillehaug?\u00a0<\/p>\n

      It could have been a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n

      Instead, you – the JEC – tried to manipulate the convention, and did it very badly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      And I haven’t the words to express my contempt for what you all did.<\/p>\n

      That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      To:\u00a0 The MNGOP Judicial Elections Committee From:\u00a0 Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Who Resents The Time He’s Wasted Listening To You People Over The Years Re:\u00a0 Monday Morning Quarterbacking Dear JEC, Quick – without looking at a ballot, tell us – who was running for the other Supreme Court\u00a0 of Minnesota (SCOM) seat on Tuesday? We’ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,280,72],"tags":[249,357],"class_list":["post-48914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14","category-circular-firing-squad","category-mngop","tag-open-letters","tag-the-jec-goat-rodeo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48914","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=48914"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58848,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48914\/revisions\/58848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}