Opposition researchers are pretty much paid to be ugly, catty and anal-retentive.<\/p>\n
The City Pages would have you believe that the oppo-research battle in the House race in Apple Valley is worse than most.\u00a0 And in its way, it is – although not for the reasons the City Pages wants you to believe.<\/p>\n
It’s a battle between two younger women – Republican Ali Jimenez-Hopper and DFLer Erin Maye-Quade – and the oppo researchers working with both of them.<\/p>\n
Everybody’s Doing It<\/strong>:\u00a0 Maye-Quade – who the City Pages’ Mike Mullen notes is a “biracial, married lesbian with impeccable credentials [although no details about the “credentials” are given – more on that in a moment] who worked to get Barack Obama elected and gun control passed”, although no gun controls have passed in this state in decades – was the first target.\u00a0 Says Mullen:<\/p>\n Maye Quade\u2019s persona became the subject of scrutiny last week when conservatives dragged out a number of posts meant to throw her qualifications into question. \u201cMacy Gray wrote a love song to a vibrator,\u201d Maye Quade tweeted last year, \u201cshocking no woman who has ever used one.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good line. But not the kind DFLers want to see parading across the screens of suburban voters.<\/p>\n Other posts show her pissed off (\u201ctoday can blow me,\u201d she once wrote) or turned on (actor Rob Lowe is \u201cmasturbate in public sexy,\u201d according to a January 2013 tweet).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can give Maye-Quade a break for that.\u00a0 I’ve long lamented the idea that anyone who wants to get into politics basically needs to spend every waking moment of their lives from childhood on guarding against any hint of impolitic impropriety if they ever <\/em>want to “serve” the public in elective office.<\/p>\n Of course, the name rang a bell with me – and it brought us back to this episode, in 2010, where Maye, then employed by “The Uptake”, giggled “\u201cI\u2019m Editing.\u00a0 I feel important because I can make people say things they may not have said<\/a>.\u00a0 Muhahaha\u201d \u00a0 It gave her a kick that she now had the power to use her job editing news content to affect the political process<\/a>.<\/p>\n Which reminded me that there are many, many better reasons not to vote for Erin Maye-Quade.<\/p>\n So Where’s The Bad Part?<\/strong> – The DFL responded by digging out this bit of “dirt” against Ms. Jimenez-Hopper:<\/p>\n On June 14, two days after 49 people were killed in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Jimenez-Hopper told her Facebook followers she\u2019s armed and ready to defend herself. She\u2019s not going to die \u201cin a helpless blubbering heap on the floor begging for my life or my child\u2019s life.\u201d Hardly the requisite \u201cthoughts and prayers for the victims\u2019 families\u201d that Republicans like to trot out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anyone who doesn’t agree that one is better fighting back against violence than being a passive victim is beyond moral help.<\/p>\n And have you noticed the gotcha – Republicans who ask \u201cthoughts and prayers for the victims\u2019 families\u201d are condemned for not supporting the right<\/em> response, while those who don’t get hit for…well, not?<\/p>\n By the way, Ms. Jimenez-Hopper?\u00a0 Don’t change a thing.<\/p>\n Another post seemed distinctly anti-feminist. Jimenez-Hopper shared a meme that stated women \u201cweren\u2019t created to do everything a man can do.\u201d The candidate added: \u201cMen and women are not equal… what we are is equally different.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The horror.<\/p>\n I love that last bit.\u00a0 Democrats – most of whom haven’t taken a hard science since high school at the latest – jabber about their respect for empiricism, and snark down their sleeves about the evolution-denying “young earth creationists” they think all Christian Republicans are.<\/p>\n And yet faced with the ineluctible fact that evolution <\/em>has equipped men and women differently, for remorselessly empirical reasons, suddenly they go all faith-based – in this case, out of faith that the left’s social dogma is the one real truth?<\/p>\n I endorse Ms. Jimenez-Hopper, by the way.\u00a0 Hopefully the good people of Apple Valley can smell the difference between reason and dogma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opposition researchers are pretty much paid to be ugly, catty and anal-retentive. The City Pages would have you believe that the oppo-research battle in the House race in Apple Valley is worse than most.\u00a0 And in its way, it is – although not for the reasons the City Pages wants you to believe. It’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,63],"tags":[430],"class_list":["post-60488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16","category-lefty-alt-media","tag-erin-maye-quade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60489,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60488\/revisions\/60489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}