The REAL Issues of District 15

Why are we talking about something so trivial like a “maybe she sent it, maybe she didn’t” email to a B-list celeb, PP, when there are REAL issues to discuss here? Let’s talk about what should be politically significant here:

1) John Madigan switched from being a life-long Republican to a Democratic CANDIDATE just 5 days before the filing deadline. I think we can all agree that’s shade-o-rama. Not only that, but the it becomes known that he’s the Business Manager/Office Manager of the Catholic Church, which indubitably raises questions about the separation of church and state in South Dakota state government. C’mon. Agenda much? I mean really? I don’t care what your religion or what your political party – something is very wrong with this.

2) There’s a small incestuous group of ‘Democrats’ that have their hands dirty in all of this and guess what, Martha Vanderlinde, isn’t one of ‘em. Recall the post by Kelsey here at DW where the “Elect Your New District 15 Team” mailing was discussed. Speaking of incestuous, has anyone checked out the campaign finance reports on these guys? Jim Miles is the Chair of John Madigan’s Committee and Kathy Miles is the Treasurer. Gil Koetzle is the Chair of Pat Kirschman’s Committee with (guess who?!) Jim Miles again as the Treasurer. Hmmm. I think John Madigan’s email address sums it all up: votehappyclub@q.com.
Which leads me to my next point…

3) Seems to me that there might be a little campaign finance law violation in all of this. On the “Team” mailing of Kirschman, Miles, and Madigan, Deb Koetzle is listed as the Treasurer for all the candidates in a “Paid for by the Candidates, Deb Koetzle, Treasurer” sort of way. Well, two things: 1) that’s not what the campaign finance reports say for either of these two men 2) isn’t it a blatant violation to have a joint account with other candidates? I’m certainly no expert here, but I’m also not seeing any in kind donations to each other to pay for this mailing. I’m aware that you don’t have to list a treasurer at all according to new campaign finance law, but what about if you list someone that isn’t the correct treasurer as according to your statement of organization…or even more – what if you list one person as the treasurer for three campaigns and then the supplementary documents don’t match up? What the hell is going on here? Am I missing something or is Roger Hunt these people’s campaign finance law advisor?

So, let’s stop making this about a candidate who has never tried to hide who she is or what she believes through dissecting a petty message board post, taking it’s writing ridiculously out of context (“What a hardship for young girls in the middle of nowhere SD!!” does in no way imply that this lady hates South Dakota, she’s ashamed of it, or anything else. She’s very clearly talking about pharmacy refusal in rural areas. Grow up or re-learn how to read and comprehend written information, kids. ) And you know what? At least with Vanderlinde you know what you’re going to get. We can’t really say the same about ANY of the other candidates in that district, now can we? I think all this conspiracy stuff is disgusting and it hurts everyone involved: other candidates, the voters, the district, the parties, and the state.

The little blog that...couldn't?

So Anna has decided to take a blogging break, Lucretia has decided to go for insults rather than dialogue, and I'm wondering if we still have a common purpose. Kool-Aid, indeed.

Good-bye, cruel world.

The other posters at Dakota Women have recently felt the need to distance themselves from my posts about the primary. I don't feel that any of them were unreasonable, but it's possible I could be wrong. With that in mind, I'm going to stop posting here and take a long break from the local blog world.

Something about this primary season is really ugly and scary to me. I'm proud of my involvement in Hillary Clinton's campaign, because I think she's far and away the best candidate for president. However, I think those of us who are partisans on either side get caught in this weird echo chamber, and more than a few of us (I include myself in this, and, frankly, I include Todd Epp) are getting a little crazy.

This is something I've been considering for a long time. I haven't lived in South Dakota since August of 2007 and I don't know that I'll probably ever live there again - or, at least, I won't live there in the near future. So I also think it's best to turn this over to women who are actually in South Dakota and are able to offer a better perspective than I can regarding what's going on with women in the state.

I'm really not attempting to throw myself a pity party, so I'll stop here, but I did think that I owed people an explanation.

I now leave it to the rest of you to argue with Ken Blanchard.

Mountains, molehills, and Hillary's Sioux Falls gaffe

The Obama bloggers in South Dakota are off to the races after Hillary's comments to the Argus Leader's editorial board about RFK's assassination.

Though, speaking only for myself, I wish she wouldn't have said that, I would also strongly suggest that you're making something out of nothing.

Hillary Clinton stated two historical facts - first, that her husband did not clinch the presidential nomination in 1992 until June, and second, that RFK was murdered in June of 1968, while he was campaigning for the Democratic nomination. The point she was trying to make, Jon, was that primary contests have often gone through June in the past. Nothing more, nothing less.

To imply anything further from those comments is, frankly, not the most intelligent political analysis I've ever seen from Schaff or Epp. To suggest that she was saying that she should remain in the race because the eventual nominee may be assassinated is nothing short of lunacy. To further suggest, as Epp did, that Hillary Clinton would be behind the assassination of Barack Obama takes him into the stratosphere of illogial Hillary hate, to levels rarely seen outside of Rush Limbaugh's listening audience.

Hillary has actually made this comment previously, in a March, 2008 interview with Time. No uproar followed her comments then. I wonder why we would be making such an issue of this now?

Oh, wait. I know the answer. I bet you do too.

I'm especially disappointed to see Todd take a potshot at Hillary over this. You know, Todd, once we have a nominee, you're going to sound like kind of a hypocrite if you call for the media to move away from the BS gotcha coverage they've provided through most of this campaign - and Obama has made literally hundreds of gaffes, and downright offensive statements over the last fifteen months or so. You're buying into it right now because you think it benefits your candidate. Pretty soon, it won't.

What's Wrong with Hyperion -- From Z to A

I don't know if we have any Union county voters out there -- I live in Clay county, so even though my way of life will be just as altered by Hyperion as someone who lives in Elk Point, I don't get a say in this issue. But for those of you who do, a local woman has put together a really concise explanation of the problems with Hyperion, from Z to A.

One that really resonated with me (and which I've discussed with a number of people over the last few weeks) is the Sioux City Journal's finding that 38% of young people aged 18-24 years said they would consider moving if a refinery is built, and 29% aged 25-34 said they would consider moving (obviously this doesn't even take into account the younger people that might've moved back but not won't). The fact is, if someone wants to be near lots of shopping and make tons of money, there are plenty of cities and suburbs and sprawling areas of this country to do that. But if someone wants to start a family in the unspoiled area like where they grew up, their choices are dwindling. Most of us who have chosen to live here (and in the case of my husband and I, chosen to return to this area) have done so because we want the kind of quality of life that this area provides. And like many of those surveyed by the Journal, if we can't get that here, we'll have to go elsewhere.

More Clues in the District 15 Mystery

In looking at the SD Family Policy Council's voter guide, one can't help but notice that recent democratic convert John Madigan lines up almost issue for issue with DakotaWomen favorite Manny Steele. Manny isn't exactly what I'd call a moderate Republican, and yet the only places their answers don't match are issues on which Mr. Madigan appears to be "undecided" -- allowing homeschool students to enroll in public schools less than half-time, and universal pre-school. Would one of the bluest districts in the state really want to elect a Manny Steele think-a-like? Or outside of the social issues that the SDFPC focuses on, is he a really progressive guy?

A quick breakdown of the voter guide questions:
1. Support sonogram requirements
2. Support giving Dept. of Ed authority over pre-K programs
3. Support more regulation of adult businesses
4. Support getting rid of the pharmacists conscience clause
5. Support allowing firearms on college campuses
6. Support allowing homeschoolers to attend public school less than half time
7. Support state website explaining how tax dollars are spent
8. Support giving benefits of marriage to gay couples
9. Support prohibiting gay couples from adopting (P.S. Anti-choicers who answer yes to this need to be slapped. "Yeah, we know that thousands of children are languishing in foster care, but we'll decide which loving homes they don't go to.")
10. Support abstinence-only education
11. Support universal pre-K

The Pro-Cancer Clearinghouse

"HotMama247" (seriously!!) over at the Abstinence Clearinghouse blog is trying to scare people about the HPV vaccine and even seems to be implying that it's mandated nationwide (which, of course, it's not).

I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm pretty sure Leslee Unruh loves cancer. Here's the crazy thing about HPV, friends: even abstinent people can get it. Maybe Leslee should change the name of the organization to Living-Inside-an-Airtight-Bubble-Like-John-Travolta-in-That-Movie-Because-
That's-the-Only-Way-to-Be-Totally-Safe-From-Disease Clearinghouse.

Wherein I agree with Blanchard and Schaff???

Well, sort of.

I want to say first of all that I have debated posting this for the past day or so. I think some of the things I have to say about the Democratic primary are sort of upsetting to people whom I consider good friends, and I obviously don't enjoy making my friends angry. And though I'm with Hillary Clinton as a candidate until she decides to drop out (not only personally, but also through commitments I've made to the campaign and am unwilling to abandon), I'm also dealing with the notion of Barack Obama as the presumptive nominee, and someone I need to get behind in November, so I don't know if posting stuff like this is helpful in that process.

However, in one of the comment threads below, a couple of other Dakota Women posters and I went back and forth about an issue that seems to be addressed pretty clearly in a long New York Times article about Obama's history as a local-level politician in Chicago. It's also been a topic of discussion on South Dakota Politics, with Jon Schaff arguing that Obama is sort of a typical Chicago machine politician, and Ken Blanchard has addressed some of the same issues - asserting that Obama is an extremely liberal politician who comes out of an extremely liberal (probably radical, actually) environment in Chicago. He's also weighed in on some of the enthusiasm of the left blogosphere which I still believe needs to be dialed back to a great extent.

Anyway, with the Times article in mind, I would suggest that our South Dakota Politics friends are sort of right and sort of wrong about Obama. The article suggests something that I've long suspected about him - he's whatever he needs to be, depending upon the people to whom he is trying to appeal. When he's courting the liberal/radical Democratic activists in Hyde Park, he holds liberal views - he's pro-Palestinian, for example. When he starts running for statewide office, and needs to gain the political and financial support of the ardently pro-Israel Crown family, his opinions change, they change pretty significantly, and he leaves his old allies in the dust:

He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.

To broaden his appeal to African-Americans, Mr. Obama had to assiduously court older black leaders entrenched in Chicago’s ward politics while selling himself as a young, multicultural bridge to the wider political world.

...

Others see his deft movements as a politician’s shifting of positions and alliances for strategic advantage, leaving some disappointed and baffled about where he really stands.

“He has a pattern of forming relationships with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago.

My reading of this article is undoubtedly colored by my bias in this race, but what I see here is a desire for power, entirely separated from any core set of personal beliefs, or any real sense of purpose beyond enjoying political power and wanting to move further up the ladder. If he needs to use the Chicago machine for a while to attain higher office, he'll do that, and then he'll abandon that and move on to something else once it stops working. That's why, I think, it's so hard to nail him down regarding his stands on a lot of issues. His positions change depending upon the group he's appealing to at the time. He's a liberal in Hyde Park, and a moderate in the Democratic presidential primary. He donates to the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families in 2006, then touts the support he receives from pro-life Democrats when he wants to gain the Catholic vote in Pennsylvania.

The thing is, of course, this makes him not much different than many politicians. However, many people in South Dakota's left-wing blogosphere have been representing him - and he's been representing himself - as something other than, or different from, politics as usual.

I'll direct you to page six of the article, where Rashid Khalidi, a longtime political ally of Obama's, says what so many people in the local and national left-wing blogosphere won't:

“People think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s a politician.”

Hillary in Sioux Falls...with Pictures!

Below are some pictures from Hillary Clinton's stop in Sioux Falls. Good event overall, although it was muddy where I had to park, some of Hillary's people misled a lot of people into thinking they had to park at the airport, then we had to pay to get out, and Hillary was very late. But the turnout was good, the speech was good, and the crowd was enthusiastic (and I only ended up having to tell one person that I had voted for Obama). Kudos to my old friend Geoff who's directing Hillary's South Dakota campaign -- he's a great guy and it looks like he's doing a great job.

Hillary in Sioux Falls

Hillary Clinton's Sioux Falls rally is available in full online at KELO. If you haven't had a chance to see it, take a bit of time to watch what she has to say. It looks like a pretty energetic, excited crowd showed up at the airport on Thursday afternoon.

By the way, I find the pantsuit she's wearing today delightful.

What the Heck is Going on in District 15?

I don't live in District 15, but I do come from a District 15 family, so I know a little about the lay of the land up there and I get the occasion updates on the political happenings.

So what to make of this recent mailing, featuring *some* of the Democratic candidates? Let's see, we have John Madigan, Pat Kirschman, and Kathy Miles. First off, isn't somebody missing from the District 15 Team? Like, perhaps, the only (to my knowledge) pro-choice candidate: Martha Vanderlinde (daughter of beloved District 15 Representative Mary Vanderlinde)? Also, what the heck is Kathy Miles doing there? She doesn't even have a primary!

I've been hearing some gossip about Madigan and Kirschman "working against" Vanderlinde and perhaps engaging in some not-so-cool negative campaigning, but until this mailing, I hadn't seen any proof. Is this just a case of the anti-choice candidates banding together? Word around the blogosphere is that something a little more nefarious is going on. Scott over at South DaCola did a little cartoon about the fact that Madigan was, until recently, a registered Republican and is currently an employee of the Catholic diocese. Some of the comments on that blog and the subsequent repost at South Dakota 123 suggest that perhaps Madigan wasn't inspired to switch parties out of disgust with the repubs, but because either his friends or his bosses wanted him to take out a strong pro-choice candidate (apparently, they couldn't get Travis Benson to change his registration).

I suppose I wouldn't be surprised if the GOP or the conservative element in the Catholic Church were trying to infiltrate the Democratic party. I don't expect a lot from them. I am a little disturbed by the implication that Kirschman and Miles are involved. First of all, Dem on Dem hate makes me very uncomfortable. I don't like it in the presidential primary and I like it even less at the district level, where we should all be treating each other like friends and neighbors. It makes me even more uncomfortable to hear that someone may have been recruited to switch parties based just on the abortion issue.

If their loyalty isn't to the party, maybe they should think about re-registering. Start an Anti-Choice Catholics for Introducing Abortion Bills 24/7. Otherwise, start acting like Democrats and play nice! Leave the dirty tricks to the Republicans.

Stay classy, Ken.

Ken Blanchard loved this example of the blogger/media chorus which has recently suggested that Hillary Clinton ought to be murdered, run over with a truck, taken in a room and beaten to death, or now euthanized, which is probably one of the kinder Hillary murder fantasies to come out lately.

Maybe the press isn't covering this, Ken, because it's completely nasty and inappropriate. Maybe some of them don't necessarily need to see the primary campaign as a metaphorical horse race, during which Hillary Clinton will be metaphorically killed. (Some of them do, obviously.) Nothing about the story of Eight Belles is funny.

Yikes

The Obama supporters in the South Dakota blogosphere have started throwing around some pretty irresponsible statements about both candidates in the Democratic primary (I linked only to the main page of Madville Times, because, honestly, look at any of it and you'll see what I mean).

From Cory: Obama "inspires." How? Should we be looking to politicians for inspiration in the first place?
From David Newquist: Obama is "our best chance to restore America to what it can and should be." In what way? What specifically leads one to think this? What has Obama actually done in the past that would cause someone to believe this about him? He makes good speeches, but is there more to being president than making speeches?
From a Nation article that Cory approvingly reposts: Obama "does appear to offer a way out of the testosterone-addled GOP framework." How? Because I just heard Obama today on Meet the Press talking about how he agrees with pretty much every foreign policy stance Hillary Clinton has ever set forth in this campaign.

I've been thinking about this a lot ever since our campaign for Hillary has started in earnest. I tabled for Hillary at an event Friday night and heard surprisingly uninformed things coming from Obama supporters. Many people believe that Obama voted against the war in Iraq in the Senate. Many people believe that Obama supports universal health care and Clinton doesn't (totally false). The things I see South Dakota bloggers say about him really aren't that different than what I heard this past weekend. A lot of you are in outer space right now, and I hope you'll join us here on Earth really soon.