Stuff gets real: Marty Seifert steps into race for Minnesota's GOP gubernatorial nomination

No one is surprised that former House Minority Leader Marty Seifert jumped into Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial race today--nor should the attention given the Marshall Republican's announcement by the press be a surprise either.

Seifert is a charming and very funny man. However, no reports recall how Team Seifert practiced brass knuckle tactics against its opponents--real and potential--in the 2010 campaign.

Today's news

The former lawmaker's hometown paper reports in Seifert joins GOP race:

"I'm a different person now than I was four years ago. I am a 100 percent private-sector citizen," Seifert said. He said that experience has helped shape his decision to run for governor. Seifert said there have been some disturbing developments in Minnesota in the past several years, including unemployment, rising tax and regulatory burdens for businesses and rising health care costs under Obamacare.

"Real, normal people are hurting right now," Seifert said. Minnesota will be in "desperate need" of leadership in the next four years, he said.

Never mind the fact that headlines today read At 4.8%, Minnesota unemployment rate drops to pre-recession level.

The New Ulm Journal reported in Seifert joins GOP race for Governor:

. . .Seifert made the expected announcement at City Hall in downtown Marshall with his wife Traci and children Brittany and Braxton by his side.

Marshall was the first stop of a 13-city tour for Seifert. He plans to be at the Happy Chef in North Mankato at 4 p.m.

"I think the people of Minnesota want to see a candidate as much as possible, which is why we're going to 13 cities," Seifert said. "We'll be hustling around a lot and my family and I are ready for it; this isn't our first time in the rodeo. We know what we're getting into."

The Associated Press reports that one of his children fainted at the press event in St. Paul:

He cut short a question-and-answer session to tend to one of his two children, who fainted under the hot lights as his father spoke.

This time, it seems, Seifert may not accept no as an answer from the state convention delegates, according to the New Ulm Journal:

This will be Seifert's second run at the GOP nomination - he lost to Tom Emmer in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign. That year, Emmer, who was ultimately defeated by Mark Dayton by fewer than 9,000 votes, carried a game-changing advantage in the metro area, and on the second ballot was able to pull away from Seifert, who eventually withdrew from the race. Seifert, however, has recently expressed his confidence in his ability to improve his standing in that area as a rural candidate in 2014. . . .

Bluestem predicts that the heretofore convival gubernatorial race will likely turn more aggressive with Seifert's entry into the race, given the rough and ready tactics his campaign used in 2010. Two items from that contest are worth noting.

Daudt about Tom Emmer's DWIs

The Star Tribune's Baird Helgeson reported in Seifert campaign reignites Emmer DUI issue:

Tom Emmer’s previous drunken driving charges have resurfaced in the neck-and-neck Republican gubernatorial contest.

State Rep. Marty Seifert’s campaign released a letter Tuesday from a delegate who criticizes Tom Emmer’s legislative push to weaken drunken driving laws while at the same time failing to disclose at a recent candidate forum that he had two previous drunk driving charges.

“I was shocked to learn that Tom Emmer was not entirely forthcoming,” wrote Sandra Berg, a Chisago County delegate who said her husband and son were seriously injured when their car was struck by a drunken driver. “He also used his role as a lawmaker to attempt to weaken the kinds of laws he had previously broken and to cover up the fact that he had broken them.”

Seifert campaign manager Kurt Daudt defended the release of the letter.

"Republican activist and state convention delegate Sandra Berg’s family was victimized by a drunk driver," he said in a statement. "As a result, she was moved to share important information with fellow Republican state convention delegates about Tom Emmer’s record: two past DWI arrests; his efforts in 2009 as a legislator to weaken the state’s DWI laws and cover up the fact he broke them; and not sharing this information when asked about a possible ‘October surprise’ at a recent candidate forum.”

Daudt said the letter “provides factual information about a vital issue for the delegates to consider.”

Later in the campaign for the general election, the progressive group Alliance for a Better Minnesota created a devastating IE ad on a similar premise.

The ghost of a snapshot: 2009 "Commentgate" shenanigans

But there were whispers of other smear campaigns, though the reports were based on circumstantial evidence. As Tommy Johnson posted in a 2009 blog entry at the Minnesota Progressive Project, Another Piece In The CommentGate Puzzle, Emmer might not have been the only Republican whom the Seifert campaign was accused of sliming:

. . .Last Monday, August 10th, blogger Brian Falldin, who broke and is covering this story, posted the following breaking news:
MINNEAPOLIS (CWM) – We’ve received an e-mail confirmation from Residual Forces author Andy Aplikowski that Andy Gildea was the Republican Staffer referred to in his accusatory article. (CWM.org)
Tuesday, I confirmed Andy Gildea was on GOP Rep. Marty Seifert’s staff when this smear campaign was being orchestrated; Andy Gildea left Rep. Siefert’s staff when Seifert stepped down as Minority Leader. Andy Gildea is now employed as a Research Consultant by the GOP House Caucus.

Stay tuned as this CommentGate story of dirty GOP politics (are there any other?) continues . . .

Little remains outside of the Wayback Machine of Commentgate, in which rumors of an affair on Brod's part were left in the comment sections of conservative blogs.

Brod had been considering a gubernatorial bid, but decided against it after a health scare. (Of course, Bluestem has retrieved the Commentgate material once posted by Dusty Trice and Brian Falldin at their late lamented blogs, and the Triple A post that Johnson references, but feels that that ground can for now remain fallow).

In light of distribution of the boudoir shot of Brod to the press in the Summer 2013 and her subsequent statement about the status of her marriage, explored in painful detail by City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman, 2009's Commentgate takes on a whole new meaning. Will it reverberate in the 2014 gubernatorial race?

Photo: The Seifert family. Photo by Per Peterson, The Independent, Marshall.

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