Tuesday's Morning Take noted a new Halloween-themed microsite from the Minnesota House DFL caucus committee:
FIRST: Today the House DFL will launch a campaign microsite called the GOP House of Horrors, targeting incumbent Republican Representatives on an interactive map. When you click the photo of the Representative you get a bio of their “scary” ideas. SURF: http://bit.ly/1tHPIX5
They're not all incumbents, since "Istanbul" Jeff Backer, Tim "So Not An Uncaring Ogre" Miller and Eric "Gender Anxieties" Lucero are on the list.
Nevertheless, the site is helpful in explicating why the photo on Miller's Facebook page (above) is so scary. From left to right, the photo shows the doorknocking help Miller received over the weekend: Made ALEC member Steve "Draz" Drazkowski, Miller, Scott Newman for Attorney General campaign manager state senator Dave Thompson, and Minnesota House District30B candidate Eric Lucero.
Republican sources have told Bluestem that Southeastern Minnesota representative Steve Drazkowski recruited Miller to run again over a candidate in Clara City recruited by the HRCC. Draz and Miller were to appear at a January 2014 Tea Party rally in Willmar (cancelled because of weather).
The DFL House of Horrors site notes this about the Draz:
Last time Republican Steve Drazkowksi was in the majority, the very first bill he introduced included provisions to let local governments in Minnesota discriminate against female employees based on pay, for the first time in nearly 30 years. Even though the law has resulted in more than $1.2 million in back-pay for 1,300 Minnesotans, Drazkowski said protecting women against this form of discrimination was “unnecessary.” Editorial boards said Drazkowski’s proposal was “at best naïve and, at worst, sexist.” [Sources: HF7, introduced 1/10/11; Winona Daily News, 2/11/11; Winona Daily News Editorial 2/16/11]
With legislative mentors like that, it's no wonder why Tim Miller didn't see the need to bother to read one of the signature laws of the last session, the Women's Economic Security Act (WESA). As we noted in MN17A: Miller imagines mention of WESA is a "War on Women" attack on all Republicans, Miller had this to say about WESA, after talking about who his wife went to college:
So that's even better that we're setting out for than for your, ah, your [spins finger] Economic Progress Bill or whatever it is.
I apologize that I have not read all of your bills. I have a job. I need to go out there and work. It's easy when you're in the legislature to stay on top of all the intricacies of this. I did not realize that this was going to be test on the Andrew Falk bill writing academy.
By the way, Drazkowski was part of the minority of the minority Republican caucus to vote against WESA.
But Draz's extreme agenda doesn't stop with trying to block or erase measures to help women in the workplace. There's the infamous floor amendment to chop down black walnut trees in state parks, as we noted in Only God can make a tree, but stupid ideas are left for The Draz to introduce.
And there's his pushing of an ALEC-approved "Tenther" resolution.
Draz tried to frighten people about Environmental Quality Board listening sessions, as we reported in Steve Drazkowski sends scary email about extremists hijacking EQB citizen forums. It's not the only thing that The Draz got wrong, as we observed in Representative Steve Drazkowski gets confused about Constitution and stuff Ben Franklin said.
While the DFL placed Tim Miller in Montevideo, he's actually from Prinsburg, which City Pages reporter Robbie Feinberg profiled in Meet Prinsburg, Minnesota's most conservative city:
In the 2012 election, more than 90 percent of Prinsburg's voters cast their presidential ballots for Mitt Romney, and in every other race that pitted a Republican against a Democrat, more than 75 percent leaned towards the GOP.
That profile stands in stark contrast with the rest of the district, where Romney took 50.72 percent percent of the vote to Obama's 47.04 percent. Falk won the district by 53.86 percent, while in every other race that pitted a Republican against a Democrat, more than 60 percent chose the DFL.
There's no public school in Prinsburg, so perhaps that's why Miller can say the scary thing that the DFL found on his website:
Tim Miller is no friend to public education. After his Republican allies took more than $2 billion in funds from our schools in 2011, Miller defended the borrowing stating “Plainly stated, schools suffered no burdens because of the shift.” [Source: standwithtim.com, accessed 10/7/14]
According to Miller's wife, pointing out facts like that, as Education Minnesota did in at least one mail piece to members, makes Miller look like "an uncaring ogre." Her words, not ours or those of the union. We don 't think that pointing out the positions of Miller's allies is a personal attack--and that's what the union has been doing.
Dave Thompson
As a state senator, Thompson isn't up for re-election this cycle, although he did try for the Republican gubernatorial nod. Via ABM's Wrong for Minnesota, we learned that he voted against school lunches for low-income students (apparently it's better to pull trays out of kids' hands when a student's parents can't pay, as happened in Willmar), voted against WESA, opposes raising the minimum wage, and promised to work for that pesky policy of requiring a photo ID to vote.
That brings us to the record of another candidate Thompson is working to support. Thompson now serves as the campaign manager for Republican Attorney General candidate Scott Newman, author of the failed Photo ID amendment of 2012. Only 42.47 percent of HD17A voted for this amendment, which incumbent Andrew Falk also opposed, which illustrates how, on Planet Tim, some amendments are more equal than others.
That brings us to Eric Lucero, about whom Bluestem was the first to report in depth, back in our September 9, 2013 post, Eric Lucero, "gay marriage & the homosexual lifestyle" opponent, files in FitzSimmons' HD 30B. As we posting then, Lucero objected to (among other things):
Blending the gender distinctions such as women in combat and homosexuals openly serving in the military.
That information is repeated on the DFL site, framed about how even Republicans found those views extreme:
Eric Lucero’s views are so extreme, the Republican Party and the Voices of Conservative Women both tried to defeat him in an August primary (unsuccessfully). Lucero’s campaign website has attacked government policies “blending the gender distinctions such as women in combat and homosexuals openly serving in the military.” [Sources: MinnPost.com, 6/26/14; Voices of Conservative Women, 2/20/14]
These are the people who join Tim Miller knocking on doors in MN 17A.
And incumbent Andrew Falk (DFL-Murdock)? He chose a much different photo to post over the weekend. Sure, there are a couple DFL House leaders in the shot, but there's also the mayor of one of the towns in the district, people of both genders, and a wide mix of ages:
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