Visit the Twitter account of Kim Spears, the endorsed Republican candidate now making his third run for Minnesota House district 19A, and one of the first things keen observers will notice is while he's been on Twitter since May 2014, he's only tweeted 58 times.
Scroll to the bottom of his account, and a reader will see that the tweets begin on January 22.
What's up with that? District resident Seán Easton has been tweeting the deleted backstory and it ain't pretty. Seems that Spears made some tweets disappear that might not meet the standards of the district that's home to generally civil people in communities that are growing more diverse.
Who are we kidding? Material of this tone wouldn't have met with public approval even during our editor's years in the area as a person who attended St. Peter Public Schools in the 1970s.
Here's a sampling of screengrabs of the deleted material Easton has sharing on twitter (via Twipu).
There's the anti-public schools material:
Kim Spears wants to rep MN 19a (where I live) but then tweets this on healthcare, public schools (where my kids go) & even pre-k. His catchphrase is #GreaterMinnesotavalues, but he wants to take away what we value. #mnleg @Mankatonews @EducationMN @MNdeptEd @candidatekim pic.twitter.com/H933gNeo0Y
— Seán Easton (@EastonMN) June 19, 2018
The neo-Nazis-could-be-fine-people schtick:
Kim Spears @candidatekim endorsed (in this tweet he has since deleted) Trump's statement that the Charlottesville violence had fine people on both sides - the torch-carrying Neo-Nazi side and the other one. Spears is not fit to rep MN19A in the state house.#NotMyRep @Mankatonews pic.twitter.com/YpiRmJtD2L
— Seán Easton (@EastonMN) September 1, 2018
The crass anti-Muslim pork "joke":
@candidatekim running to represent the now very diverse MN 19A community, in a campaign makeover, deleted racist 2017 hate-mongering comments and retweets of the same, as well as alt-right, anti-Muslim fake news. He cannot represent our whole community. @MankatoNews #notmyrep pic.twitter.com/vNsHsfQlKu
— Seán Easton (@EastonMN) August 28, 2018
The black-people-are-stupid cartoon:
Kim Spears @candidatekim rt'd this racist cartoon mocking African American voters as dupes of the Dem party. This wasn't clueless racism (still not ok) in making a political point. He deleted it before running. He knew what he did. He's not fit to rep MN19A.#NotMyRep @Mankatonews pic.twitter.com/candPGGUZI
— Seán Easton (@EastonMN) September 2, 2018
The climate-change-denier fake news:
@candidatekim (Kim Spears), running for MN House 19A, in a campaign makeover, deleted his 2017 retweet of this fake news piece denying climate change. Extremists who hide their extremism can still only represent a hardened faction, never a whole community. @MankatoNews #notmyrep pic.twitter.com/lw2BtwuJ3v
— Seán Easton (@EastonMN) August 27, 2018
There's more but one gets the picture. Perhaps Spears feared being branded the next Nolan West, whom City Pages' Mike Mullen dubbed The Bigot of Blaine. Perhaps this is the sort of schtick Melissa Hortman had in mind.
Spears' DFL-endorsed opponent in the open seat is St. Peter City Council Member Jeff Brand. The race is considered highly competitive.
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