Sure, friends in Minnesota are tweeting about scary postcards they're getting from the Republican Party of Minnesota about radical mind control and Joe Biden. An example from Twitter graces the top of this post.
But Assistant Senate Majority Leader Gary Dahms, R-Redwood Falls, a former county commissioner and retired insurance agent, shared an even more dire vision of the future, according to a report in the September 11 New Ulm Journal, Carnahan meets with Republicans in New Ulm.
Clay Schuldt reports:
. . .Congressman Jim Hagedorn and State Sen. Gary Dahms both spoke on the importance of this election. Both compared voting for Biden to voting for socialism.
“(Biden) likes equalization of wealth and that is the direction they are going to want to go,” he said.
Dahms warned that without a GOP majority in the state Senate and state House Minnesota will have state-run healthcare, recreational marijuana and changes in abortion laws within the first six weeks of the new session. . . .
Given that none of these things were accomplished in the last two-year session, during which the Republicans controlled the Senate, while Democrats held the majority in the House, we're wondering how any of those changes will be accomplished if the DFL doesn't flip the Senate.
Perhaps even more interesting, Dahms doesn't face a DFL opponent in the general election. Rather, he's facing off Steve "Stoney" Preslicka, of the Legal Marijuana Now Party and Joshua Prine of the Independence-Alliance Party.
According to the registry of cases searchable online via the Minnesota Trial Court Public Access (MPA) Remote View, two misdemeanor convictions for disorderly conduct (case numbers 65-CR-19-412 and 65-CR-20-67) Preslicka received for charges filed in December 2019 and March 2020 are still under court supervision. He was earlier convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault in 2013; the case (65-CR-13-52) is closed.
We doubt Preslicka is much of a threat as a candidate to Dahms anti-weed hegemony.
Nor do we suspect that Dahms loses sleep over Prine, as upright as he appears.
This isn't the first time Dahms and Hagedorn have fretted about socialist recreational pot.
Our 2015 post, MN Senator Gary Dahms shares scary vision of pot-loving DFL majority with Brown Co faithful noted:
Never mind Governor Mark Dayton's stiff and well-documented resistance to legalizing medical marijuana--much less recreational pot use--during the 2014 session.
Or the resulting law that has produced policy that's so restrictive the families of those few who are able to get into the program--like little Amelia Weaver--are pleading to expand those covered so that costs (not covered by insurance) come down.
Or that the manufacturers are having a hard time making money under the law, with one firm delaying opening two dispensaries in Greater Minnesota.
If you were among the Brown County Republican faithful gathered at FUNRaiser at the Brown County REA Auditorium, you would have heard a very different story from state senator Gary Dahms. R-Redwood Falls. Fritz Busch reports in Daudt: No gas tax hike:
District 16 Sen. Gary Dahms said if the Republicans didn't control the House, the Legislature would be talking about passing recreational marijuana.
"We need the Speaker Daudt and the House to deal with a wild, liberal government, and I'm sugar-coating it by calling it that," Dahms said. "We're dealing with people who have over-stepped their bounds and it's not just Gov. Dayton."
Unlike Dayton, Walz does favor legalization of recreational cannabis, but with the divided legislature, the discussion went nowhere, even though retiring Republican Senate COVID minimizer hero Scott Jensen favored that conversation.
In 2019, we posted in Hagedorn: Senator Gary Dahms stands between you and socialist legal recreational marijuana:
In Sunday's New Ulm Journal, Fritz Busch reports in Hagedorn, Torkelson address county Republicans:
. . .Hagedorn said. “You have great leaders here in Southern Minnesota with Rep. Paul Torkelson and Sen. Gary Dahms. Paul worked hard on Highway 14 and everything else. Gary stands between you and a more socialist Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz wants a gas tax, legal recreational marijuana, single-payer healthcare and 50 percent renewable energy, which isn’t feasible because we don’t have the technology.”
Read the rest in the post.
Are the fear tactics of the Republican Party of Minnesota working? The New York Times reported this weekend Minnesota Seemed Ripe for a Trump Breakout. It Has Not Arrived. The short skinny:
At this moment, however, most evidence indicates that the president is in a worse position in 2020 than where he finished in 2016. New polling from The New York Times and Siena College shows that Joseph R. Biden Jr. leads Mr. Trump by nine percentage points in the state, more than five times the small margin Hillary Clinton won the state by four years ago. And while Mr. Trump does enjoy the firm backing of conservatives in rural areas who support his law-and-order message, the same theme has not resonated with the larger coalition he would need to overtake the Democrats.
Polls are only snapshots of the moment, of course, but the New York Times/Siena College poll does not appear to be an outlier.
In the meantime, we're wondering what Dahms is smoking. Or he simply recycling talking points, pandemic or none?
Photo: A MNGOP fearmongering postcard.
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