Reading around, Bluestem is struck by the peculiarity of Republican Party endorsements of candidates for secretary of state in Minnesota and South Dakota. Kim Crockett and Monae Johnso
We've been covering the Kim Crockett beat since mid-May's MNGOP endorsed secretary of state candidate's election ignorance pairs well with past racism.
Crockett added anti-semitism to that laundry list, as we noted five days later in GOP SOS candidate we scolded for racism, incompetence gets antisemitism added.
Most recently on the Crockett beat, Deena Winter reported in Crockett is part of a national push to recruit an ‘army’ of activists to watch elections for the Minnesota Reformer:
Kim Crockett, Minnesota Republicans’ presumptive nominee for secretary of state, is part of a national right wing network recruiting an army of activists to become poll workers, stoking fear among Democratic voting rights activists that they’ll seek to intimidate voters.
The nationwide network is led by Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer who tried to help former President Donald Trump flip the Georgia election results and has become a key figure during the recent hearings of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. . . .
Mitchell said in a March podcast interview that Republicans didn’t pay enough attention to the mechanics of elections — from campaign finance to election laws — until 2020, when they were “awakened,” presumably by Trump’s frequent false claims of fraud and attempt to overturn the election he lost.
Crockett said Mitchell isn’t new to her. “I’ve actually known her for quite some time,” she said of Mitchell in a YouTube interview with Max Rymer, president of Nativ3 Digital Marketing and a consultant to Crockett’s campaign. Crockett did not respond to a request for comment.
Crockett is part of the Election Integrity Network, or EIN, which is being run by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank founded by former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint in 2017 to support conservatives on Capitol Hill. Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is a senior partner, and Mitchell is a senior legal fellow at CPI.
Crockett said EIN meets twice a week, with the Heritage Foundation leading one meeting, and Mitchell the other. She told Rymer the RNC knows it “missed the mark” in 2020, and she’s been “blown away” by the humility displayed by RNC leaders who “didn’t listen” in 2020.
Crockett and Mitchell think their group helped Republican Glenn Youngkin defeat former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race last year.
In the runup to the Virginia governor’s race, Mitchell said she helped organize “task forces” and trained more than 4,000 poll workers and observers.
“I know a lot about the task force that won that state,” Crockett told Rymer. “And I said OK if they can do this, we can do that in Minnesota.”
(A more likely explanation for Youngkin’s victory: He received more votes, as often happens in off-year elections when the other party controls the White House. According to Reuters, Youngkin won due to a wave of red enthusiasm: the number of Republican votes grew by more than 40% compared to the 2017 gubernatorial contest while Democratic votes increased by about 10%.) . . . .
Bluestem now welcomes Monae Johnson to the gallery of nincompoops who might manage state election and business services in the Upper Midwest. In Watertown this past weekend, South Dakota Republicans endorsed Monae Johnson over sitting Republican South Dakota Secretary of State Steve Barnett. The Associated Press reported in South Dakota GOP picks experience for AG, bumps an incumbent:
The day featured one upset.
Delegates denied Secretary of State Steve Barnett the opportunity for a second term. Monae Johnson won easily in a campaign where she stressed her opposition to online voting, online voter registration and online registration updates.
What little we knew of her before endorsement came from reading the very Republican blog, Dakota War College, first with Monae Johnson appears to be running for Sec of State on “Election Integrity” platform.
More worrisome: Why does Monae Johnson for SOS want my thoughts on vaccination and abortion?
Then earlier this month Bluestem learned in SOS Candidate Monae Johnson tells delegates that if elected, her intent is to disenfranchise a group of voters that Johnson hates South Dakota's special Nomadland voters.
Prior to the convention, the Associated Press's Steven Groves reported in South Dakota GOP to decide AG, other nominees amid infighting:
. . . Republican Secretary of State Steve Barnett is facing a challenge for the nomination from a candidate who has built her campaign around “election integrity." This comes amid a surge of concern among some conservatives about voter fraud following former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Monae Johnson, who worked in the secretary of state's office before Barnett's tenure, says she is “answering the call of concerned citizens” to run. Her campaign centers around criticism of Bennett’s unsuccessful pushes to allow people to register online to vote and his decision to mail out applications for absentee voting during the pandemic.
Perhaps the most comprehensive summary of Johnson's qualifications for the office is in Cory Allen Heidelberger's Jackley, Rhoden Nearly Lose Nominations; SDGOP Tosses Barnett, Picks Less Qualified Monae Johnson for Secretary of State at Dakota Free Press. He muses:
. . . In the final rebuke to both mainstream authority and care for qualifications, the insurrectionist delegates scored one clear victory in throwing aside incumbent Secretary of State Steve Barnett and nominating likely Trumpist election rigger Monae Johnson. Barnett, perhaps the least robust scion of the politically powerful Barnett family, came to the Secretary of State’s job four years ago after two quiet terms as State Auditor. His management of the Secretary of State’s office has been inferior to that of his predecessor, the energetic, helpful, and alas-one-term Shantel Krebs, but his incompetence hasn’t risen to anything like the constant failure to perform that led the GOP to shove lazy one-term bumbler Jason Gant aside for Krebs in 2014 (back in the good old days when South Dakota Republicans still clung to some expectation of job performance, not just Election Day id-scratching). Barnett hasn’t done anything to scandalize Republican voters. Good grief, he even helped prevent Indians from registering to vote! Republicans ought to love that disenfranchisement!
Yet Monae Johnson, who claims to have worked for three previous Secretaries of State but who seems not to have done any serious management on the Second Floor, was able to oust Barnett yesterday with 61% of the weighted delegate vote. Barnett seems to have coasted on his incumbency and SDGOP mainstreamery and not whipped his delegates. Johnson seems to have tapped the vote with her talk of “election integrity” and nonexistent “voter fraud”, which we know is code to the insurrectionist crowd for, “The elections we lose are all rigged, so I promise to rig the next election to make sure we win!”
Steve Barnett let a Trumpist insurgent with far fewer qualifications for public office beat him out of a second nomination for Secretary of State. Kristi Noem let the Haugaardian mugwumps in her party oust a reliable party boy from the field and place a less-qualified liability on the November ballot. Rather than consolidating her power, Kristi Noem has let the South Dakota Republican Party descend further into a mad detachment from the seriousness of winning elections and running state government.
. . .Democrats, it’s now up to you to nominate a qualified candidate for Secretary of State and pour a million dollars into that campaign to protect the honest and accurate conduct of South Dakota’s elections.
We certainly hope so.
Image: Back of a Johnson campaign piece via the Dakota War College post, A few campaign items from the trail: Mary Mowry (sans hat), Monae Johnson, and Steve Haugaard. From the post:
If you’re going to note that you have 8 years’ experience in the Secretary of State’s office towards the top of your list, and highlight “election integrity,” you probably shouldn’t violate South Dakota campaign finance law regarding disclaimers on campaign material. Because it doesn’t have one.
It doesn't get much better than that.
Related posts:
- MN SOS: Secretary of State Steve Simon announces Minnesota Election Facts Webpage
- MN Reformer: Kim Crockett must be shunned
- MN Reformer: Republican Party of Minnesota endorses election denier to oversee elections
- MNGOP endorsed secretary of state candidate's election ignorance pairs well with past racism
- GOP SOS candidate we scolded for racism, incompetence gets antisemitism added
- Westrom wouldn't talk to local reporter about why he attended sketchy election fraud event
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email [email protected] as recipient.
I'm on Venmo for those who prefer to use this service: @Sally-Sorensen-6
Comments