On Wednesday, Bluestem posted Can Le Sueur County GOP chair's reading of newspaper coverage of candidates be trusted?, exploring the way in which the Le Sueur County Republican Party Chair inserted state representative Susan Akland's name into an October 11 Mankato Free Press editorial Too many election deniers on ballot.
Oddly enough, Representative Akland wasn't named in the editorial--at least, in the online version.
That led us to review Akland's activism about election denial--including her presence at the Minnesota State Capitol as part of the January 6 "Storm the Capitol" rally.
A reader let us know that a video exists which puts together two different versions of Akland's presence at the Storm the Capitol event. The video--tweeted by Minnesota State professor James Dimock, opens with a brief clip of Akland telling those at League of Women Voters forum that the event involved "praying in the snow for our state." It cuts to a speaker who's advocating a more aggressive response, then closing with part of Akland's own speech on the state capitol steps. Akland talks about how her district had been blue, but she had run to preserve conservative Christian values.
Here's the tweet:
— James Dimock (@JamesPDimock) October 16, 2022
Dimock share the video on his Facebook page, along with the comment:
This short video shows you who the real Susan Akland is. She straight up says her mission is to impose her conservative Christian agenda. She lies about the nature of the Storm the Capital demonstration and what happened there.
She needs to be stopped. We need Jeff Brand in St Paul and she has got to go!
Is the Akland forum comment taken out of context? The video of the MN State Legislature Senate 18 & Representative 18A Candidate Forum held on September 27, 2022 is viewable on the City of St. Peter's YouTube channel. I embed both candidates' answers to a question about election integrity. Brand mentions Akland's presence at the Storm the Capitol rally and mentions the violent rhetoric; at the 30:30-31:30 mark, Akland calls it a Stop the Steal Rally and makes her comment that what she saw were people praying in the snow.
The image at the top of the post is from Hold the Line's invitation to the rally.
At the Star Tribune, Stephen Montemayor reported on January 7 in At State Capitol, several hundred Trump supporters decry certification:
They cheered and sang, and they talked about armed revolt. They posed for pictures and wore Colonial-era costumes, and they laughed when they found out a mob breached the U.S. Capitol Building.
The roughly 500 supporters of President Donald Trump who gathered outside Minnesota's fenced-off State Capitol on Wednesday mixed violent rhetoric with jubilation at a four-hour rally that later moved to the governor's residence amid chaos in Washington.
"Now you know why Trump wanted us there!" said Alley Waterbury, a local Republican Party leader from Woodbury who emceed the rally. "My God you guys, we are going to fight, we are going to go down, there's going to be casualties. I'll be the first casualty, I do not care."
Organizers from the group Hold The Line dubbed the event "Storm The Capitol," though they cautioned on Facebook that breaching the fence would result in arrests. Instead, they saved their energy for talk of armed revolution and charges of treason for those who stood in Trump's way. . . .
The video Dimock tweeted and posted on Facebook includes the Waterbury speech--and the speaker in the video at the beginning of the Strib article talks about civil war.
Akland has a very strange vision of what praying in the snow looks like, but we're not finding it in video of the speeches at the rally, whether one calls it the generic "Stop the Steal" or "Storm the Capitol."
And it' not as if people in the district aren't noticing Akland's answers to questions about election integrity. On Sunday, October 16, Brand tweeted an image with two letters-to-the-editor from local election judges:
Two local elections judges bravely called out @AklandSusan.
— Jeff Brand (@RepJeffBrand) October 16, 2022
Our neighbors know that you can't "both sides" January 6th. Seven people lost their lives due to the violent insurrection, including police officers.
It's time that we have leaders who will stand up to extremism. pic.twitter.com/qSd6ZoHGDB
It certainly does appear as if questions about election integrity are coming up in this contest, however the LeSueur County Republican Chair wants to distrust Mankato Free Press editorials. And Akland wants to pretend video of the Storm The Capitol rally doesn't exist.
How important is the race in Minnesota House District 18? At Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) Brian Bakst reports in Campaign for control of Legislature plays out in suburbs:
. . .The districts pivotal in determining control of the Minnesota Legislature are getting clearer by the week. While this November’s election will fill 201 seats, only a small fraction of them are actually competitive. . . .
. . .DFLers Brad Tabke of Shakopee and Jeff Brand of St. Peters are the others seeking political redemption following narrow 2020 losses; they’re in rematches with the Republicans who beat them, Erik Mortensen and Susan Akland respectively. . . .
Will Akland's conservative Christian fabulist tendencies matter?
Related posts:
- Can Le Sueur County GOP chair's reading of newspaper coverage of candidates be trusted?
- Unmasked, part 3: Minneapolis Star Tribune fills in Storm the Capitol context for Susan Akland
- Unmasked, part 2: letters condemning Akland's Storm the Capitol speech poured into Free Press,
- Unmasked: Susan Akland's non-apology apology about storming the Minnesota state capitol
- Correcting the timeline on a report about Stop The Steal; Akland constituents talk back
- Tim Miller emails House colleagues, staff to incorrectly argue masks aren’t effective
- Minnesota House sedition faction reply to Protest and Dissent letter, defend attack on state voters
- Emily Gruenhagen missed something about that Storm The Capitol rally in St. Paul
- Couldn't get to DC: Akland, Drazkowski, Franson, Gruenhagen and Lucero storm MN state capitol
- From the Journal of the House: Eight members protest & dissent those who signed Paxton letter
Image: The online poster for the Storm the Capitol rally organized by Hold the Line. According to Newsweek, "Becky Strohmeier, from Hold The Line, MN, helped organize . . . "Storm the Capitol" rally."
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