GOP Senate Minority Leader Dave Senjem and Sen. Chris Gerlach (GER'-lahk) said they were uncomfortable with Ritchie overseeing a Jan. 3 special Senate election while the secretary is being investigated by the legislative auditor for alleged use of a state mailing list for political purposes."
– Associated Press
This paragraph from a GOP-press-release-driven nonstory summarizes why I've resisted getting embroiled in the flap over Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's "alleged use of a state mailing list for political purposes."
It's a neat, dark little phrase, with the word choice of "state" versus "public" to describe the list and "political purposes" instead of "a campaign-related mailing."
But the only news apparently is that two partisan Republicans are "uncomfortable" with Ritchie doing his actual job. That is, his job supervising an election called by the Governor at a time that I'd allege was chosen to reduce college student involvement in the campaign.
Of course they're uncomfortable about anything that might broaden voter turnout in the district. But this is really about the election coming up in November 2008. Republicans want Ritchie out in time for a caretaker to exert the desired vote-suppressing effect across the state. Or at least to hamstring him sufficiently.
I first saw this manufactured little nugget quoted by Michael Brodkorb, the GOP functionary and oppo-research blogger. You can see here in microcosm how it works. Ron Carey and the party boys gin up a slight variation on a theme introduced by Bordkorb. Brodkorb repeats it. He scours the web for someone, any one (in this case, the Brainerd Dispatch), careless enough to fill space with the non-news. He repeats the citation in another post.
Someone says bullshit. He says, LIBERALS IN DENIAL ABOUT RITCHIE. Or we say, this is bullshit, but we're not happy with how Ritchie dealt with it, Brodkorb writes, DFLERS UNHAPPY WITH RITCHIE. Or we try to avoid feeding him by ignoring him, and the headline becomes LIBERAL BLOGOSPHERE SILENT ON UNETHICAL SECRETARY OF STATE.
Pundits, not willing to miss an opportunity to pontificate, jump on it. Defenders and critics react to the restatement of the charges and to each other. Little side skirmishes start up.
What starts as a scrap of potato peel mounts into a pile of festering garbage. RITCHIE MESS: A PILE OF FESTERING GARBAGE, ADMITS DEM INSIDER!! With so many people pointing at the pile, someone decides to write a new story about it, and the cycle repeats.
My mission is usually to puncture sanctimonious posturing, not encourage it by giving more pixel time, but that's the trap Brodkorb sets. I finally fell for it.
Ritchie apparently committed a minor technical violation by passing on a public list to his campaign instead of simply saying to them, why don't you add those people to our list? Then he compounded the mistake by treating it as a minor technical violation and trying to explain it (poorly) instead of simply admitting it. GROWING CONSENSUS: RITCHIE VIOLATION COMPOUNDED.
Ritchie's office supervises elections, not campaigns or fundraising. The discomfort of his opponents is not about his inability to do that job but that he would do it well.
