Cool art in the Minnesota House chamber (www.mnhs.org).
by Dan Burns
Nov 1, 2022, 12:00 PM

Just repugnant Party of Trump candidates, all the way down, Part 2

Minnesota GOP candidates, including some incumbents, have been spouting off in pretty vile ways.

Heartland Signal has a story about how current House members running for reelection John Heinrich (R-Anoka) and Don Raleigh (R-Circle Pines), as well as Party of Trump candidates Aaron Henning (St. Cloud) and Stephen Lowell (Eagan), have been responsible for some pretty crude police and/or military-bashing. Incidentally, Heinrich’s race is very competitive, and his DFL opponent is Zack Stephenson.

And there’s this:

A Republican candidate in a newly drawn House district encouraged people to fly the Confederate flag, questioned President Obama’s birthplace as recently as 2019 and called Islam “a plague.”

Stephen Doerr is running against Rep. Gene Pelowski, DLF-Winona, in House District 26A. Pelowski was first elected in 1986 and has often sailed to reelection, but the newly drawn district is solidly purple.
(Minnesota Reformer)

And this (Hudson lives in Albertville):

Walter Hudson, a Republican-endorsed state representative candidate running for a seat in House District 30A, has called for people who travel to other states for abortions to be arrested for murder, and companies that help them to be charged with aiding and abetting.

In a tweet (in late June), Hudson wrote: “The obvious solution is arrest for murder upon return, and arrest of executives for aiding and abetting.” His remark was in response to a graphic showing numerous companies that have pledged to help finance employee travel for abortion.
(Bring Me The News)

Theses are just the handful I’ve happened to run across. There are likely plenty more, especially in districts well out in the “boonies.”

It hasn’t always been like this. There was a long time when many Republicans in office were not unreasonable people. Lots of small-town lawyers and the like. It was more or less taken for granted that you didn’t run for office, in either party, unless you had some sort of reality-based understanding of things. But then came President Reagan. Many decided that if a washed-up actor, spouting simplistic drivel about “real American values” and “trickle-down,” could get into the White House, they could sure get into their state legislatures, and for that matter the U.S. Congress, and indulge their own fantasies of power and adulation. Which they have, and that’s been good for very few of us.

The parallels, in terms of conservative candidate quality, with “President” Trump are readily apparent. Hopefully we won’t have to live with this for decades, too.

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