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BEMIDJI PIONEER EDITORIAL BLASTS SECRETARY OF STATE RITCHIE
By Michael B. Brodkorb | November 28, 2007
"When Mark Ritchie campaigned for Minnesota secretary of state last year, he pushed hard that the office, as the state’s No. 1 watchdog over fair and impartial elections, should be non-partisan. He alleged that under then-incumbent Mary Kiffmeyer, it hadn’t. In some regards, Kiffmeyer, a Republican, did run the office as a partisan way in that she embraced conservative ideals of going to extremes to prevent voter fraud where none previously was found, and sought to mandate voter ID at the polls such a photo driver’s license.
There would be none of that, Ritchie, a Democrat, pledged. The office would be non-partisan with the goal of making it as easy as possible for people who are eligible to vote to register and vote, removing as many barriers as possible. While Kiffmeyer was the Republican secretary of state, Ritchie would not be the DFL secretary of state, he promised.
The credibility of those words are now in question as Mr. Ritchie has done just what he said he wouldn’t — politicize the office. At issue is a list of names of people who attended a secretary of state-sponsored non-partisan seminar on civic involvement which somehow ended up in the hands of Ritchie’s campaign, which sent them all a newsletter which included a campaign donation request." Source: Bemidji Pioneer, November 28, 2007
Click here for the complete editorial.
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"But troubling is the ongoing investiga-tion by the legislative auditor into the affair, who announced this week he may seek sworn testimony from Ritchie and his staff after receiving 'unreliable' information and that the legislative auditor 'cannot confirm the veracity of the statements' from Ritchie and his staff. First, Ritchie denied knowing how the list got to his campaign. Then, last week he acknowledged to a Twin Cities newspaper that he personally transferred the list from his state office to his campaign organization.
If that is so, Mr. Ritchie has undercut his pledge of running a non-partisan operation and his promise to separate his Democratic politics from his over-seeing and management of state elec-tions. Again, if that is so, Mr. Ritchie owes the Minnesota public a meaning-ful and sincere apology for abusing the privileges of his public office." Source: Bemidji Pioneer, November 28, 2007
Click here for the complete editorial.
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5 Responses to “BEMIDJI PIONEER EDITORIAL BLASTS SECRETARY OF STATE RITCHIE”
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November 28th, 2007 at 7:32 AM
Another damning editorial from a greater Minnesota newspaper. If Ritchie makes it through this scandal and has the gall to run for re-election, these types of editorials will be killers for him. People in these commmunities (Bemidji, Marshall, etc) always read their local papers and it’s usually their first source for news. The fact that these papers are lambasting Ritchie is very bad news for him.
Let’s see what happens when Jim Nobles starts to slap Ritchie around a bit — then they’ll really go after him for his unethical (possibly illegal) behavior.
Keep up the great work, MDE.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:34 AM
You missed this section…
“Republican Party officials have asked Ritchie to resign, a far too drastic meas-ure that is basically a knee-jerk reaction and even perhaps political payback for the rough time Ritchie gave Kiffmeyer.”
November 28th, 2007 at 9:02 AM
It’s not just Greater MN newspapers. From the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
A problematic mix of business and ambition
E-mail addresses are about as private as the shape of your nose. But unlike your very public proboscis, e-mail addresses can attract attention from afar, as with those fellows from Nigeria who need only your credit card number to unlock kabillions from a vault in Lagos.
Which may be why we are less than shocked that an e-mail list put together by the office of Minnesota’s secretary of state, originally intended to promote civic engagement, wound up being used by the sec-of-state’s campaign, and extended to the solicitation of campaign contributions.
Less than shocked, but also less than pleased. Minnesota’s secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, is our chief elections officer. If there is a Bush-v.-Gore-type train wreck here, our fragile democracy may depend on Ritchie’s perceived impartiality. This does not help that perception.
Ritchie is a Democratic-Farmer-Labor party member who defeated the incumbent Republican, Mary Kiffmeyer, last November. He is a liberal activist in the mold of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and strikes us as a smart and committed fellow. Some say he has a big political upside, which may be partly why he is in the fix he is in.
Ritchie hosted a meeting in April of members of a variety of interest groups, hoping to form a state council on civic engagement. Participants received follow-up e-mails, and a directory was created of the participants. In October, two Republican activists who had attended the meeting received what they called a “dear friend” letter from Ritchie’s campaign.
It invited them to a Ritchie fundraiser and said they could donate to his campaign on-line. (Nigerian riches were not mentioned.) The activists raised heck. They complained to Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles, who is now on the case.
Ritchie was asked about the co-mingled lists by a reporter for the Star-Tribune. The reporter quoted him saying initially that the civic engagement list was public information, available to anyone; and later saying he had given the list to his campaign. Both could be true. But it creates an impression that he wasn’t forthcoming.
Nobles said this week he finds this discrepancy in the two answers “disturbing” and that he will likely take further testimony from Ritchie’s office under oath. Ritchie’s office issued a statement this week saying he “takes this matter very seriously” and “welcomes the extra attention being given by the legislative auditor.” We do, too.
We had no beef with Kiffmeyer over the quality of Minnesota’s elections, but Ritchie certainly did. We endorsed him and said in this space that we will “hold Ritchie accountable to his promise to run his office as a ‘nonpartisan.’ ” This e-mail co-mingling appears to be different from what he promised. It smacks of an old Capitol trick of blurring the line between politicking and governing.
Ritchie is not the first to straddle this line and won’t be the last. But this job, considering its role in mediating election disputes, should be one where scrupulous fairness and avoidance of partisan hackery are paramount. We could imagine a world where chief election officials are not partisan activists, but for now, the best we can hope for is a professional, low-volume partisan.
After the 2000 presidential election, the pressure of deciding who won Florida fell to Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who had been co-chair of George W. Bush’s campaign in the state. In 2004, attention shifted to the swing state of Ohio, where Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was a Republican who had served as honorary chair of President Bush’s re-election campaign. We’re not going to re-fight those battles except to say that election officials who are overtly partisan are asking for trouble.
So are those who are less than truthful.
We don’t know all the facts in Mark Ritchie’s e-mail list dust-up. We do know that robust, loud, hard-fought and fair elections are critical to our democracy. We know that in the heat of the contest, the secretary of state is the closest thing Minnesota has to a referee, and that the referee’s independence is far more important than his political upside.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:13 AM
Kiffmeyer did well to invite MB as a witness when she gave Ritchie a briefing as she exited.
Ritchie can not be trusted with the proceeds of a garage sale let alone our elections.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:18 AM
If the list in question is “Public information” why not release it to MDE, the Pioneer Press, The Star-Tribune, and your political opponents?