To drive people to the polls

October 16, 2012 11:53 AM

Who is voting against MN's same sex marrage ban being enshrined in the MN constitution? Michael Brodkorb: Broadkorb, a former top strategist for the Minnesota Republican party before losing his job because of an affair with Senate Majority leader Amy Koch says he plans on voting against the amendment even though he helped craft it. The gag order in his case claiming wrongful termination was recently removed allowing him to "clear the air". perhaps the biggest charge that he lays so far is the amendments where strictly a ploy to drive voter turnout:

“The belief was, the United States senate race was not going to be close, and that Republicans needed and social conservatives needed a reason to get to the polls in November,

posted by edgeways (43 comments total)

Sorry.. amendments refer to not only the SSM amendment but the voter ID one as well.
posted by edgeways at 11:54 AM on October 16, 2012

But Brodkorb — once a powerful Republican insider — says a big reason it’s on the ballot isn’t family values. Top Republicans needed a way to get conservatives off the couch and into the voting booth.

There's nothing particularly new here.

Denying others the right to have a family is not a family value.
posted by schmod at 11:57 AM on October 16, 2012 [10 favorites]

I don't know what's sadder, that Brodkorb thinks this is some kind of amazing secret revelation hidden from the masses or that it worked.
posted by fshgrl at 11:59 AM on October 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I loathe Brodkorb so thoroughly that, when this broke today, I actually experienced a split second of feeling guilty about voting no, just because it means I agree with him on something.
posted by COBRA! at 12:01 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

MN United has made a ton of progress in the polls, but we are running out of time and the negative commercials haven't even begun yet. Please donate or sign up to volunteer. We REALLY need more volunteers.
posted by Think_Long at 12:02 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also - too scared to volunteer? Memail me your phone number, I will call you and drag your ass to a phone bank.
posted by Think_Long at 12:03 PM on October 16, 2012

I don't know what's sadder, that Brodkorb thinks this is some kind of amazing secret revelation hidden from the masses or that it worked.

To the extent this revelation is clear to the left, it's important to hear someone high up in pushing right-wing extremism admit it publicly.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:04 PM on October 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

And, I'm assuming, he was just implicated in some sort of gay airport prostitution ring scandal?
posted by Behemoth at 12:05 PM on October 16, 2012

What a scumbag. He helps develop the campaign to make same-sex marriage more illegal, but then because he has sour grapes about his affair and being fired, he decides that he's suddenly going to "stick it" to the GOP by changing his vote? Meanwhile, the rights of thousands of people hang in the balance thanks largely to his own efforts. He obviously doesn't care one whit about the outcome of the vote, it's all just some big joke to him. This is the worst kind of person to have in politics. Which, I assume, is why he was a republican staffer in the first place. Die in a fire, Michael Brodkorb.
posted by Demogorgon at 12:15 PM on October 16, 2012 [16 favorites]

And, I'm assuming, he was just implicated in some sort of gay airport prostitution ring scandal?

Nope, just your average heterosexing of a married lady. Somewhat interesting in that the married lady was his boss, not his subordinate like you'd expect.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:18 PM on October 16, 2012

Wholly speculation if he'd go this far, but this is also the fellow who knows where a lot of bones are buried, who is sleeping with whom. there was a minor panic about it all last year when he started making noises about it.
posted by edgeways at 12:19 PM on October 16, 2012

Brodkorb got his position in the state Party by carefully cultivating a reputation as a mad-dog scruple-free PR attack machine. His specialty is peddling embarrassing rumors about political enemies and digging up anything that can be manipulated into looking like dirt. It was a terrible strategic blunder on the part of the Republican state House leadership to fire him and not provide him a new job. You can't let a dog like that off his leash and not expect him to turn on you.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 12:41 PM on October 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

he decides that he's suddenly going to "stick it" to the GOP by changing his vote

Changing his vote isn't really sticking it to anyone, considering this is a ballot measure. He's one vote in millions, so this is just a symbolic thing. Not that he isn't a jackass, but how he votes is really of no concern. What he did to craft the legislation was 1 million times more destructive than how he votes.

Using wedge issues to draw out the republican base is not exactly a new tactic. They'd be screwed at every level of government without them. The marriage amendment isn't the only one either, we've got a voter ID amendment on the ballot too here. These aren't real issues, they are political strategies, and it's ugly, disgusting, and absolutely typical.

In other words, everything I expect from the GOP.
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:46 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

It was a terrible strategic blunder on the part of the Republican state House leadership to fire him and not provide him a new job.

It was a terrible strategic blunder for them to ever hire the sleazy motherfucker in any official capacity. As a adjunct attack dog, he was useful to them. The second they put him on an official payroll, they were rolling barrels of nitroglycerine into their basement.
posted by COBRA! at 12:48 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Changing his vote isn't really sticking it to anyone, considering this is a ballot measure. He's one vote in millions, so this is just a symbolic thing. Not that he isn't a jackass, but how he votes is really of no concern. What he did to craft the legislation was 1 million times more destructive than how he votes.

Oh, I totally get that. My point is exactly what you stated; what good is his vote after all the destruction he's wrought?

"Keep your shitty vote dude, we don't want you either."
posted by Demogorgon at 12:53 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think that when you add up the math for the GOP, it’s a lot easier to win” if the evangelicals and socially motivated conservatives turn out to vote, but both sides need gay marriage to be an issue to get out the vote in Minnesota.

Local Democrats need a motivator to turn out MN voters in November, because Democrats are saddled with a turkey of a President, a Senate with approval ratings lower than Bin Laden, a slew of Congressional seats at risk, and by recent two-chamber flips in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The DFL and Democrats need to be able to wave the shirt of “bigotry” at its sympathetic constituents to ensure voter turnout.
posted by lstanley at 12:58 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hmmm: "Michael Brodkorb lost his job after admitting an affair with then Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, and he’s now taking legal action for what he says was an improper firing." How's he rate on Minnesota's right to work amendment?
posted by boo_radley at 1:13 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

a Senate Republican Congress with approval ratings lower than Bin Laden

Not that you care.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 1:14 PM on October 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

FWIW, one slim chance the amendment has of failing is that any non vote counts as a no vote, so the amendment couldn't pass, for example, if the final tally was 49% voting for it and 45% voting against it and 6% not voting at all for/against. There actively has to be 50+% people to actually mark their ballots yes.
posted by edgeways at 1:19 PM on October 16, 2012

This could turn out to be an excellent DFL year in Minnesota--Obama at the top of the ticket is leading here easily, Sen. Klobuchar could win with the winningest margin of any senator up for election this year, and no DFL members of congress are expected to lose.

The 8th district seat is a tossup could be taken back, and there's an outside chance that the 6th district seat could flip to the DFL as well (yes, that's Bachmann's seat, and I'm still saying this despite the Channel 5 poll over the last couple of days).

The DFL also stands a chance of taking back both houses of the state legislature.

Meanwhile, the local Republicans are in disarray and chased by scandal, Bachmann is having to fight for her seat, and for the first time Kline in the 2nd district is having to compete for his. The races that bigger-name Republicans are waiting to run for aren't even this year: they're laying low and waiting to run against Gov. Dayton and Sen. Franken in 2014.

Overall, I'm cautiously optimistic that with hindsight, the Republicans will find that putting the amendments on the ballot this year was a huge tactical mistake on their part.
posted by gimonca at 1:29 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

IIRC one of Brodkorb's contentions when being fired was he knew of several women staffers who engaged in affairs, but rather then getting fired when found out got reassigned. So... there is that potential powder keg right prior to the election.

And generally I don't give a shit about that sort of thing other than it's is pretty blatant hypocrisy for "family values" crusaders... but you know... this particular MN congress under the GOP leadership really really needs to get kicked in the metaphorical teeth, even if it is as a result of things I generally couldn't care less. As longs as it is legal and truthful I don't give a rat's ass what is used against them this time around.
posted by edgeways at 1:29 PM on October 16, 2012

(With Pawlenty out of it for 2014 the MN GOP as of now do not have a top tier candidate to run against Franken)
posted by edgeways at 1:31 PM on October 16, 2012

The only way Brodkorb could expiate himself would be to go on every talk radio show, Fox News program, and general media outlet and proclaim loudly and firmly that the whole Republican push to outlaw same-sex marriage was purely a GOP get-out-the-vote ploy and to institutionalize voter ID was purely a Democratic voter suppression ploy. He might earn some forgiveness from me if both measures fail resoundingly after that.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:34 PM on October 16, 2012

FWIW, one slim chance the amendment has of failing is that any non vote counts as a no vote...

Wish we could count those who don't show up at the polls as a no vote.

This suggests that a good opposition strategy is to tell people that if they oppose mangling the constitution with this parochial political ploys, they should vote no. If they're not sure about the amendments and what they imply, they should leave the vote blank. If people feel they have to make a choice, they will go with what their gut tells them.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:37 PM on October 16, 2012

Local Democrats need a motivator to turn out MN voters in November, because Democrats are saddled with a turkey of a President, a Senate with approval ratings lower than Bin Laden, a slew of Congressional seats at risk, and by recent two-chamber flips in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The DFL and Democrats need to be able to wave the shirt of “bigotry” at its sympathetic constituents to ensure voter turnout.

This is a flawed analysis. President Obama is relatively popular in Minnesota. The state is not considered a toss-up by any serious analyst. As for the US Senate, the only Senator up for re-election in Minnesota is Amy Klobuchar. She's the the most popular politician in Minnesota. No serious Republican candidate was willing to run against her. She doesn't need a referendum on the ballot to win. What are the congressional seats at risk? I can only think of Tim Walz's seat, and I can't see that having gay marriage on the ballot is going to help him in Southern Minnesota. Fortunately, bad candidate selection from the republicans looks like it might save him. The only thing I agree with you on is that the state house and senate could be in play.

More fundamentally, however, your account misses the fact that it was the Republicans, not the DFL who put the referenda on the ballot. The DFL fought both of them every step of the way. As for the bigotry, it is real. Just look at Bachman and Quist.

(For non-Minnesota folks, the DFL is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. It is the local version of the Democractic party. The Farmer-Labor Party and the Minnesota Democractic Party merged in the 1940s.)
posted by Area Man at 1:39 PM on October 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

That's good to know. I was thinking "Dallas/ Ft. Lorth" which was jarring.
posted by boo_radley at 1:42 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

On a brighter note, you can bid to win a dinner with MN Viking Chris Kluwe with proceeds going to fight the amendment.
posted by Muddler at 1:59 PM on October 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

(For non-Minnesota folks, the DFL is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. It is the local version of the Democractic party. The Farmer-Labor Party and the Minnesota Democractic Party merged in the 1940s.)

Yeah, I was thinking Dems4Life or something.
posted by nushustu at 3:05 PM on October 16, 2012

Yes, Ft. Lorth, the oft-overlooked younger sibling to Minneapolis and St. Paul. Ft. Lorthians insist that this metro area should be called the Triplet Cities, but ignore those poor dumb bastards. Ft. Lorth, home of the Dehydrated Lucy. St. Paul was originally named Pig's Eye and Ft. Lorth was Sheep's Anus; some of us still call it that.
posted by Area Man at 3:13 PM on October 16, 2012 [6 favorites]

the negative commercials haven't even begun yet.

'Vote yes' ads were running on NBC in Minneapolis Saturday night. I was muting the commercials, but I didn't see a 'no' ad Saturday. Saw a few a couple of weeks back.
posted by hoyland at 3:15 PM on October 16, 2012

I've been told that the really nasty ads are expected this week or early next week. We'll be told to worry about our children.
posted by Area Man at 3:17 PM on October 16, 2012

I saw both vote yes and vote no ads on Saturday night (Thursday and Friday too) - maybe even during the same commercial break (can't remember for sure) but definitely during the same program.
posted by nickmark at 3:26 PM on October 16, 2012

David Foster Lorax?

A post modern Dr. Seuss character?
posted by bumpkin at 3:26 PM on October 16, 2012

The same thing happened in Ohio years ago.
posted by sciurus at 3:51 PM on October 16, 2012

The vote no ads on the anti-marriage amendment have been many, and they've been running for at least a couple of months. I've only seen vote yes ads in the last couple of weeks.

All the ads have been very soft-spoken so far, nobody's gone negative in a TV spot. Yet.

The vote yes ads have been....weird. "Protect the right of the voters to decide....by taking away the ability to ever decide this again." No idea what the thought process was behind them.

You can never rule out ugliness in TV spots like this (we had a spate of dead fetuses a few weeks ago), but so far both sides seem to be taking the approach of not scaring any potential voters away. Again, that could change.
posted by gimonca at 4:14 PM on October 16, 2012

I see vote yes ads on TV all the time (no comment on how much time I spend in front of the TV) and this week I saw a vote yes billboard in fucking Uptown of all places. I am so happy that the SSM amendment getting so much coverage but really discouraged by the relative lack of publicity for the Voter ID one. Every time I see comments on facebook about this, it's a lot of people saying stuff like - what's the big deal about showing an ID? The voter ID seems to make intuitive sense on the surface if you don't delve any deeper, and a hell of a lot of people - I might even say a majority - don't delve any deeper and are really unaware of the implications of it. Support for a Voter ID amendment seems to be narrowing, but it's still not a for sure thing by any means. I really hope we start to see some targeted ads on this like the marriage amendment folks have been doing to educate voters. Minnesota Nice votes "No" TWICE.
posted by triggerfinger at 4:16 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, he's a total freakazoid, but he's my freakazoid. Jesse weighs in on the issue.
posted by gimonca at 4:22 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Jesse really went off the deep end after his term as governor. I've met him and he's really...intense. I've met Terry too and she's delightful. I'm not at all surprised that they support gay marriage.

It seems like the people who want to defeat the measure have been more vocal about for a lot longer (at least based on the yard signs I've seen around my neighborhood) so I'm hopeful that it won't pass.

I still feel like the fact that it made it this far is a huge loss. We're wasting tons of resources (on both sides) on something that, even if it passes, will end up getting overturned by federal law or the supreme court.

My only hope is that, as a voter turnout ploy, it backfires and ends up driving voter turn-out for progressives instead.
posted by VTX at 5:40 PM on October 16, 2012

Oh, once deeply blue state of MN. Land of Humphrey, Mondale, Wellstone. Have you even started to realize how very, very far you've sunk?

Somwhere in the dark woods there's a hidden GOP hunting lodge with the severed heads of once-bright MN and WI mounted on the trophy wall.
posted by Twang at 5:32 AM on October 17, 2012

There are plenty of us working to make the state more liberal and progressive. We've had some success again in the last few years, but taunts like that don't actually help. Nor is the electorate sympathetic to the idea that the DFL deserves their votes because this is Minnesota and everyone knows it is supposed to be liberal. They tried a lot of that sort of rhetoric in Wisconsin over the last two years and it hasn't gotten them anywhere. We actually have to convince people that our ideas and candidates are better; if we provide only an appeal to history and a contempt for Republicans, we will lose.
posted by Area Man at 6:18 AM on October 17, 2012

Seimone Augustus, WNBA star, speaks out for gay marriage. The Minnesota Lynx forward is engaged to LaTaya Varner; they plan to marry in 2013. Wouldn't it be nice if they could tie the knot in Minnesota?
posted by Carol Anne at 6:26 AM on October 17, 2012

The Minnesota Lynx forward is engaged to LaTaya Varner; they plan to marry in 2013. Wouldn't it be nice if they could tie the knot in Minnesota?

Not going to happen, short of some sort of judicial miracle (via Prop 8, I guess). Even if the marriage amendment fails, it's sapped all the resources from the 'legislative strategy' or whatever we were calling it and it's not like that was close to bearing fruition anyway.
posted by hoyland at 6:32 AM on October 17, 2012

The legislative strategy will take time, but is the only strategy in Minnesota that will get us anywhere (I agree that there is some chance of a win on the Federal level). We went 20 years without a DFL governor appointing a Justice to the Minnesota Supreme Court, so we aren't going to get a success in state court like in Iowa or Massachusetts.
posted by Area Man at 6:42 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]