The 2015 Session isn’t even finished and the political fliers are already arriving in homes in House District 51A. The three I have seen were sent be Minnesota Jobs Coalition. This is the organization that flooded the district last year with their distorted and disturbing literature. The fliers this year are about actions that I might take, not that I have taken. How weird is that? Usually if you saw someone with a camera at my Town Hall Meetings or parades, that was their tracker. The House Republicans were obviously impressed with the work of this organization because they hired the former leader of the Jobs Coalition to be executive director of the House Republican Caucus this year. Interesting article about this on front page of the Star Tribune on May 5th.
The main problem is that this group doesn’t fall under Campaign Finance regulations and is not even required to list their contributors. So they are able to get their publicity out and not have the restrictions that officials and others who do report to Campaign Finance have to follow. Representative Winkler has offered a bill to correct this, but the Republican Majority has blocked this each time.
The House Republican Majority is also supporting legislation that will entirely do away with restrictions on contributions. This is about big money impacting our government and elections. A danger to our democratic form of government.