What’s in a Name?

Back in March 2012, Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Jon Tevlin wrote a piece under the headline “Think politics can't sink lower? Well, www.thinkagain ...”

Tevlin opens his piece with this bit of hyperbole,

I think all of us, regardless of political orientation, can agree that it can't possibly get any worse in politics, that the level of crass, petty sniping has finally driven our opinion of the people who represent us to the ultimate bottom.

Pregnant pause for dramatic effect.

Well, get a load of this.

By this point I’m sure you are wondering what fresh outrage finally drove state politics to the ninth circle of hell.  It turns out that a few Republicans purchased web site names that sounded like they belonged to Democrats.

Yes, the most unforgiveable crime in politics, the one dirty trick that cannot be forgiven, the act that will have you tossed into the fiery furnace for eternity is…cyber squatting.

Today we engaged in a little kerfuffle on Twitter when it came out that Carrie Lucking—the Executive Director of the Democrat-front-group Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM)—was the proud owner of the domain name MaryFranson.com.  Ms. Franson, of course, is a Minnesota state representative from the Alexandria area.  A Republican, Rep. Franson won the closest election for state representative of the 134 contests in 2012.

My own detective work uncovered that among the 69 web addresses purchased by Ms. Lucking through ABM is the web name JeffJohnsonforgovernor.com (and .org for good measure).  Of course, Commissioner Johnson is currently running for Governor of Minnesota under the nom de internet of johnsonforgovernor.org (no “Jeff”).

What’s most remarkable about this affair is the timing.  Tevlin’s column is dated March 6, 2012, and ABM purchased the Franson web name on March 5^th of that year, the previous day.  Of course Tevlin cited only Republican wrongdoing in his column.

The double standard at work barely warrants a mention anymore.  Of course we know that all Republican wrongdoing is always of the worst possible kind and Democrat wrongdoing never occurs.

But, here we are in 2014 and the Executive Director of the Democrats’ most important organization owns more than five dozen web names.  What will she do with them?  And who among our state’s political reporting corps will dare to ask that question?