The Backstory on That Video Clip

Today I was contacted by Michael McIntee of TheUptake.org and Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed concerning my 42B video clip, now available on Youtube. Many viewing the clip don't quite know what to make of it. Here's my explanation:

I'm a blogger whose main focus has been the race for US Congress in Minnesota's Third Congressional District. So I spent months following the DFL congressional candidates around. I had open access to numerous candidate events during the DFL endorsement competition. I participate in the DFL Party.

As of April 12, we have our two major party candidates for US Congress in CD3. Erik Paulsen, the Republican candidate, is the longtime state rep for 42B, where I have lived for more than a decade. Ashwin Madia is the DFL candidate.

So I want to blog on the Madia-Paulsen race. Some time ago I started sending Erik Paulsen and his staff a daily email. At first I addressed substantive political issues--abortion and global warming, just to get a discussion started. But upon learning of Paulsen's total refusal to respond to my inquiries, I tried to author the most innocuous possible question--one that he couldn't imaginably refuse to answer: I would provide him my address and ask Paulsen Who is my state representative?

I've been sending him this question every day for three weeks now, and he hasn't replied once. Nor has his staff, all of whom are well aware of my emails.

To blog on this race, I need some access to each campaign. It simply does not [okay, shouldn't] interest me to engage in a six month soliloquy. I'm going to need to communicate with Team Paulsen. Trouble is, Erik Paulsen opposes the concept of dialogue among political adversaries, sad to say. So I'm trying to persuade him of the value of bipartisanship.

Erik Paulsen knows I'm a Democrat, so he and his staff refuse any contact with me. Paulsen is a veteran pol; he has made a cold calculation that a no contact policy toward the fearsome Gavin Sullivan is the safest bet.

I think Paulsen has made a silly miscalculation. If this were 2000, Paulsen could likely get away with his stonewalling policy. But social networking has advanced mightily since then; I am now trying to apply pressure upon Paulsen to engage in dialogue and explain his views--to participate in democracy, in other words.

Paulsen almost never appears in public; he makes it extremely difficult for any critic to engage in dialogue with him. The night before last a friend reminded me that the 42B GOP was holding its endorsing convention at Eden Prairie Senior High School, so I went there. At the credentialing table on the way in, I explained that I was a blogger and wanted to observe the convention, and was--somewhat to my surprise--allowed in. No particular rules were brought to my attention; I had every intention of behaving politely and believe that I did, given the circumstances.

During a break at the 42B Convention, when people were socializing, I confronted Paulsen on the convention floor, shaking his hand and saying hello. I then asked him when I could expect a reply to my emails. He was aware of my emails, he said, but he won't reply because they are insincere. And he turned away just as a number of Republicans shepherded me off of the convention floor.

After that, I looked for an opportunity to confront Paulsen again, were he to walk off of the convention floor. (Were your state representative so astoundingly arrogant he refused to answer when you asked him--every day for three weeks--'Who is my state representative?' I believe you'd have every right to be pissed off.)(So I had a right to pretend to be pissed off.) Unfortunately, the mouse was quite aware of the cat in the building, so I couldn't find an easy opportunity to give Paulsen an earful. Late in the convention, however, an idea occurred to me: Use the video-capture feature on my trusty Panasonic Lumix to film myself standing in front of Paulsen, informing viewers that Paulsen is so unbelievably arrogant he refuses to respond when a constituent asks him Who is my state representative?

So Paulsen was thinking he could stonewall me into non-existence and I was thinking I could embarrass him into engaging in democratic dialogue.

Angie Erhard, a well-known local Republican, saw me expressing an idea she wanted to stamp out, so she lunged for my camera, clutching it. I grabbed it back from her and then tried to continue filming while being shoved toward the door by sergeant-at-arms Jim Nelson.

It seems odd that the Republicans threw me out of their convention because they didn't like an idea I was expressing to my own camera, off of the convention floor, without disrupting the proceedings in any way.

Had Michael Brodkorb at the CD3 DFL Convention on April 12 pointed his own camera at himself and said, 'Ashwin Madia is a rat fink' or somesuch, do you really think DFLers would have lunged for his camera and pushed him out the door? It would seem a bit childish, no?