No, Democratic Journalist Heidelberger Doesn’t Support Milbrandt. Or Kaiser.

Good grief—no matter who wins, I’m going to get a speeding ticket.

According to Dakota War College, a PAC organized by Rapid City conservative Jordan Mason has misrepresented my blogging to claim that I support Mark Milbrandt’s bid for reëlection as Brown County sheriff. This false claim went out as part of a postcard evidently trying to persuade Republican primary voters to back Republican Rep. Dan Kaiser instead. Let’s debunk this claim right now.

Mason quotes from my November 28, 2017, blog post explaining Democratic city councilman Mark Remily’s very public switch in voter registration to Republican. Here’s the full quote from which Mason pulls nine words (and misattributes to me a misspelling of Milbrandt’s name… after misspelling my name in his photo caption—good grief, Jordan! Can you not do anything right?):

But Remily is sending a sensible signal to local Democrats that, if we don’t see some surprise candidate jump in to primary either our practical gubernatorial candidate Billie Sutton or our economically astute U.S. House candidate Tim Bjorkman, we all might want to consider helping him support incumbent Sheriff Milbrandt against his strongly tea-party-flavored contender. (And then we Democrats need to give Remily good reason to flip back to the right party by winning some races in November!) [CAH, “Remily Jumps Party Ship to Support Milbrandt in GOP Primary,” Dakota Free Press, 2017.11.28]

Might? Consider? That’s all you’ve got, Jordan?

In this November blog post, I refer to the signal Mark Remily is sending. I acknowledge the rationale Remily and other Democrats could offer for supporting Milbrandt over strongly conservative Kaiser. I do not declare my support for Milbrandt.

Since that post, I have not switched my registration to Republican, and I will not participate in the Republican primary.

I find Dan Kaiser’s embrace of Trumpist anti-immigrant propaganda morally offensive and unacceptable for a public official. I find Mark Milbrandt’s shielding of sexual harassment and participation in retaliatory discrimination against a victim of sexual harassment morally offensive and unacceptable for a public official. Whether we’re talking racism or sexism, both Milbrandt and Kaiser have given cause to believe that they are not capable of enforcing the law fairly on behalf of all segments of their populations.

I thus have no candidate to support in this race.

For the record, on May 11, I wrote an analysis of the May 9 candidate’s forum concluding that Milbrandt beat Kaiser at that particular event. Milbrandt proudly touted that analysis on his campaign Facebook page. However, in a May 14 post drawing a tongue-in-cheek line from Milbrandt’s schmoozing with Marty Jackley to Trumpism, I asked, with a hyperlink back to the Remily-switch story, “Jeepers—why would any Democrat switch registration to vote for Milbrandt or Kaiser to be sheriff?”

Perhaps Mason’s mailer had to go to print and sort prior to my more recent and detailed coverage of the sheriff’s race. But Mason clearly ignores my April 26 post in which I questioned Milbrandt’s professed commitment to taking accusations of sexual assault seriously. Instead of misrepresenting me as a Milbrandt supporter, Mason and other Kaiser supporters could make a more honest case against Milbrandt by using my actual statements and analysis of the sheriff’s race.