With all the vitriol that the right wingers have gone after Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, you'd have thought he was responsible for the I-35W bridge falling down. With help from a stenographer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Mark Brunswick), Michael Brodkorb (the right wing's MN schlockmeister) was able to breathelessly push a story with as much weight as Paris Hilton's analysis of the Minnesota Senate race. Yesterday, the Minnesota Legislative Auditor, Jim Noble, released a report that exonerated Ritchie (it's a PDF).

Here's the essentials of this controversy. Mark Ritchie obtained emails that were publicly available. His campaign sent an email to the addresses he'd obtained. Two of these people were right wingers Mark Giga and John Tomczak. They are friends of Michael Brodkorb. Brodkorb ran with this story. The MN Legislative Auditor investigated and said Ritchie did nothing wrong.

There are two main aspects of this controversy that have significant background. First is the right wingers hate for Mark Ritchie. Second, is Minneapolis Star Tribune's Mark Brunswick's stenographic tendencies.

Why right wingers hate Ritchie

Republicans understand how important it is to control the Secretary of State's (SoS) office. In Ohio, the Republican SoS gave Diebold (a major Republican donor) the contract for touch screen voting machines. He granted the contract for these voting machines despite the ease with which they could be hacked and despite the fact that they provided no verifiable paper trail. He appointed reliable neocon conservatives to county level election positions who then made sure that there weren't enough voting machines in inner city precincts which happen to vote overwhelmingly Democratic and plenty in suburban, Republican precincts.

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.
(Rolling Stone: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?)

The SoS establishes the playing field. Republicans do not want high turnouts on election day. When turnout is high, Democrats win. The MN right wingers understand that if they hold the SoS, they can give themselves an advantage.

Mary Kiffmeyer had taken measures to reduce turnout among solid Democratic demographics. She had worked to disenfranchise Native American voters by preventing as she could from voting.

Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver’s licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes’ photo IDs.
(Common Dreams)

She did her best to remove voters from the voting rolls from highly Democratic areas in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

During the contentious 2004 presidential campaign, Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer drew attention for an array of dubious election manuevers. She asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Hennepin and Ramsey counties, alleging that election officials in those jurisdictions were using illegal voter registration forms. The DOJ said the forms were fine. The officeholder, who was first elected in 1998, also sought to knock a slate of Independence Party candidates off the ballot for failing to follow election laws. That action also failed when the Minnesota Supreme Court reinstated the candidates.
(City Pages)

Then there was the terrorist posters she wanted posted at every polling location.

But perhaps the strangest episode from the 2004 election season was when Kiffmeyer sent out terrorist alert posters to polling places across the state warning voters to be on the lookout for men wearing perfume and muttering to themselves. Local election officials, for the most part, refused to hang the posters. The secretary of state's peculiar behavior led Democratic Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, writing in the Star Tribune, to dub her "the least competent person to hold this important office in Minnesota history."
(City Pages)

So when Mark Ritchie ran against Kiffmeyer pledging to increase voter turnout and promising to protect everyone's right to vote, he threatened to upset their apple cart. They would no longer have a SoS who would work to suppress votes in areas where Democratic turnout was high.

Stenography by Mark Brunswick at the Strib

When Michael Brodkorb broke this story at his blog, Mark Brunswick at the Minneapolis Star Tribune quickly ran with it. Contrasting Brunswick's coverage with MPR's in the succeeding weeks, MPR frequently just republished AP articles which provided some balanced analysis, while Brunswick got his talking points from Brodkorb's blog. Brunswick's analysis was always weak, mainly relying on he-said-she-said style reporting without any thorough analysis.

Phoenix Woman at firedoglake speculates about Brunswick's journalistic abilities. I'll cut Brunswick a slight break as I don't believe its entirely his fault. Since the Strib has slashed its staff, there are far too few reporters for them to adequately cover Minnesota's politics. It's so much easier to just go to a blogger and rewrite his talking points.

Last week, I discussed the not-really-liberal StarTribune's strapping on the kneepads for the GOP. The work of Strib reporter Mark Brunswick was featured, particularly his recycling of Minnesota Republican Party talking points and press releases under his own byline.

Brunswick's also been giving ink to Republican-authored hit jobs against Minnesota's Democratic secretary of state, Mark Ritchie. Ritchie's actual crime was defeating the corrupt, vote suppressing, and just plain crazy Republican incumbent Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006, and Republicans have been looking for revenge ever since. Richie's been the target of overheated attacks and calls for his resignation generated by Minnesota state GOP chair Ron Carey and his right-hand man Michael Brodkorb. These attacks concern Ritchie's using public records for a political e-mail list -- which may skirt ethical lines, but which is a common practice and is, so far as anyone has yet to determine, not illegal.

The irony: In preparing a follow-up story, Brunswick asked the Minnesota State Sesquicentennial Commission for their contact list, which they promptly gave to him. He then used the list to send out an unsolicited mass e-mailing, asking the people on the list if they'd received any stuff from Mark Ritchie as a result of their names being on the Commission's e-mail list:

I am a reporter with The Star Tribune and am working on a story that may involve the Sesquicentennial Commission. Specifically, I'm wondering if you have received an electronic newsletter or other correspondence from the Mark Ritchie campaign or any other political campaign as a result of your name being on the mailing list for the Commission.

If you have received such a correspondence I'd be interested in talking with you about whether you think it was proper to be put on such a list.

Thanks in advance,

Mark Brunswick
Staff Writer
Capitol Bureau
Star Tribune
651-222-1636
FAX: 651-222-0101
mbrunswick@startribune.com

This irritated enough people that the Commission was forced last week to apologize to the people on it (emphases mine):

December 4th, 2007
Dear Sesquicentennial email list members,

Yesterday, many of you who signed up for the Minnesota State Sesquicentennial e-newsletter received an unsolicited email from Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Mark Brunswick.

The Sesquicentennial Commission does not, as a rule, share contact lists with anyone. We respect your privacy and want to ensure you only receive information about the Sesquicentennial.

Mr. Brunswick contacted the Sesquicentennial Commission offices last Friday to ask for our contact list. He did not tell us why he was requesting it, but in accordance with the Minnesota Data Practices Act, we complied with this request. The Commission is a state agency and therefore all of our data, including contact lists, is public data.

To be clear, we have never shared our mailing list with anyone (until Mr. Brunswick's request).

We have expressed our concerns to the Star Tribune for the way in which the list was used. If you have questions or comments about the Star Tribune email you can direct them to Politics/Government Team Leader Doug (D.J.) Tice at the Star Tribune. His email is dtice@startribune.com and his phone number is 612-673-4456.

Sincerely,

Jane Leonard, Executive Director, Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission
Tane S. Danger, Communications Director, Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission

A few things stand out here:

-- Yes, Brunswick's doing a variant on what he's condemned Ritchie for doing.

-- Yes, in both cases it looks to be perfectly legal, while still being irritating to the recipients, as the lists are public records.
(firedoglake.com)

The controversy falls apart

Michael Brodkorb was pissed off when the Auditors report was released. Prior to this, he'd extolled the virtues of Auditor James Noble.

Back when Jim Nobels was assigned to this case, Michael Brodkorb at Minnesota Democrats Exposed crowed about how great Jim Nobels was. He even posted this little ditty from PIM about how you don’t mess with Jim– with multiple posts (must read! He tells you, because Drudge copywrited that little siren thing) about how the tough, thoughtful, well respected Legislative Auditor is going to come take Mark Ritchie to task.

But now when the report comes back and it doesn’t come out how Mike wanted, he’s going to say that the Legislative Auditor doesn’t know how to do his job?

In my opinion, these interviews are full of inconsistent statements and they shows the levels at which Ritchie and members of his office provided roadblocks to Nobles’ investigation.

I will be post the transcript of these interviews as soon as possible on Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

You don’t think that Nobels can do his job Michael? Maybe you could do it better? Is it his credibility? Is it his competence?
(MN Publius)

Mark Brunswick must've been keeping up with the posts on Brodkorb's blog as he ran with Brodkorb's talking points:

Report clears Ritchie but also criticizes

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie did not misuse state resources or violate any laws when he provided his campaign contact information from a civic engagement forum his office was sponsoring, the Minnesota Legislative Auditor said in a report released Tuesday.

But the report criticized Ritchie for failing at first to be forthcoming with the Legislative Auditor's investigation of the complaint, filed by two long-time Republican activists
(Strib)

You know that Brodkorb will never consider this issue over if he can possibly breathe any life into it. Will Brunswick continue to provide the Republicans with his stenographic services on this issue?