On Tuesday morning, Don Pogreba opened an interesting can of worms for himself.
He did so on his blog, Montana Post, with an article entitled How Did Christi Jacobsen Win the Republican Secretary of State Nomination? She Bought It.
One of Don’s first objections to the way Jacobsen ran her campaign is that she spent $73,000 on TV and facebook ads.
I don’t think this bothers anyone.
I know it doesn’t bother Mike Cooney.
He spent $75,000 on TV ads. I wrote about that in the Missoulian the same day, in fact.
I hope you understand the logic here:
- GOP spends $73,000 = bad
- Dems spend $75,000 = good
It’s that simple.
Don even admits near the end of his article that what Jacobsen did was “smart,” but then goes on to say that, “smart though the strategy was, it’s another troubling sign that elected offices are for sale in Montana.”
And that’s exactly how we want it.
That’s how we made the laws, both here and nationally.
If we didn’t like how the current system of elections and campaign finance was set up...they why wouldn’t we simply change it?
Let’s not be stupid - we can’t change it. No matter if we vote for a D taking $75,000 or an R taking $73,000...nothing ever changes.
You think either of those two are going to change these election finance laws? I don’t.
So we get what we pay for.
This is the can of worms: Don criticizes Republicans for doing exactly what Democrats are doing.
But he'll never criticize a Democrat for those things.
Because he's a hypocrite.
Another problem of Don’s is that Jacobsen loaned herself nearly $83,000, which was more than the $64,000 she got from donors.
This is a common complaint of Don’s, and typically applies to Gianforte. He justs doesn’t like the idea of candidates giving themselves money.
Well...that’s not quite accurate - he doesn’t like Republican candidates giving to themselves.
For instance, we never once heard any complaints about the $515,000 that Kim Dudik loaned herself.
Why?
It’s simple - that doesn’t fit the narrative of only Republicans trying to ‘buy office.’ It’s hypocrisy.
It’s interesting that Don never mentions who Jacobsen is running against.
He mentions two of her primary opponents, and the fact that they loaned themselves $25,000 for their campaigns, but he never mentions the Dem.
That’s Bryce Bennett.
Bennett hasn’t spent much out-of-state, and I mentioned this nearly three weeks ago. I was impressed by that...but I know it won’t continue.
Do you think Don will chastise Bennett when he begins to spend large sums out-of-state?
I don’t, either.
Yeah, I know this makes Don a hypocrite, but he doesn’t care.
When you read this post, how you respond really depends if you’re a Democrat, a Republican...or neither.
- If you’re a Democrat, you’ll likely agree with Don and you might even be eager to voice that agreement in the comments...which Don didn’t allow for this post.
- If you’re a Republican, you’ll likely disagree with Don and take to Facebook to commiserate with your friends.
- And if you’re an Independent, you’ll probably balk at the hypocrisy of it all, for you know full-well that candidates from both parties engage in this.
Don’s dislike for Jacobsen first appeared last October when news broke that Jacobsen’s boss, Corey Stapleton, had misused his state vehicle. Don chastised Jacobsen for “creating a toxic culture” at work, while also pushing the idea that she thinks stealing state resources is a good idea.
Several posts have appeared about Jacobsen since then, and it’s clear she’s going to replace Stapleton as one of Don’s favorite punching bags. Sadly for Don, Jacobsen is a woman, so he has to walk a bit of a fine line. For instance, there’ll be no ‘doctored’ images of Jacobsen, like with the male GOP candidates. Doing so might appear sexist.
In closing, I’d once again like to point out that Don has made the conscious decision not to allow any comments on this post.
He’s doing this more and more with what he thinks might be ‘controversial’ posts, meaning that he might have too many right-leaning individuals come to his site to speak their mind.
Don can’t have that.
When you allow opposing viewpoints to mar your carefully crafted narrative, people might begin to think for themselves instead of blindly following the messenger.
Democrats can’t have that.
Since Tuesday, Don has put up two more posts where you can’t comment. I think this will become the norm as we get closer and closer to election day.
Democracy is simply too important for all voices to be heard.
