Michelle MacDonald | RPM via Strib photo
Steve Timmer
by Steve Timmer
Jul 17, 2014, 2:30 PM

Every word screams: CRACKPOT!

Please see the update below.

This caught my attention; Michelle MacDonald received the endorsement by the Republicans to run for the Minnesota Supreme Court this fall.

Additional tweets from Michael Brodkorb reveal that the email was a free-lance project by Republican activist Bonn Clayton (a member of the RPM Judicial Elections Committee, I think, but not acting exactly on behalf of the committee) and candidate Michelle MacDonald herself. You can read the email by selecting it in the embedded tweet above.

It is difficult to pin down the authorship of this wonderful little manifesto. It purports to come from the MacDonald Law Office, but is written in the third person, and refers to “our Committee.” But it wasn’t shown to, much less approved by, the committee chair.

It clearly has Michelle MacDonald’s fingerprints — maybe footprints — all over it.

When I was reading along, the image of a person, wearing a hoodie with the hood up, chain smoking, and hunched over a manual Underwood in a pool of light in a darkened, cramped cabin in the woods formed almost immediately.

Try it, and see what you get.

The stories recounted in this febrile apologia are at odds with published media reports, and undoubtedly the police reports, too, both about MacDonald’s DWI and obstruction charge, and her antics in family court in Dakota County. One item stands out as so improbable that it really makes you discard the rest, if you haven’t already. Our cooped-up correspondent says that MacDonald took a photo of a deputy in court because he posed for the photo.

When my homeboy Keith Downey, chair of the RPM, began to edge away from this one, I knew it would be good.

I have maintained — since the Republicans started doing them — that judicial endorsements were a really bad idea. They aren’t vetted well, and the endorsement attracts bizarro ideologues exclusively. Exactly the people you don’t want wearing a black robe and being called “Your Honor.”

And in conclusion, for the stray Republican reading this, former governor Al Quie is against judicial endorsements and has been working on an alternate retention system for a long time. This is one of the reasons he supports Marty Seifert for governor. Seifert doesn’t like judicial endorsements, either.

Update: Here’s more about the email:

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