(The Anon Guy) – I was looking at Twitter the other day and realized that I hadn’t seen anything this month from Elizabeth Halseth, one of the Nevada 2010 candidates I follow. I checked my list and figured she must have accidentally fallen off, a Twitter glitch perhaps, but when I went to re-follow I discovered the above. I was blocked by the Republican candidate for AD-13.
Now, her tweets were no great shakes. They are mostly about baking cookies, some boilerplate stuff (“No empty campaign promises, no politics as usual, and no political drama! Vote for Elizabeth Halseth. www.ElizabethHalseth.com”), some slightly awkward lines (“‘We must have a vision before change can become reality’ – Elizabeth Halseth”) and quotes usually seen on posters featuring dangling cats (“When you feel like giving up, don’t! The best is yet to come!”).
And, yeah, she likes the exclamation point. But it does let you get a feel for how a candidate thinks and operates, and that’s always a good thing. So what does blocking a Nevada voter say about the Halseth campaign?
Since I have yet to post nary a line about Halseth or the AD-13 race the only thing I can think of that would possibly cause her to fear having her tweets delivered to me (even though I, like anyone else, can access them directly from her account) is that I had asked her some questions about two months ago.
Back then I had noticed her site was one of the better GOP ones out there, but the bio portion left me curious. If you look at it, there seems to be a lot of high school stuff but not much info on her current business or schooling (UNLV, someplace else?). You also couldn’t really get a timeline for, well, any of this as there were no dates or numbers.
I figured this was more to the fact that she wanted to avoid tipping her age (she’s 26) and residency length. But people do like to know such things, especially the classic “How long have you been a Nevadan?” which, if you’re running for office, is a valid question.
I didn’t hear back from Halseth for a couple weeks, even with a follow-up, so I gave up. But then, in December, I received a response. Chuck Muth had apparently vouched for me so I was golden, at least for the moment. The thing of it is, though, the answers really weren’t answers. They were more of the “other candidates aren’t doing it” ilk. The only problem was, the other candidates were, in fact, doing it.
Anyway, I wrote back giving her some examples of candidate bios that do go into great detail and gave her the following obvious advice:
“The thing of it is, if a candidate is somewhat vague on their own bio there will always be people more than happy to define it for them. That’s what happens in campaigns. And it’s not that hard to do. I did a very basic internet search and here’s what I came up with:”
I showed her seven things I found that any opposition research team could uncover in an hour or so. Some could be problems. Needless to say, I never heard back from Halseth.
It’s kind of funny in some sense that a political candidate is apparently somehow afraid of a lowly, and relatively mild-mannered, blogger. But in the larger picture, what kind of candidate doesn’t want voters to know about them? If you want to represent a district with, at last count, 98K active registered voters sticking your head in the sand just won’t cut it.
Another thing to consider, especially for the Republican Party, is the 2011 legislative session will, in all likelihood, be a brutal affair. Besides budget battles there will also be the extremely partisan matter of redistricting. Does the GOP really want someone that thin-skinned and inexperienced representing them in those negotiations? Or, more importantly, carrying the Republican banner into a GOP-held district where Democrats have a 4,000 voter advantage? I wouldn’t think so.
(The Anon Guy writes the Dullard Mush blog in Nevada)
