GOP Endorsed Candidate Files Complaint Against Her Own Party

A Republican intraparty squabble is getting more heated, and more public, as a GOP endorsed candidate for Minnesota’s Supreme Court filed a complaint against the party’s executive committee in a dispute stemming from a drunk driving charge she faces.

On Wednesday, Michelle MacDonald filed a complaint with the Office of Administrative Hearings against State Republican Party Chair Keith Downey, Republican Party State Committee member Pat Anderson, attorney Patrick Burns, and Republican Party Judicial Election Committee Chair Doug Seaton for alleged violations of various provisions Minnesota’s Fair Campaign Practice Statute. She says they have acted to negatively influence her campaign for Supreme Court justice.

During last month’s State Fair, Republicans blocked her from campaigning at the party’s State Fair booth. MacDonald says they also sent her threatening messages and phone calls asking her to refrain from being a candidate and repudiate the endorsement. If she did not drop out of the race, she says, the party members threatened to damage her reputation and her business.

MacDonald was endorsed by the Republican state convention in May after giving a speech where she held a bible over her head and said it was impossible to govern “without God and the bible”.

Her short campaign speech, which was interrupted eight times by applause from the Republican delegates who unanimously endorsed her, was heavy on religious references and Tea Party touchstones such as property rights and “liberty”.

Most of the Republican delegates at the convention were unaware that MacDonald had been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and resisting arrest last year. Downey told the Star Tribune “none of us, including the convention delegates were aware of this information about the candidate.” He said “delegates did not have the full disclosure they should have.”

MacDonald’s drunk driving case will be heard this month. She says she’s innocent. “That’s why I’m going to trial.”

Her attorney, Greg Wersal, who also ran for Supreme Court with a Republican endorsement says, “it really doesn’t make any difference in the end if she’s found guilty or not guilty. What’s important to me is that as a judge she needs to understand how people get swept up into the criminal court system and how innocent people are swept up into that system and that they need an advocate who is going to represent them and they need a judge who is going to be fair and not prejudge the case.

“I’m going to be voting for her irregardless. And I would tell other people to vote for her irregardless.”

Several prominent Republicans, including U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden and gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson, have said they will not vote for MacDonald.

MacDonald’s opponent in the November election is Supreme Court Justice David Lillehaug.