It isn’t that there isn’t a fair amount of truth in this SC Times article. It’s that it didn’t talk about a truly disturbing pattern, namely ABM’s lies in their anti-GOP smear campaigns.

Jerry McCarter tried portraying himself as having tried to run a clean campaign on the issues. I wrote here why that’s BS. First, let’s look at what he said in the Times article:

“Part of what I was trying to do was show people you can do this without negative ads; you can do this without all the special-interest money,” he said. “I guess I showed them that you can’t.”

Now let’s look at something McCarter ran on:

McCarter, who’s running against Sen. John Pederson, R-St. Cloud, says the shutdown was part of what spurred him to run for Senate. “Like a lot of people, I found [it] unnecessary, politically motivated, and I think it damaged the state’s image long-term,” he said.

I’ve written repeatedly that Gov. Dayton shut the government down. It’s a matter of record that several GOP legislators submitted lights-on funding bills to prevent a state government shutdown. The one attracting most attention would’ve funded state government at its 2011-2012 levels through July 11. During that time, the goal was to negotiate a final settlement on the budget.

At 10:00 pm of June 30, 2011, Mark Dayton stepped to a microphone and announced that negotiations had failed and that state government was shutting down. Rather than calling a special session to pass a lights-on bill, Gov. Dayton put 23,000 state government employees on furlough.

For all of his I’m-running-a-clean-campaign rhetoric, the truth is that Mr. McCarter built much of his campaign on a verifiable lie.

That isn’t the only lie ABM peddled during the campaign. With their willing accomplices in the Twin Cities media, they put together this lie-filled ad:

One announcer said that “It was another day of deep budget cuts at the Capital.” Pat Kessler said “Cuts are so deep, it threatens public safety.” Dayton said “There are real consequences to every dollar cut.” It’s time to highlight the truth with the DFL’s own words:

SEN. COHEN: We’re going to be passing a budget that it billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars and at a level that we’ve never done before in the history of the state. The 12-13 budget will be $34.33 billions of dollars in general fund dollars taxed to the citizens of Minnesota. The 10-11 budget two years ago was $30.171 billion, I believe.

So the difference is over $4 billion, I believe. The largest state general fund budget ever, ever, ever, in the history of the state of Minnesota.

What this means is that Gov. Dayton’s words, Pat Kessler’s words and other biased media’s words didn’t have a hint of truth to them. It’s worth noting that ABM didn’t hesitate in using them in their statewide smear campaign against GOP candidates.

It’s time for Mr. Sommerhauser and other reporters to blister Alida Messinger, Gov. Dayton and the Twin Cities media for telling the whoppers that they told. If he won’t, citizen journalists like Mitch Berg and myself will expose the DFL for the corrupt political party it is.

Comments welcome at Let Freedom Ring.