Evidently Clark Schmidtke Sr., Indy/Dem candidate for District 8 State Senate, has aroused the worries of the Republican machine. When a challenger can stand and point to everything that is wrong about Russell Olson's voting record—handouts for Big Oil, failing to support education and health care—the Republicans respond not with policy but with character assassination. SDGOP mouthpiece Dakota War College has dredged up court documents from the 1990s in Minnesota saying that Schmidtke forged two checks, had a license for providing adult foster care recommended for revocation, and failed to file a campaign finance report related to his 1994 bid for Minnesota state legislature.
I await Mr. Schmidtke's comment on these documents.
I also look forward to the release of any and all court documents relating to the personal history of the Republican candidate in this race. Stay tuned.
I think one has to agree that *if* is is him, stealing from the elderly is pretty ugly.
ReplyDeleteYou jump all over Noem for speeding tickets and other court violations, with some of the speeding violations when she was a teen. Are you saying that what is in a politicians past now remain in their past?
ReplyDeleteOr are we talking a double standard here?
FireBire = Tim Higgins
ReplyDeleteCory -
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what's more laughable, your trying to make this some GOP party effort, or your defense of someone - who if it's true - stole from someone he was trusted with caring for.
#1 - the tip came from someone who reads and comments on most SD blogs, yours and mine included, who wishes to remain anonymous because of nonsense like you're trying to shovel here.
#2 - FireBird beings up a good point. If 21 year old speeding tickets are fair game, then I would certainly think that a 15 year old felony charge for forging checks on an Senior citizen client is more than grist for the mill.
But please, keep trying to defend the indefensible.
Keep it down, I'm reading....
ReplyDeleteIf the allegations are true, there's a huge difference between speeding when you're a teenager and stealing a lot of money from someone you're entrusted to take care of. Perhaps Schmidtky should pull himself out of the race because this will haunt him forever. If it is him, he certainly needs to explain himself to voters.
ReplyDeleteThe adolescent dissembling about this is inane, for the following reasons:
ReplyDelete1. A casual reader of and commenter on blogs doesn't supply bloggers with court documents.
2. To obtain such documents, one is obviously familiar with the legal process and the means to obtain such documents, such as an attorney.
3. War College has published every bit of data coming out of the SDGOP defamation project, which usually bears the names of Lentsch and Gray, and the opposition research is done by GOP members with partisan motives.
A problem here is that findings of fact are reproduced from the original document, but the disposition and status of the case is not published. Just because an individual against whom prosecution leaves the state does not close the case or suspend efforts to make charges a matter of record.
Another problem is the fact that it is a routine and easy matter of determining whether the individual on whom the documents were issued is the same individual now residing in and running for office South
Dakota. The ploy of hiding behind the possibility of coincidence does not absolve War College of any legal liabilities should they be raised. The lawyer who supplied the data should know that.
David -
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you're utterly partisan, and as stupid as a brick.
In response....
#1 - The "court documents" are very simply the first things that come up if you google "Clark Schmidtke." try it - you might enlighten yourself by using the Internet.
#2 - see #1
#3 - That's quite the assertion. Do you have any proof to your allegations? As usual, no. Despite admonishing those who you view as lesser men, you once again prove yourself to be an utter putz, and we all weep for those who had to suffer through the tripe that passed as your instruction.
As I heard from one of them who now serves in public office... "God I hated that class. He was just a liberal nut."
Quite the postscript indeed.
Learned something today. I never realized Dave was/is a college professor.
ReplyDeleteI just hope he expects more coherent thought from his students? But would he know coherent thought when he sees it?
What in the world does this sentence mean? Newquist: "Just because an individual against whom prosecution leaves the state does not close the case or suspend efforts to make charges a matter of record."
Corey - so is this the same guy? If not, he's owed an apology. If it is, he's got some splann'n to do. I've just followed it from a far, but it would seem a curiosu mind in his district that supprts him, could call him and publish the results.
ReplyDeleteI once prosecuted a drug dealer like that, who claimed the flasher conviction of somebody with the same name, build and time the dealer was living in that community - wasn't him. The coincidences are always interesting, and one of them has to be a gullible reciever of the info.
--Lee Schoenbeck
Lee, I have messages in to Mr. Schmidtke and await his reply, and I do intend to publish fully on the matter as soon as I get that reply.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCory,
ReplyDeleteI seem to have kicked a hornets' nest. I hope you get a response from Mr. Schmidtke to nail down the identity once and for all.
However, I did Google Clark Schmidtke and far down the string was minutes from a Minnesota Office of Admimistrative Hearing for an ethics panel that noted campaign finance reporting violations which were being kept active in the Attorney General's office. It noted that the Clark Schmidtke named had moved to Mesa, Arizona. He is listed as a Clark C. Schmidtke there.
The fact finding reproduced on War College was available to me only through a subscription court records search engine. That's how I viewed the original. If it is on Google, it is too far down the list to find.
I think Mr. Schmidtke has the right to respond to his accusers at this point.
And, for the record, I never taught any courses where my political affiliations or proclivities would ever come up.
It would be irrelevant to any of the subjects I taught and, therefore, was avoided.
PP can always be depended upon to present us with carefully verified facts and never to indulge in namecalling and petty libel. If only the rest of the world understood.
ReplyDeleteCan't this be cleared up by looking at the last four digits of the guy's SS#?
ReplyDelete...or spot checking the addresses of the name in question. There are quite a few Clark Schmidkes in the white pages nationwide, I notice.
One of them in AZ as Newquist mentions.
Why speculate when it's so easy to verify?
Especially if you have the inside connections PP supposedly has.