In Minnesota Primaries, you get a ballot that’s divided into a DFL section and a Republican section. Pick one. You can vote in either the DFL section, or the Republican section. If you vote in both, that’s a spoiled ballot that won’t be counted. (Mostly the machine will spit it back out at you.)

At Diversicon last weekend, one of the other attendees told me that she was working for the Secretary of State’s office when we started having machine-read ballots instead of hand-counted ballots and she was flooded with irate calls from people who wanted to know why they could no longer vote in both primaries. The information that they’d actually never voted in both primaries, that their ballot was simply tossed without being counted, did not go over well.

Anyway. In Congressional District 4, we are represented by Betty McCollum. She has a primary opponent named Steve Carlson. The Republicans hoping to oppose her are Nicolay Nicolayevich Bey, Greg Ryan, and Gene Rechtzigel.

I’m going to go through all five of these candidates but remember, you only get to pick someone off one side of the ballot.

DFL

Betty McCollum

Betty McCollum is the sort of solidly reliable liberal Congress person you get in a solidly blue congressional district like this one. She is less flashy (in terms of “making the heads of the right wing explode”) than Keith Ellison, but I find her a generally satisfactory representative and I expect her to hold this seat until she gets tired of it, say because she got offered a cabinet position or something.

A+, would vote for her again.

Steve Carlson

One of the many tells of a flake candidate is the URL they registered six years ago and never updated. (If you’re considering “quixotic pursuit of political office” as a hobby, I would suggest a URL like yournamehereFORTHEPEOPLE.org because that can be endlessly repurposed and never gets dated.)

Far and away the #1 reason to visit his website is if you’d like to watch a rap video in which an aging white guy with no particular sense of rhythm or rhyme tells you that “all lives matter.” (Which offers up an anti-abortion message with the problematic white cluelessnes.) I watched that video, and … I feel much better about my rap abilities now, so time well spent, I guess?

REPUBLICANS

Nickolay Bey

Nickolay has a website for a business that … I’m not even sure what the hell the business is. (“NNB know’s how to grow business, it’s not all about advertising, or that marketing plan. But at the end of the day, it’s all about knowing how to keep that customer coming back for more.” Who would give this company money, and for what? IT IS A MYSTERY.) The website talks about the primary election and mentions he’s running but says nothing about his views on much of anything.

He has a Twitter account with three tweets, a Facebook page that reveals he’s one of those people that thinks every other word should be a hashtag, and an incoherent press release. A very persistent reporter from Stillwater managed to get some verbal comments but they don’t make him sound any more qualified.

Gene Rechtzigal

Gene has a solid URL for a flake candidate but a wide variety of other flake flags:

1. He capitalizes things randomly but especially the word YOU. (“The Gene for People Rechtzigel Political Revolution is now here to be your congressional candidate of change for YOU, by YOU and with the Power of YOU.”)
2. The writing is incoherent and ungrammatical. Actually, some of his bullet points sound weirdly like (surrealist erotica writer) Chuck Tingle on Twitter. (“Gene for People Rechtzigel wants to make You safe from the Zika Mosquitoes, potential GMOs health hazards, while giving you affordable health care of your choosing from orthodox medicine and alternative medicines; and thereby insure you the right to know (listed with the price) what is in your food at both the grocery store and restaurants before you buy or order.”)
3. His ideas are super vague and super ambitious. (“Gene for People Rechtzigel will work, help plan, and implement a Super-Freeway Highway System that will rid the Twin Cities of Freeway Congestion for the next 100 years during rush hours!”)

Poking around a little I noticed that he ran for mayor of Apple Valley in 2014 (and spelled “campaign” with an o, “compaign”) so the “gene for people” URL is serving him well. The reporter who interviewed Nickolay tried repeatedly to get ahold of Gene and Gene never called him back.

Greg Ryan

The actual (endorsed by his party) Republican candidate. Greg Ryan owns a family plumbing business, Ryan Plumbing and Heating. (They get mixed, but generally okay reviews.)

He talks a bunch about “listening” and “change” and then lists off a fairly boilerplate set of Republican principles, including gun rights, dogwhistle racism, dogwhistle anti-gay stuff, and a bunch of puffery that doesn’t mean anything at all (“Restore Jobs and Economic Growth” with zero specifics). About what I’d expect for someone who’s running as a Republican in a solidly blue district with an entrenched, popular Democrat in office.

I’ll give him credit for running and having a website that isn’t going to embarrass the people supporting him. If you’re a Republican, you should definitely vote for him, and heck, if I were actually choosing someone to support me on this side of the ballot, I’d probably pick Greg because he does not come across as fundamentally incompetent at the basic functions of the job of Congressional Representative.