Last week, over 160,000 letters were sent to House Republicans by ABM supporters asking what parts of the health care reform bill they want to repeal. So far, we have heard back from only a few — none of which mentioned specifics.
However, we DID hear about how some House Republicans were just forwarding these emails onto DFL legislators — just to try and jam the DFL-side inboxes as a sort of retaliation.
The response we got was one of the biggest yet for any ABM action — which is why we alerted the media to this effort. However, there was no mention of the more than 160,000 emails in any of the stories written about Republican efforts to repeal health care. This email push actually knocked out the email system for legislators in some cases.
Before we sound like whiners for not getting some mainstream media attention, let’s compare it to a similar incident earlier in the yea when a handful of phone calls made in February, when the MNGOP directed some party members to call legislators while they were on the floor of the Senate. In that case there were at least 5 stories about it:
- MPR: MNGOP dials phones that rarely ring
- KARE 11: Phone stunt sparks war of words at Minn. state capitol
- Star Tribune: DFLers, GOP trade jabs over calls on state Senate floor
- Pioneer Press: Minnesota Republican Party’s use of Senate phones creates static (no longer available)
So, after we jammed the email system, we moved onto social media. This campaign generated hundreds of tweets asking Marty Seifert, Tom Emmer, the MN GOP, and other Republican legislators to be specific about which parts of health care reform they wanted repealed. But we didn’t stop there — we asked folks to visit theFacebook pages of the GOP, Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer to ask our questions again.
Here are some great comments that people have posted (note we snatched some of these screenshots before they were scrubbed):
It doesn’t seem balanced to report on GOP hijinks while not even mentioning more than 160,000 emails. Is there another reason we’re missing?
