Former Minnesota State Senator Scott Jensen (R-Chaska) announced who he believes is the second most qualified Minnesotan, after him, to run Minnesota’s state government during very challenging times. Jensen picked — fake gjallarhorn, please! — the Minnesota Vikings’ former Center Matt Birk.
A celebrity! Intriguing! Fresh!
An all-white male ticket! That has got to be first for Republicans, right?
Predictably, the Birk announcement got a lot of uncritical news coverage in Minnesota, particularly from local TV and radio newsrooms. These are some of the same jock sniffers who spend roughly one-third of most news broadcasts building up local athletes as heroes.
And who knows, the Birk stunt just might work, politically speaking. After all, this is a state that “shocked the world” and elected an outlandish and churlish former fake wrestler, and then was shocked when he turned out to be an outlandish and churlish fake Governor.
To be fair, Birk is certainly no Ventura. The Saint Paul native is Harvard educated, and not clownish like Ventura . He’s also done a lot of admirable charitable work in the community. On many levels, I admire him.
But he’s applying to be Governor, and he is largely an unknown quantity on policy issues. So maybe the local media should pump the breaks just a bit on the Birk bandwagon. You know, like maybe ask him a few questions about his actual plans and positions?
Reasons for Skepticism
Here’s a few reasons why skepticism is warranted:
He’s an Extremist Abortion Banner. One of the few Birk policy positions we know about is that he supports overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Birk feels so strongly about this that he refused to join his Baltimore Ravens teammates in being honored at the White House, because Birk would have had to stand in proximity with then-President Barack Obama, who opposes overturning Roe.
Citizen Birk obviously had every right to express that opinion. But he is now applying to be Lieutenant Governor for all of Minnesota, and this position puts him at odds with the a huge majority of the people he seeks to represent. Surveys show that two-thirds (67%) of Minnesotans oppose overturning Roe.
At a time when it looks likely that the court is about to overturn Roe and start allowing state governments to take away women’s abortion rights, Birk’s refusal to listen to two-thirds of his constituents on this timely issue is a particularly big deal.
He’s an Extremist Marriage Equality Banner. Abortion isn’t the only issue where Birk is out of step with a majority of Minnesotans. In 2012, he very actively campaigned in favor of the Minnesota Marriage Amendment that would have changed the Minnesota constitution to specifically prohibit marriage equality for same-sex couples.
Once again, Birk is on the right wing fringe, ignoring the opinions of two-thirds of his would-be constituents. A 2018 poll shows 67 percent of Minnesotans support same sex marriage.
Birk’s positions on abortion rights and marriage equality would seem to portend how he would come down on other socially conservative changes being pushed by the far-right, such as book banning and “don’t say gay” laws.
He’s Unqualified for the Job. Then there’s the small matter of qualifications. Birk currently has as much directly relevant experience to be a heartbeat away from the top position in state government as current Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan has to be a professional football player.
After electing a wealthy celebrity with no governing experience President blew up in the nation’s face, maybe we should be a little more cautious about hiring someone who has never done any actual state governance to lead a very complex $48.5 billion per biennium endeavor. How many times do we have to make this same mistake?
He’s Hitched His Wagon to a Extremist Quack. Even if you like Birk as a player, philanthropist, and sports analyst, and I do, you should learn a little more about his running mate Scott Jensen before signing up to be a Jensen-Birk supporter.
For instance, the non-partisan fact-checking organization Politifact cited Jensen as a major source of its 2020 “Lie of the Year 2020 about coronavirus downplaying and denial. This is arguably the most lethal political lie of our times, and Jensen played a very prominent and destructive role spreading it.
Jensen also joined U.S. Capitol insurrectionist Simone Gold and others in suing the federal government to prevent children from receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
But apparently none of this bothered Birk.
COVID denial and anti-vax messaging earned Jensen a lot of love on Fox News and other far-right outlets, but now he is trying to win a plurality of votes in Minnesota, a state with the second highest rate or boosted residents, and where about three-fourths (74%) of voting age residents rejected Jensen’s ignorant, irresponsible medical quackery and got themselves vaccinated.
What We Don’t Know
Beyond the handful of issues cited here, Minnesotans have no idea where Birk stands on a whole host of other important issues.
Paid family and medical leave? Public funding for free birth control, which is proven to dramatically reduce unplanned pregnancies and abortions? Giving Minnesotans the option to buy into MinnesotCare? Prayer in public schools? Which religion’s prayer? Taxpayers subsidizing billionaire sports team owners’ stadiums? Making the wealthiest 1% of Minnesotans, which includes Birk, pay higher taxes to fund education improvements? Accepting Obamacare funding for Medicare expansion in Minnesota? Maintaining the MNsure Obamacare insurance exchange? “Don’t say gay” laws to punish teachers who mention gay people in school? Allowing parents to ban books from school libraries?
In addition, the state where a majority (52.4%) of 2020 voters rejected Trump should know whether Birk voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and whether he plans to vote for the insurrection inciter in 2024. We also must know whether Birk supports the Big Lie that Trump didn’t lose the 2020 election.
I’m very interested to know the answers to these questions. Is Birk Trumpy enough to win far-right primary votes, but too Trumpy to win swing voters in the general election? Or will Birk expose himself to be insufficiently Trumpy, and subsequently be a “kiss of death” for Jensen in the primaries, where Trump loyalists are dominant and demand total obedience.
To be clear, I deeply respect the man’s ability to calmly read a defense with another man’s hands nestled firmly in his buttocks. Skol!
But maybe Minnesotans deserve to know more about Matt Birk than that.
A steady stream of candidates for the 2018 gubernatorial race will soon be emerging. Often “past is prologue” in politics, so we might want to consider the type of leader Minnesotans have preferred in our recent past.