She’s back! Controversial former SoS Kiffmeyer seeks to replace convicted legislator

Last weekend former Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer got the endorsement nod from House District 16B Republicans to replace embattled Rep. Mark Olson, whose conviction for domestic assault got him booted from the House Republican caucus. If they were looking to replace Olson with someone less controversial, Kiffmeyer may have not been the best choice. District 16B is in Sherburne County and comprises the city of Big Lake.

Kiffmeyer was an extremely controversial figure as secretary of state, drawing criticism from Democrats, independents and, occasionally, Republicans.

Kiffmeyer came under fire for her statements regarding the separation of church and state. At a National Day of Prayer event in 2004, Kiffmeyer said that the “five words” that are “probably most destructive” in America today are “separation of church and state.” Kiffmeyer later told the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman, “It’s not the words that are destructive, it’s the way they are interpreted. There are a lot of good church people who don’t think they can be involved in government.” She also told the Minnesota Monitor that her statements regarding the separation of church and state were “cobbled together.”

Despite the fact that Minnesota’s same-day voter registration policy has helped the state maintain the highest voter turnout in the nation for five decades, she often told other officials from other states attempting to implement same-day voter registration that it was problematic and contributed to voter fraud. She told John Fund, author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,” that she was “tired of hearing her state’s same-day registration extolled.” At the same time, she often took credit for the high voter turnout.

Many of her decisions as secretary of state were overturned by the courts. In 2002, when Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, she prevented the distribution of replacement absentee ballots to those who requested them, a decision overruled by the Minnesota Supreme Court.

In 2004, she attempted to remove the Independence Party from the ballot, a move that was overruled by the Minnesota Supreme Court. She tried to prevent the use of IDs issued by tribal governments for voter registration, a move that was overruled by the courts.

During the 2004 elections, Kiffmeyer made national headlines when she decided to post terrorist warning signs at polling places throughout Minnesota urging voters to be wary of people appearing at precincts with “shaved head[s] or short hair” who “smell of unusual herbal/flower water or perfume,” wear baggy clothing or appear to be whispering to themselves.

Race to the Right, a conservative talk show that appeared on several conservative radio stations around the Twin Cities and St. Cloud, grew very critical of Kiffmeyer after she agreed to go on the air five times, but canceled one appearance and failed to show for three others without notice.

The show’s hosts wanted to discuss the fact that the secretary of state’s Web site carried only metro-area elections results in 2005, an odd-year election. Kiffmeyer briefly touched on the issue in an interview with Minnesota Monitor’s Paul Schmelzer. Of working with the county auditors, she complained: “I did stuff and went to things and found that it is ever-unending. I can’t seem to get ahead … You meet this and it’s more. You meet this, and it’s more. It’s unending.”

The Kiffmeyer clan made waves on the political scene even before Mary Kiffmeyer’s tenure as secretary of state. Her husband, Ralph Kiffmeyer, served one term in the Minnesota House, and he made it a controversial one with a bill to outlaw “sex toys and live sex performances.”

Kiffmeyer and her husband are evangelical Christians, and are part owners in a “Christ-centered” bank. In fact, Kiffmeyer was the director of the bank’s parent holding company. Two paintings at Riverview Community Bank in Otsego hang on the wall of the office where the bank president prays with bank customers. One painting shows “two businessmen in an office; one is shaking hands with Christ, as though closing a deal,” and the other “is a scene of what appears to be Eden. Tucked into the background of that painting is a small representation of Riverview,” according to the Pioneer Press in 2004.

Continued: Click “Read More”On to Minnesota Majority

Since Kiffmeyer was voted out of office in 2006, she has joined up with an organization called Minnesota Majority as its executive director. Minnesota Majority is made up of Jeff Davis, founder of Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage, a group dedicated to preventing legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Minnesotans, and Drew Emmer, uncle of Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano.

Minnesota Majority is an advocacy group that engages in a hodgepodge of wedge issue and culture war rhetoric. Its Web site decries taxes, abortion, GLBT rights, embryonic stem cell research and illegal immigration. It advocates for military intervention in Iraq, abstinence-only sex ed, a free market health care fix and intelligent design taught in the classrooms. There’s barely a religious right or ultra-conservative topic left untouched.

The group came under criticism for racially charged text on its blog earlier this year. “It is not surprising that Sweden has a lower infant mortality rate, or that Japan has a longer life expectancy than the United States does,” read an article on the site. “They are nearly racially pure; we are not.” Kiffmeyer defended the text saying that its mention of racial purity must be understood in context, that it “is simply descriptive.”

“That’s a genetic term,” Kiffmeyer told the Pioneer Press’ Rachel Stassen-Berger. “It does matter when you are doing medical studies.”

The group’s newest project, globalclimatescam.com, is dedicated to “exposing the truth about global warming hysteria” by pointing out that the planet can’t be warming because we had a cold winter this year.