Tagged: Scott Aspenlieder

Posted: May 17, 2012 at 7:48 am

TEA Partier Refuses to Let Facts Stop Angry Tirade

A 29-year-old hothead, a wannabe Tea Party politician named Scott Aspenlieder (pronounced Aspen-lighter), was caught in the embarrasing position of being on the wrong side of the facts this week. Scott launched an angry tirade accusing Secretary Linda McCulloch of being behind a Broadwater County precinct’s ballot glitch.

However, the Great Falls Tribune reported hat Scott is wrong:

Broadwater County election officer Rhonda Nelson said the error on the 11th precinct ballot was between her office and the private contractor who printed and mailed the ballots.

“There was no state involvement in this error,” Nelson said. “There was nothing that the state should have done or could have done differently. The error was entirely between the software company and my office.”

Scott  refused to acknowledge he’d gotten it wrong, which shows he doesn’t even know how the office he’s running for works.  County election officers are responsible for printing ballots.

Scott began his campaign by insulting teachers. He declared that Linda McCulloch, the current Secretary of State (SOS), is a “lifelong bureaucrat” and for that reason is not qualified to be SOS. McCulloch is a lifelong teacher, so Aspenlieder has now brought the national GOP war on teachers to Montana, by calling teachers “bureaucrats.”

Scott opposes mail ballots–perhaps because the allow more people to vote.  In voicing his opposition to the practice he even insulted rural communities. He railed on a vote-by-mail proposal that McCulloch voiced support for (she supported it because it would have saved the state two million dollars annually.)

Scott stated that:

“voting is about all these rural communities have left.”

In other words, Scott  thinks rural folk need the diversion thay a trip to the polls provides, since they have nothing else in their lives.

The glitch impacted 125 ballots.  All the voters are being notified by phone of the error and sent new ballots.

 

Posted: January 7, 2012 at 5:03 pm

The Assman Raiseth

Steve Bullock blew Rick Hill out of the water this fundraising period, raising almost twice what Hill raised, the Billings Gazette reports this week.  That doesn’t surprise me, because Hill has baggage and GOP activists and donors have steadily been learning about it.

But the juicy part about the just-released fundraising numbers is that Hill got beat by Jeff Essmann, aka the Assman, a moniker that refers both to his physical situation and also the smell of his foul legislation, which resembles ass.

Perhaps Essmann’s impressive money victory means that the rumors about Dennis Rehberg supporting Essmann are true.

At any rate, Bullock raised double what Essmann and Hill were able to bring in ($171k as opposed to $85 and $82k, respectively) leaving the entire GOP field in his dust. Neil Livingstone is once again bankrupt, and the other dwarves have no money either.

In other fundraising news, Pam Bucy and Jesse Laslovich are neck and neck in the money game.

Denise Juneau meanwhile had a very strong quarter and is inviting little in the way of a serious challenge.  In the Secretary of State race, Brad Johnson, who is trying to reclaim his lost seat, raised around $4,000 and spent $2,000 (on whiskey, perhaps), and Scott Aspenlieder did better than Johnson but he too fell short of matching what Linda McCulloch raised.  Derek Skees came in at a sad $2,000.

Posted: June 13, 2011 at 10:17 pm

Angry Helena Man Declares for Secretary of State

A 29-year-old hothead, a Tea Party-boy named Scott Aspenlieder, has announced he’s running for Secretary of State.

He began his campaign by insulting teachers. He declared that Linda McCulloch, the current Secretary of State (SOS), is a “lifelong bureaucrat” and for that reason is not qualified to be SOS. McCulloch is a lifelong teacher, so Aspenlieder has now brought the national GOP war on teachers to Montana, by calling teachers “bureaucrats.”

He also ranted about how the Land Board–which consists of the five state-wide elected officials incuding the SOS, and authorizes projects on state-owned land– needs more “business-minded” members. In fact, McCulloch has voted up, unanimously, all money-making projects that have come before the board, inclusing the Otter Creek project. Presumably she believes, as a teacher, that schools need the funding from these projects.

Aspenlieder also said the SOS office must be “run like a business” and must “do more with less”. In fact, after taking over from Republican Brad Johnson, who looted the SOS office by handing out giant bonuses to his political staff on his last day in office (also his first day in rehab for alcoholism), McCulloch has reduced expenses in her office to the lowest level in history.

Aspenleider then insulted rural communities. He railed on a vote-by-mail proposal that McCulloch voiced support for (she supported it because it would have saved the state two million dollars annually.)

Aspenlieder stated that

 

“voting is about all these rural communities have left.”

 

In other words, Alpenlieder thinks rural folk need the diversion thay a trip to the polls provides, since they have nothing else in their lives.

The vote-by-mail proposal is dead, but would have had no negative effect at all on these communities had it gone into law because their central polling places would have remained open. Of course, the reason it is dead is that former Rehberg operatives Jake Eaton and Dustin Frost quietly had it killed, on behalf of their alchoholic do-nothing boss, fearing that a mail ballot system might mean more Democratic votes because Republicans are too stupid to know how to organize a get-out-the-vote effort.

Eaton and Frost, interesingly, have also been hired onto Aspenlieder’s campaign team.

Finally, Aspenlieder says he has no opinion on the way in which elections are conducted in Montana. Which means that he has effectively endorsed Linda Mcculloch, since elections are the main focus of the office of SOS.