On Vetting Candidates: Be Sure to Check “Social Media.” You Know, on the Inter-Webs

In Wisconsin’s 44th Assembly contest, nineteen-year-old GOP candidate Jacob Dorsey has withdrawn following discovery of his numerous racist and bigoted posts on social media.  The episode is now a national story. 

(Bashing blacks, gays, even Abraham Lincoln…Dorsey kept busy. One additional, much smaller matter: he even suggested in a tweet that Utah was his favorite state; a candidate for Wisconsin office should have a longstanding conviction that Wisconsin is his or her favorite state.)

Although it’s lawful to post what he did, needless to say his already long odds in a Democratic-leaning district grew vastly longer after the discovery.  For principled and practical reasons, he had to withdraw. 

Dorsey is heading back to school at Brigham Young University-Idaho; he’ll have ample time to consider these statements and the impact on his future plans. 

The Rock County Republicans, however, aren’t heading to Idaho; they plan on staying in Rock County. 

I’m a libertarian, not a Republican, but I am sympathetic to ordinary GOP voters in Rock County who were owed greater diligence from party leaders.   Unlike their candidate, one can guess that the average age of GOP officials in the local party is somewhat over nineteen.

Those officials should have done a better job vetting this candidate before they gave him a donation (one that they now want back).  People who believe in a political party – whichever one – deserve better candidates than this; it’s the task of party leaders to do more research than was done in this Assembly race.

Both the WISGOP and WisDems have professional websites and up-to-date communications, but no advanced operations were required to learn about these past statements.

All that was needed was a computer, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection. 

That’s not too much to ask of local party leaders, in Rock County, or anywhere else in America.