Senate GOP says ‘DFL interests’ editing negative messages into senators’ Wikipedia pages 

As of Monday night, the introductions on their pages included their voting records on popular DFL issues and used nearly-identical language. 

The Minnesota Senate Victory Fund, the political arm of the Senate Republican Caucus, said the Wikipedia pages of several Republican senators were selectively edited just days before the general election.

A Wikipedia editor with the username “Gaelic Tuberosa” conducted the edits and describes himself on his page as a “mechanical engineer in the Midwest who reads politics and history for fun.” He has also promoted the Black Lives Matter movement on his page.

His editing history shows that he made changes to thirteen Senate Republican pages, including candidates in closely contested races.

“The edits match negative campaign messages emanating from the millions of dollars in attack ads against these Republican senators,” the Senate Victory Fund said in a statement.

The Wikipedia pages for Sens. Karin Housley, Warren Limmer, Jerry Relph, Carla Nelson and David Senjem have been heavily edited over the past three days, according to the revision history on their pages.

In Housley’s case, her page was edited to describe her as a “failed Minnesota politician.”

As of Monday night, the introductions on their pages included their voting records on popular DFL issues and used nearly-identical language.

The pages for both Relph and Housley, for instance, said that they “voted against the Alec Smith Emergency Insulin Act.”

“Senjem voted to give tobacco companies a $35 million tax break,” said Senjem’s page, a line that was repeated verbatim in Limmer’s bio.

The pages for Nelson and Senjem claimed that they “voted against banning the practice of conversion therapy on children under the age of 18 and vulnerable adults.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group co-founded by billionaire Mike Bloomberg, launched a $1 million ad campaign against all five GOP senators in September.

“All of these candidates have been the subject of a multi-million dollar coordinated attack by the DFL Party, DFL Senate Caucus, Alliance for A Better Minnesota, Michael Bloomberg, Planned Parenthood and Climate Vote MN,” Senate Republicans said in a statement.

 

Anthony Gockowski

Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.