MN FOX Affiliate Blames Kiffmeyer Hire On Mark Ritchie

Somebody really needs to send the folks at the local Murdoch Media outlet a working calendar. They might then know, as Sally Jo Sorensen points out, that the person they want to hang around current Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s neck was actually hired by his predecessor, voter-suppression maven and ALEC in Minnesota leader Mary Kiffmeyer:

In Bluestem’s reading about the case, we noticed that Oluremi George was reported to have worked for the State of Minnesota for seven years. Since 2012-7 = 2005, we wondered who had hired her and whether she had always worked in the Secretary of State’s office.

That question is answered in a couple of articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Yesterday, Elisabeth Mohr reported in State employee indicted on federal fraud charges:

Using the Ayoola name, George was hired by then-Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer in 2005 as a temporary office specialist. In 2006, she was promoted to administrative specialist, according to Pat Turgeon, spokeswoman for the office.

[…]

These facts raise some questions for former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer.

1. This person was hired and then promoted by Mary Kiffmeyer. Does she or or her chief staff Kent Kaiser know if there was some special reason why George was hired?

2. Why was George  promoted during the Kiffmeyer administration? Were there any special reasons why George was promoted?

3. George voted illegally under Secretary Kiffmeyer’s watch in 2004. Did Kiffmeyer know this and ignore it, or was she not aware of the vote? What measures did she have in place to address this sort of fraud? As Steve Drazkowski asked of Mark Ritchie, did this woman run the state’s voter data base? 

We know from a press release issued by Ritchie’s office that George’s job was clerical assistant in the business services office, located in a completely different location from all elections staff. Information about her responsibilities under Secretary Kiffmeyer could be obtained by calling her directly. Perhaps the conservative bloggers attacking Mark Ritchie could give Mary Kiffmeyer a call.

(By the way: Sally Jo is not getting paid by any group to do the excellent work she does, though lots of people try to steal her stuff without credit, much less linking back to her reporting. Let’s help her out a touch, eh?)