I swear you can’t make this stuff up.
South Dakota’s Queen Bee of legalizing pot, Melissa Mentele, just announced she’s running for District 19 State House as “Your Pro-Life, 2nd Amendment Supporting Conservative Democratic Candidate.” She notes in her announcement:
I have decided against switching and will be running as a Democratic candidate. I feel that switching parties would have been dishonest and would start a relationship with voters that was tainted by a lie. That goes against everything I believe in. Honesty and Transparency are the key to the start of any good relationship.
I pride myself on being an honest and trustworthy person. I hope you will take the time to get to know me and my values before you write me off because of a D behind my name.
It is going to be fun getting to know each other.
Sincerely,
Melissa Mentele
Your Pro-Life, 2nd Amendment Supporting Conservative Democratic Candidate
I think you are going to like me.
Now I can’t say I have any insight as to her position on the Second Amendment. But I do feel fairly safe in pointing out if you were one of the prime people behind trying to put a measure on the ballot to legalize killing grandma via assisted suicide, then by no stretch of the imagination can you consider yourself pro-life. It would be the opposite. You would be pro-death. I would almost guarantee groups such as South Dakota Right to Life might take some offense at her trying to paint herself otherwise.
But that might have been too honest a statement for the not-so-conservative Democrat.
Update… just because I had to check, here’s some further information on Mentele’s position on being “pro-life” from the 2016 South Dakota Right to Life Voter’s Guide:
So… I’m not sure where promoting Grandma Killing, and declaring that she’s “pro having the choice” exactly qualifies for calling yourself pro-life?
She is the female version of Tapio. Long on ambition but short on brains.
Careful Frank Melissa Mentele will threaten a lawsuit!
By the way, Stace, who do you prefer as your District-mate, Mentele or Schoenfish?
Did she just say I thought about lying? Sheesh. Honest people don’t think about lying. It doesn’t cross their mind.
But we have a boatload of so-called republicans in Pierre who have done just that and get away with it ! (Lots of former dems, Schoenfish included, have magically become repubs to get elected)
In the 2016 election, Schoenfish received 44% of the vote, Peterson 40% and Mentele 16%.
Some people don’t learn.
She’s South Dakota’s chief advocate to legalize killing grandma and she has the nerve to call herself pro-life?
Democrat? Didn’t she say she was being recruited to run as a Republican? How was her latest supposed lawsuit going against the SDSU police in criminal and civil court? Remember she said the truth will come out? “Police Brutality!” “Horrific Screams!” Calling every media outlet again in a frenzy? Oh yeah! They found that happened was well covered in the campus police officer camera video footage, The officer did what he was trained to do and was cleared by the SDSU Campus police department and DCI.
Everything is always over the top, major credibility issues with wild claims of what pot will do for people and South Dakota besides drama, not accepting personal responsibility, accusations of people being possessed by demons with their heads turning around, has a habit of threatening lawsuits, 2018 election circus season in South Dakota is ramping up.
Sorry Melissa, I don’t like you. You are not conservative, and you are not somebody I want having any say in any lawmakin’ that goes on in this here state.
Every party has its kooks. Anti-choice gun nut? That’s a firm “NO” right out of the chute.
Neal 2017-09-12 at 21:18 @ Dakota Free Press
Mentele’s account is over the top, full of hyperbole (“brutally attacked”; “horrified screams”; “absolutely traumatized”; etc.), and ultimately not credible. The photos don’t support anything even close to resembling her description of what happened, and the fact that her underage daughter tested positive for alcohol indicates that there’s much more to the story than her claims, which border on preposterous.
Her daughters screwed up and are compounding it with these ridiculous claims. Take your lumps, learn you lesson, and move on.
Powers- I’d expect if you’re calling out MM for claiming to be pro-life you would certainly be responsibly enough to call out Republicans making the same false claim? Let’s see, a quick check on VoteSmart shows us Deb Soholt received a 50% rating from SDRL and 100% from NARAL and Deb Peters received a 57% from SDRL too. Hmmm….. Interesting.
Listened to your interview on Newstalk and we wonder if you may be contradicting yourself some? Would this post here be considered a litmus test? Are you being disingenuous, seems to us you are.
MM called herself a “Pro-Life, 2nd Amendment Supporting Conservative Democratic Candidate.” Considering that she just got done leading a petition drive for letting people kill their grandmothers through assisted suicide, I just pointed out that might not have been completely accurate.
I agree. However, shouldn’t we be challenging those who run on the Rep. platform and clearly vote against the right to life? There is, in a sense, a litmus test for politicians. You know it and I know it.
For example, if you claim to be Rep, one might think you’d support lower taxes. Here we have Mickelson attempting to put a “sin tax” on a product that would hurt low-income people the most.
Let’s challenge those making false claims within our party. The Democratic party have and continue to dig their own grave, we don’t need to help them.
Mickelson is all over the place this last year it seems.
Melissa Mentele is an opportunist using a broken and desperate political party. Today she is running as a Democrat and tomorrow who knows. Running to win as a candidate to serve others around a party platform? No. It is just her own platform where she can further her goal to get a big financial payoff being a future legalized drug dealer.
Kind of sounds like Lora Hubbel
If MM could get away with it she would run as a Republican but she has been and would be confronted right away and that program would be shut down pronto. Credibility is zero!