UPDATE: TenHaken promises transparency as mayor, but won’t answer questions about his previous involvement with Mike Rounds
UPDATE: Jo goes after Paul on Facebook. Paul calls it a ‘Nothing Burger’. What the heck is a ‘Nothing Burger’. Must be something the ‘Evengelist of Downtown’ serves at BBQ’s.
Like Huether, he says there is ‘nothing to see’ and kills the messenger.
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You know what they say, politicians will say almost anything to get your vote. Remember Mayor Huether as a candidate? He promised to be one of the most transparent mayors ever. I know, funny stuff 🙁
So when the Argus asks TenHaken a question about being involved with a trolling investigation, he says this;
TenHaken declined to comment for this story.
“In 2014, Click Rain was contracted by the Rounds for Senate campaign to dig into some libel/slander against various parties,†he said in an email. “I would be breaking my former client’s trust by commenting on your story.â€
First off, you are no longer employed by Click Rain. Secondly, Rounds is elected public official, what’s the big secret? If you can’t even answer a simple question about this incident, how will your relationship be with the media when you are mayor? Probably like Mayor Huether’s. I have often thought of TenHaken as the Republican version of Mike Huether.
A few months ago I had my own little ‘doxing’ incident going on. Someone was commenting on my site and making disparaging comments about a city councilor. I know what you are thinking, myself as well as other anon commenters make those remarks everyday on my site. This was different though. The first suspicion I had was they were a new commenter. I often check the IP’s of new commenters. This one was different, the IP was linked to the city’s network. The comments were coming from a city owned computer during the middle of the morning and afternoon. I assumed it was a city employee making the comments. When this city councilor asked the city’s IT department what computer the IP was linked to they told them, “From the library’s public use computers.”
Yeah right.
I guess this commenter was so upset with this city councilor they went to the library in the middle of the morning, logged in and made the comments. And when they had to respond, they returned to the library almost 4 hours later to make more comments. But when they made even more comments later that night it came from a residential Midco IP. After the inquiry this ‘person’ stopped making comments altogether. Go figure. I did some research on my side, but without having access to the city’s network OR Midco’s it was nearly impossible for me to track the user. My concern wasn’t that a person was making these kind of comments, that is their 1st Amendment right. But it is a violation for a city employee to be making these comments about a councilor on city time, using city property, most likely ending in termination.
Back to Paul.
Cory brings up something I have known about Mr. TenHaken for a very long time;
And if nothing else, TenHaken’s involvement in the hyper-defensive Rounds campaign’s internal dirty tricks should dispel any misconception that TenHaken is just a nice nonpartisan guy looking to serve his city. He’s a long-time, well-connected Republican hack, a shade more technically adept but no less partisan than Pat Powers. His involvement in RINOMike-gate could show that, if he succeeds Mike Huether as mayor, he be just as brittle about criticism of his administration, and he’ll be willing to deploy his technical skills to root out his perceived enemies.
Besides the fact that he was trying to get the help of a public university to do his dirty work, it shows what lengths Mr. TenHaken will go through to bury enemies of his right-winger clients, ironically defending one of the most corrupt governors the State of South Dakota has ever had.
That could not have been an easy job.