Moderate Democrat faces far-right challenger in Minnesota's 1st
If You Thought Michele Bachmann Was Out There...
Her mentor, Allen Quist, believes dinosaurs coexisted with man, women are "genetically predisposed" to subservience—and he just nabbed Minnesota's First District in the GOP primary.
By Tim Murphy | Mon May. 14, 2012 12:01 AM PDT
Mother Jones
Rep. Tim Walz should be in big trouble this November. The Minnesota Democrat's district gave just 51 percent of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008 and the National Republican Congressional Committee is spending big bucks attacking Walz as an out-of-touch lefty.
But Walz has two things going for him. The GOP's April nominating convention ended in a stalemate after 23 ballots, meaning the two top candidates have to spend the next three months preparing for the August primary. That, in turn, means Walz stands a decent chance of facing Allen Quist, a 67-year-old soybean farmer and onetime anti-sodomy crusader who believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century.
Quist's platform and ideology bears a close resemblance to another Minnesota conservative with a huge family and a love-hate relationship with modern science—Rep. Michele Bachmann. That's no coincidence. Beginning in the late 1990s, the duo worked together to take down Minnesota's state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism. He helped make her rise possible; now he wants to join her in Washington.
As a Minnesota state representative in the 1980s, Quist staked out a position on his party's far-right wing. At the time, the state's GOP was undergoing a rightward shift from a party known for its mild-mannered moderates to one populated by family values firebrands. Quist was the tip of the spear.
During his time as a state representative, Quist slammed a gay counseling clinic at Mankato State University by comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan (both would be breeding grounds for evil—AIDS, in this case) and went undercover at an adult bookstore and a gay bathhouse in an effort to prove to a local newspaper reporter that they had become a "haven for anal intercourse." (A decade later, Bachmann would bring groups of supporters onto the Capitol floor to pray over the desk of a gay colleague.)
By Tim Murphy | Mon May. 14, 2012 12:01 AM PDT
Mother Jones
Rep. Tim Walz should be in big trouble this November. The Minnesota Democrat's district gave just 51 percent of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008 and the National Republican Congressional Committee is spending big bucks attacking Walz as an out-of-touch lefty.
But Walz has two things going for him. The GOP's April nominating convention ended in a stalemate after 23 ballots, meaning the two top candidates have to spend the next three months preparing for the August primary. That, in turn, means Walz stands a decent chance of facing Allen Quist, a 67-year-old soybean farmer and onetime anti-sodomy crusader who believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century.
Quist's platform and ideology bears a close resemblance to another Minnesota conservative with a huge family and a love-hate relationship with modern science—Rep. Michele Bachmann. That's no coincidence. Beginning in the late 1990s, the duo worked together to take down Minnesota's state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism. He helped make her rise possible; now he wants to join her in Washington.
As a Minnesota state representative in the 1980s, Quist staked out a position on his party's far-right wing. At the time, the state's GOP was undergoing a rightward shift from a party known for its mild-mannered moderates to one populated by family values firebrands. Quist was the tip of the spear.
During his time as a state representative, Quist slammed a gay counseling clinic at Mankato State University by comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan (both would be breeding grounds for evil—AIDS, in this case) and went undercover at an adult bookstore and a gay bathhouse in an effort to prove to a local newspaper reporter that they had become a "haven for anal intercourse." (A decade later, Bachmann would bring groups of supporters onto the Capitol floor to pray over the desk of a gay colleague.)
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