‘Badass Grandmas’ doth protest too much
TOM STROMME/Tribune Dina Butcher, left, and Ellen Chaffee were involved with changing the North Dakota constitution when voters approved Measure 1 in November.
MINOT, N.D. — The ballot measure which created North Dakota’s ethics commission was pushed by a front group for national left-wing interests called, ironically enough, North Dakotans for Public Integrity.
The two women who were the face of this campaign, Dina Butcher and Ellen Chaffee, are rank partisans (the latter contributed financial support to the man who took an ax to Sen. John Hoeven’s office last year) less concerned with accountability for government than creating a venue where North Dakota’s current Republican majority could be assailed with innuendo and gotcha claims.
Perversely, these two women, who, forgetting how unseemly it is to bestow a nickname upon oneself, now style themselves the “Badass Grandmas,” are using words like “transparency” and “accountability” as cover for their political machinations.
They were successful with their ballot measure campaign, funded as it was with big-money contributions from out of state, including from an Enron billionaire, but now they’ve run into some frustration.
The ethics commission isn’t doing their bidding.
