To Matt Blake’s response to my Nesselhuf column last week:

On the minimum wage and pre-K education

-Of course Mr. Blake is happy Nesselhuf supports these. Increased government meddling in citizens’ lives is a valuable tool for the Democratic Party. 

-Blake makes a knee-jerk assumption that the minimum wage is beneficial (it isn’t) and that pre-K education is a good investment for taxpayer dollars.

On Hyperion

Nesselhuf’s failed bill  would have allowed the state government to write incredibly strict environmental regulations, leaving the door open for opposition to essentially write Hyperion out of existence, by, say, regulating so strictly that Hyperion could not operate.

“I took the laws straight off the books in California…” said Nesselhuf at one of the hearings on Hyperion.

-Also, Nesselhuf was so anti-Hyperion that the Hyperion people don’t want to work with him. Hyperion IS coming. Nesselhuf is not ready. 

My “hard core partisan” stance

-Apparently Mr. Blake knows me…despite the fact that we’ve never met. 

-His claim that I am a hardcore partisan is untrue. Though I am president of a partisan organization, I remove that hat when I write. The Volante hired me to write Matt Hittle’s opinions, not the College Republicans’. There are several issues in the Republican Platform with which I don’t agree.

-It’s smart for Mr. Blake to paint me as a radical, though. It erodes my credibility in the eyes of readers. Both he and Bill Muller, the Nesselhuf campaign manager, have done this now. Muller did it in a press release in which he falsely claimed that my Nesselhuf column was a product of the College Republicans. When asked to correct this mistake, Muller became angry and refused to change the blatant error (or lie, depending on your view).

Nesselhuf voted _____ times for _____

-And? What’s your point? So he voted a bunch of times for bills that don’t pass. Shouldn’t his effectiveness be measured not by the ideas he supports, but by his ability to get those ideas codified into law?

-What do you mean by “helped secure” dollars for USD? You mean he “voted for” the bill that gave dollars to USD. Blake makes it sound like Nesselhuf took the lead, valiantly “securing” money for USD. In reality, Nesselhuf merely voted for a Regents-supported bill. That’s a no-brainer.

Nesselhuf is popular

-No argument there, he’s a nice guy and his father is a nice guy. But you can’t ride the amiability of yourself and your family forever. Eventually, you’ll have to face your record, whether it’s in 2008 or in the next cycle.

Matt Hittle is the President of the USD College Republicans and Secretary of the USD Political Science League