Strimling: In Charles, MAGA gets their racist, incompetent, phony axe-man for the GOP nominee

As we await the final ranked choice count from the race to pick the Democratic nominee for governor (I put my money on Shenna Bellows or Hannah Pingree winning, with Shah in second), the Republican nominee, with a 17-plus point lead, is pretty much decided. Closing even a double-digit gap in RCV is almost impossible unless there is deep coalition building well before the election. And the GOP is nothing if not anti-coalition in ranked choice races. 

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That means the race to defeat the racist, corporate lobbyist turned phony woodsman, Bobby Charles, is upon us.

For those who don’t know, Charles is an Ivy League-educated long-term Republican operative who served in the Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 presidential administrations. Somewhere in there he also worked for former Speaker Dennis Hastert. That’s the same Hastert who was convicted of paying hush money to silence multiple children he molested.

While serving Bush 2 in the Pentagon, Charles was appointed to oversee the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. After 18 months of incompetence, according to an excellent expose in the Maine Monitor, “auditors found poor management, billions spent without accountability, and failure to accomplish primary foreign policy goals.” 

There were “serious problem[s]”, in the highly-sensitive work he oversaw, according to a memo from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. If even Rumsfeld, the king of incompetence, can see that your work sucks, you know you have a problem. Anyway, Charles “left” that job. 

From there Charles turned his insider game into a decades-long career as a lobbyist for the military industrial complex and for surveillance companies. Then, out of nowhere, this Dartmouth, Columbia, and Oxford educated lawyer moved back to Maine, where he now lives in a million-dollar estate on the shores of Androscoggin lake. I won’t dox the guy, but sheesh. There is nothing that says “working-class Mainer who understands the struggles of skyrocketing costs” less than this guy’s family compound.

Now back in Maine, Charles decided to run for governor by turning himself into an axe-wielding woodsman (“I’ll slash the state budget with an axe!” Get it?) who embraces every racist and xenophobic trope MAGA and Trump have dished out.

And while his xenophobic racism appears very real, his axe-wielding woodsman image is total bullshit.

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You can tell the woodsman part is a joke by the brand new spotless suede leather jacket he wears when “chopping” wood in his videos, or the expertly-ironed LL Bean flannel he dons from his perfectly caned rocking chair, or even his signature white “NAVY” hat that looks like it has been drycleaned between appearances.

As for swinging the axe, just watch his videos. He grips the axe handle all over the place. He winds up like he’s throwing a softball. He even appears to go up on his tippy toes in one video, a sure fire way to miss everything and lose a toe. In that video, you can actually see the axe handle bounce off the log at the end because of how badly he missed. As a public service, here is a basic tutorial on axe use for his team. It is a woman doing the tutorial, so he might not like that.

Last, but sadly not least, the racism is clearly not fake. Straight out of the 1920’s KKK in Maine, from day one, like Donald Trump, Charles has attacked our immigrant families as unpatriotic criminals stealing resources and culture. In particular, he has gone after the Somali community in the form of Rep. Deqa Dhalac. 

I won’t repost all his garbage here, but Ajambo Africa, a Maine publication for Maine’s newest families, tracked that Charles posted 30 racist attacks over a single two-week period. Posting stuff like, “Maine taxpayers are not a stepping stool for Somalia’s interests,” “Mainers don’t answer to Mogadishu,” or using a cartoon of Rep. Dhalac taking down the American flag and replacing it with one from Somalia at the State House.

The good news from all this is that it looks like even some Republican leaders are divided on this guy, even if the MAGA core of the GOP is not. Some of the defeated candidates are making noise that they won’t attend his unity rally, once he is crowned. I doubt it will, but let’s hope it sticks.

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But hey, if the GOP wants to nominate a racist, phony who could never win a statewide majority, who am I to get in the way.